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London Blitz, Redux

Posted by: Michael Dudley

26 November 2008 - 1:00pm

A combination of economic crises and a tax code based on square footage rather than rentals is encouraging a raft of demolitions that is leaving parts of London looking like it's been bombed again.

"To many observers, Britain's urban areas are beginning to resemble the years of the Blitz.

But this time, the empty lots are being caused not by bombs but by a freak combination of disasters in the financial system, the real-estate market and the tax code that have turned one of the world's largest real-estate booms into a recipe for derelict and abandoned properties.

As the condo market has disappeared and mortgage lending has shrunk 40 per cent, [developers] have lost their sources of financing, and there is a real possibility that huge stretches of downtown cores will be unbuilt and left as half-demolished stretches of wasteland."

Full Story: Tax code fuels London's second blitz
Source: The Globe and Mail, November 25, 2008
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