Perhaps, but it would give us an understanding of what is going on long term. The 60ish years you are looking at at the moment just doesn't give enough time to do a proper correlation. For example the housing market was massively affected by the second world war. Basically you can't say the last 5 or so years are different to history if you are only comparing it to a few years before!
You have to question why workers cottages (and renting in its various forms) were so common, because people couldn't afford to buy or build their own house?
I'm not in any way suggesting that house prices have not gone up relative to income, just that the short term you're looking at really can't give a true representation through time.
As for land, just because there was more land may not mean it was for sale. Large landowners may not have been wanting to sell, causing prices to be artificially high? What is interesting though is the massive disparity in house prices in London compared to that of the rest of the country. Even in 1900 there was little difference in house prices, that was after the main rush to the cities.
Gross income would certainly be the easiest measure, but is it really relevant? I thought it may have been until I read that article and realised that it has little to do with it. As I said in the other post, I classed disposable income as that after food costs were taken out (absolute essentials). Does the average family spend more than 20% or so of their money on food now? It used to be 60% apparently. Then there is the issue, as Castiel said, of joint income.
If you have two average wage people who spend 20% of their money on food they are going to have significantly more spending power than a single income family spending 60% of their money on food! That's before tax comes in to it.
What I don't understand is how you think the 1800s are relevant to modern UK society, we had workhouses ffs. There is such a massive difference in the safety net now compared to then. I can't find any stats on it, but I suspect the owner occupied housing was tiny and was pretty much limited to modern equivalents to millionaires, your average joe was struggling to survive not buy property.
The key is land and will always be land unless we start going dramatically upwards (high rise) or downwards into the ground, otherwise the limited amount of land per head will get smaller and smaller.
Yes workers cottages were commonly part of the package for a what in those times was often considered a good job. They couldn't afford much more than their food.
Towards the late 1800s we had proper slums still in London :
"In a recent report made to the Commissioners of Sewers for London, Dr. Letheby says: “I have been at much pains during the last three months to ascertain the precise conditions of the dwell*ings, the habits, and the diseases of the poor. In this way 2,208 rooms have been most circumstantially inspected, and the general result is that nearly all of them are filthy or overcrowded or im*perfectly drained, or badly ventilated, or out of repair. In 1,989 of these rooms, all in fact that are at present inhabited, there are 5,791 inmates, belonging to 1,576 families; and to say nothing of the too frequent occurrence of what may be regarded as a neces*sitous overcrowding, where the husband, the wife, and young family of four or five children are cramped into a miserably small and ill-conditioned room, there are numerous instances where adults of both sexes, belonging to different families, are lodged in the same room, regardless of all the common decencies of life, and where from three to five adults, men and women, besides a train or two of children, are accustomed to herd together like brute beasts or savages; and where every human instinct of propriety and decency is smothered. Like my predecessor, I have seen grown persons of both sexes sleeping in common with their parents, brothers and sisters, and cousins, and even the casual acquaintance of a day’s tramp, occupying the same bed of filthy rags or straw; a woman suffering in travail, in the midst of males and females of different families that tenant the same room, where birth and death go hand in hand; where the child but newly born, the patient cast down with fever, and the corpse waiting for interment, have no separation from each other, or from the rest of the inmates. Of the many cases to which I have alluded, there are some which have commanded my attention by reason of their unusual depravity— cases in which from three to four adults of both sexes, with many children, were lodging in the same room, and often sleeping in the same bed. I have note of three or four localities, where forty-eight men, seventy-three women, and fifty-nine children are living in thirty-four rooms. In one room there are two men, three women, and five children, and in another one man, four women, and two children; and when, about a fortnight since, I visited the back room on the ground floor of No. 5, I found it occupied by one man, two women, and two children; and in it was the dead body of a poor girl who had died in childbirth a few days before. The body was stretched out on the bare floor, without shroud or coffin. There it lay in the midst of the living, and we may well ask how it can be otherwise than that the human heart should be dead to all the gentler feelings of our nature, when such sights as these are of common occurrence."
Written in 1869. Its just a completely different world to now.
Do you want to go back to Roman times? Middle ages, I bet the multiplier was low when you built a mud hut in a field and had most of your spare income taken from you to pay for a war? The 1800s aren't a good representation for modern trends, there may not be a good representation, but post WW2 at least has reasonable correlation to what we have now, ok it was worse, but a lot of the current welfare state was born at that time.
Dont get me wrong I am not saying I think house prices are "right", but I cannot see anything to break the cycle of ever increasing prices unless something changes :
1) Lower population
2) More housing built at an affordable level to keep house inflation down
Supply and demand, whilst there is demand and lacking supply the prices will not drop. Demand is low, but there is still some, and people unless forced to are just staying put. Two things will cause most people to run into serious issues, either no income (ie job losses), but of course thats assuming they dont qualify for lots of handouts which they probably will, or a large rise in interest rates. The second could happen, its certainly creeping up as the cost of capital is creeping up for the banks.
