A tighter border means less people pressure on housing, but those that run the economy want to keep the workers here under pressure, so the border is porous, & space is expensive & dont delude yourselves that increased numbers of people and slow building rates of inappropriate & undesired housing, does not impact rental costs or house prices … how can it not? when the building rate does not match demand or provide a cost effective alternative as wages have in relative form declined, were caught between the cost of land in london, regulations & labour to build new being too costly, and that which is built of being unsatisfactory quality, meaning new builds are bad value generally, here do you fancy a 25% share in a poxy block flat in far east london, & you can pay the other 75% in rent, WTF! forget that. Combined with people pressure through immigration into the major english urban centres, the government has failed to reign in the housing market, preferring to fantasize house price increases are a valid part of the growing economy , whereas really they have very little value to us as a nation except as a lever to put pressure on people & to lower living standards, compared to say something really economically useful like exports. Over the last 50 years the government has let the buy to let / rental market run away with itself as an investment opportunity for the multiple house owning wealthy, since rent caps were abandoned in the 60’s, at the expense of the non house owning classes, increasing societal division. Half the people on housing benefit are largely a cost to the government in the first place, because rental prices are beyond the reach of low wages thereby the government is subsidising big businesses costs, unless your an economically efficient immigrant living in a bedsit or flatshare. And in this recession the government protected the property speculator by holding base interest rates, rtificially low, making better profits for banks & preventing a housing bubble correction from occurring, as it has in america. The only solution is to reduce people pressure on the housing or to build allot more housing somehow affordably & at a good standard without despoiling the environment, to be honest rent capping needs to be re-introduced as punishment for the profiteering thats occurred over the last 40 years in the rental market & slow the market down, using a base rate increase to cause the hard medicine of price decline, as the cost of housing is damaging our economy by disenfranchising and dis-heartening the people who actually work for a living rather than invest, this would require government intervention, but the lazy government still has faith in the idea of free capitalist markets resolving such issues by themselves, which they have failed to achieve, as the market is only interested in profiteering rather than providing affordable housing to make a more equitable society, and all the holistic benefits societally that might flow from that, watch the “spirit of 45”, developers can’t cost effectively solve this problem whilst satisfying investors monetary greed, housing standards are poky, awful & declining. were between a rock & a hard place im afraid … welcome to England ! ;(