Something I didn't realise until recently was in the US it's normal to have a 30 year mortgage with a fixed rate from the start, rather than a fixed rate for a few years and then either a variable rate or requiring a remortgage. My understanding is that most mortgages in the Netherlands tend to be 5-10 years fixed rather than lifetime.

In the UK I feel there's a lot of distrust of stock markets amongst normal people, partly because the FTSE doesn't grow (back in 2000 it was about 7,000, today it's about 7,500), and that's the one reported on the normal news. There's no widely reported "FTSE dividend reinvested" measure.

Add in the mortgage mess from annuity mortgages where people were sold the idea they could have their cake and eat it too, ended up without enough money to repay their mortgage at the end. Throw in the pension collapse of Equitable Life, the pension fraud from Maxwell, the stock "boom" in the 90s where normal people bought shares, driven by the selloff of nationalised industries, and then seeing those shares vanish in 2000 and never really recovering and you get a general distrust of private hands managing money, and a preference to trust the government.

This meant people put their money into houses starting in the late 90s, which combined with increasing household income as new families became dual-income led to increasing house prices and a snowball effect. Even 2008 didn't really impact, as it was mainly sold as a US problem which had an effect on the UK, but not a major one.

The UK government (any colour) will do anything to keep house prices growing as that's how you get votes.

Makes complete sense given interest rates are zero right now. However, if the ECB keeps getting surprised by inflation (like the Fed is in the US), interest rates may have to be start rising in fast, dramatic fashion.