Oh my house was way below the median, in my region of the country the median house price was £385k when I bought. If anything bungalows are often seen as a retirement option as well because no stairs to climb. At the same price range we could have got a terrace house, but they were in worse areas of town and the gardens much smaller. This is small (60m²) but its enough, after that I would like to have some outside space too. Which is also fairly small but its still something, the entire property is about 150m².

We need more places to apply similar taxes to discourage houses being left empty. It won't fix the problem but its a step in the right direction. Rentals being left empty for long periods of time is also a problem, for both residential and commercial property.

Still working remote, not sure how long I will be able to keep that but I have had to refuse orders to start commuting more than once. Compromise agreement is offered and everyone forgets about it while we continue not going into the office more than a handful of times a year. They moved the office over 50 miles away which I am using as my (quite reasonable!) justification to not go in on a regular basis. If it remained local I could cycle in more often quite happily. Yeah in my area there are not the best job opportunities, but there is at least work to be done if you want to just take any job and its not like the pay makes much difference. In the UK we have comparably good minimum wage. I am on £26k (~£13.33/h) and minimum wage gets you £12.21/hour. So even if I just switched to literally any job I wouldn't be taking much of a pay cut and its actually cheaper than taking the train each day would be as rail is really expensive here.