One of the eternal bugbears of the media in the UK (particularly the left-wing media) is that foreigners are buying property, driving up house prices and thus making life harder for Brits.
Purely personal thought: in principle UK welcomes overseas citizens. Pre EU Referendum the big lie was that EU workers took jobs and flooded our services. The reality was that the large majority provided essential labour and tax revenue. The number of Third World economic migrants was (and is) greater.
Housing: again, do not blame the ‘foreigner’. For 40 years house prices have been artificially raised, and now young people cannot afford them.
I have been told by different readers that Durham is cheap and the Universities of Durham and Newcastle have a good reputation, thus attracting lots of foreign students. Apparently, what happens quite frequently is that wealthy foreigners buy houses for their kids and then rent it out after the kids have left university.
You write "what surprised me is that Russian make up for a rather low share of the ultimate owners", but isn't a lot of Russian money parked in Cyprus? Which turns out to be higher up. Presumably other places (Mauritius?) are money parks too, though I guess maybe not Russian in those cases.
Purely personal thought: in principle UK welcomes overseas citizens. Pre EU Referendum the big lie was that EU workers took jobs and flooded our services. The reality was that the large majority provided essential labour and tax revenue. The number of Third World economic migrants was (and is) greater.
Housing: again, do not blame the ‘foreigner’. For 40 years house prices have been artificially raised, and now young people cannot afford them.
Does anyone know why Durham is such a "hot spot"?
I have been told by different readers that Durham is cheap and the Universities of Durham and Newcastle have a good reputation, thus attracting lots of foreign students. Apparently, what happens quite frequently is that wealthy foreigners buy houses for their kids and then rent it out after the kids have left university.
You write "what surprised me is that Russian make up for a rather low share of the ultimate owners", but isn't a lot of Russian money parked in Cyprus? Which turns out to be higher up. Presumably other places (Mauritius?) are money parks too, though I guess maybe not Russian in those cases.