1
Mar
"PROPERTY & PREJUDICE" - A NOVEL BY 'THE COALITION'
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single family in
possession of a good mortgage must be in want of a house. So a
Jane Austen novel on the property market could have begun.
Sadly today there are plenty of families wanting a house,
especially with affordability at near-record levels, but few can
get hold of a mortgage.
Austen knew a thing or two about property, or at least the
importance of owning it. Her novels had a great deal to do with its
acquisition. Although her preferred route to ownership was largely
through marriage, she would have understood about financing a
property purchase through a mortgage as her life coincided with the
advent of the building society movement.
Austen understood that social status played a major role in
owning or aspiring to own property. Above all perhaps, she
understood that an individual’s or family’s financial
circumstances played a pivotal role in determining where and how
one lived - and how one was seen to live. She certainly knew the
value of a fine location and the benefits that well-proportioned
rooms and good natural light bestowed upon occupants.
This understanding seems as apt today as it was when Jane Austen
was alive in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The desire to house one’s self and/or one’s family
comfortably, and the pleasure that a well-designed house gives to
its owner - both socially and materially – seem largely
unaltered.
But two things have changed. Residential property no longer just
demonstrates wealth but creates it, and thus makes it even more
desirable. Also, the de-mutualisation of the building societies and
their takeover by banks, together with the ongoing credit crisis,
is threatening the way we think about owning property. In 2011 this
means that, for the first time in over two hundred years, it will
be only the already well-off who can realistically afford to buy
property.
Building societies were created to allow their members to buy
property. Banks were created to make money for their shareholders.
Building societies were prudent and fiscally responsible. Banks
clearly haven’t been and are a perfect example of pride
coming before a fall. To extract themselves from the trouble they
are in the banks are now prejudiced against the very people the
building societies were formed to assist. Jane Austen could have
written a book about it.
Richard Copus
FNAVA FNAEA (Honoured) CPEA