Most of my writing draws inspiration from lived experience. Recently, I had a life-changing moment that led me to a conclusion I couldn’t wait to share with my readers.
I needed a spanner to unscrew my old toilet seat and fit the new one I’d bought for my flat in London. A small job, or so I thought but it put me, however briefly, in the position of a homeowner assessing what a London property actually costs to maintain, let alone buy. And that’s the thread I want to pull on, because my observations of the housing market both globally and particularly in my own environment have been heart-shattering. Inflated prices, overvalued properties, a depressed economy, and greed, among other factors, are weighing heavily on housing infrastructure everywhere.
London’s Housing Crisis, in Numbers
London’s average house price now sits around £542,000–£545,000, according to the ONS. Interestingly, that figure is inflated by a handful of ultra-prime sales in Kensington, Chelsea, and Mayfair, where average prices run as high as £1.4 million. Travel twenty miles east to Barking and Dagenham, and that same average drops to roughly £340,000 a gap that says less about property and more about how unevenly opportunity is distributed across a single city.
Strip out the prime-market outliers, and the real story is starker still: the median home costs about 12 times the median income — well above the UK’s national average of 8.3. A first-time buyer in London typically needs a deposit of £100,000–£150,000 just to enter the market — a sum that takes most people years, sometimes over a decade, to save. Renting isn’t the escape hatch either; average rent in London now runs around £2,280 a month, the highest of any English region.
Zoom out, and London isn’t even the world’s worst case. Hong Kong remains the most expensive property market globally, and cities like Seoul and Singapore are closing the gap fast. But London sits in a particular kind of trap: high enough to rival Asia’s most extreme markets, while wages lag behind cities like Zurich or New York, which at least pay enough to offset the cost.
There are small signs of correction. Prices are down about 2% year-on-year, and nearly a third of London listings have already been cut, per Rightmove. But this kind of cooling doesn’t fix a broken ratio it just makes an unaffordable market slightly less unaffordable.
I say all this because I consider housing a crucial human right, not a luxury asset class. So here’s a question worth sitting with before we move on: at what point does a home stop being shelter, and become simply another investment vehicle priced out of reach of the people who actually need to live in it?
Now, a break from the housing breakdown — back to that spanner.
The Spanner
I arrived home with the spanner, only to discover I’d bought the wrong size for the toilet seat’s screws and bolts. I was disappointed in myself, and I’ll confess I tried to unscrew it anyway. The spanner proved useless.
So I settled for a pomegranate juice and a doomscrolling session on my living room couch. I hadn’t even begun scrolling when the realisation hit me: the spanner I’d bought had become completely useless not because it was a bad tool, but because it didn’t match what it was meant to fit. It was well-made. It was even the right kind of spanner. It just wasn’t the right size, for this bolt, on this toilet seat, on this day. And a tool that doesn’t fit its purpose, however well-crafted, does no work at all.
That thought sat alongside other experiences I’ve had moments where something, or someone, proved itself useful only once it was placed in the right context.
The Tool and the System
Here’s where the metaphor opens up. On a larger scale, in the grand scheme of things, we humans are like that spanner. This world is a system, and within it, we function much like a tool designed and expected to operate in line with the Creator’s will, or risk being set aside to make way for something better aligned with the system’s purpose. This mechanism is evident in basic life activities, including human interactions.
Brutal as it sounds, I’ve come to understand it as nothing but the truth. Think of it this way: when you buy a shoe that doesn’t fit, you don’t wear it. Sooner or later, it gets discarded not because the shoe was flawed, but because it was mismatched to the foot it was meant to serve.
I mentioned “the grand scheme of things” earlier this refers to the will of the Creator. This will remains constant within the creation we find ourselves in. So the necessary action, as conscious tools or rather, individuals is to seek alignment with that will, not the other way around.
Which brings me back to that toilet seat, spanner in hand, useless despite being well-made. The question I keep returning to is this: how much of our own restlessness professionally, spiritually, even in something as ordinary as where we live comes not from being poorly made, but from being misapplied? Worth sitting with, before the next piece in this line of thought.
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