And there were many things that were allowed in the 1930s that we're paying the price for today.
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The housing crisis and ways to fix it?
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renegademaster
Established Member
People in this thread are making really convulted excuses when the more simple explanation is that the amount of houses built have dropped dramatically while population growth has risen
This link is a good primer on the issues facing the housing market "Generation Rent" and Generation "ENDIES" (Economically Active No Disposable Income)
UK Houses are unaffordable to many
UK Houses are unaffordable to many
The UK govt has been somewhat focused on the Economically INactive- those 'lead-swinging' sufferers of long covid. A million or so of them who could be driving trains, or competing with Gen Rent for bar jobs, checkouts, deliveroo etc.
The political parties will continue to pander to triple-locked pensioners and ignore the young folk influenced by that ar ... ole Russel Brand who can't be bothered to vote.
Those who will inherit the houses of their forebears will be alright Jack, inheriting maybe three or four houses able to sell or rent out or holiday in.
'The system' suits those who gain from it- council house sales, tax reliefs etc- and penalises renters, shared ownershipers, 'affordable renters', ...
It will take a long time to reverse the effects of the last half-century.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I think you'll find that 51 years separate 1971 and 2022. Does that change your calculations?
3141
Established Member
I'm sure there are, though you didn't say what things you're referring to. But the point I was making is that the complexity of today's planning system is one of the reasons why getting approval for a development is more difficult and slower, and that's the price we pay if, collectively, we want all the requirements of the present system to be met.
My daughter and her family will inherit our house, provided its value hasn't been used up for the provision of residential care for us, but only one and not "maybe three or four". But if their position is "I'm all right Jack" it's because they've already got a good-sized house of their own as a result of hard work and determination.
Yes, the system, whatever it may currently be, does suit those who gain from it. At one time they included council house tenants, many of whom benefitted from low rents, their properties being maintained, and additional family income from grown-up family members who hadn't yet left home, compared with owner-occupiers who had to meet all the costs of ownership for themselves.
HSTEd
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Whilst it is common to blame differential turnout for why the young have no power, the reality is far simpler.
As only over 18s can vote, the median age of the electorate is approximately 50.
Even if everyone voted there are simply too many 50+ people who overwhelmingly vote for the status quo.
I live in a freehold house and still have a maintenance bill (just not for the upkeep of the building). The point being is that without shared lifts and the like which can really ramp the bills up quite quickly for every year the cost would be fairly limited.
It depends on the numbers, clearly allowing 2 in for everyone who retires and isn't replaced by a young person isn't great. However, if it's a case of for every 5 people who retire who aren't replaced by a young person one is allowed in then that's a different outcome.
A LOT of inactive people (bearing in mind that the data covers 16-65 year old) are under 21 and are on full time education. Quite a few have retired early. Neither of these groups are likely to want to be working.
It's an easy thing to blame, and people think it's worth trying to get more "lazy" people into work. Only there's not really the numbers the headlines imply when you look into it.
Three of my four grandparents lived into at least their 90's (one made it to nearly 100), relatively little of my paternal grandparents money passed to their grandchildren, whilst my maternal grandmother is still alive (so kind of needs her house!). There's a good chance my parents will have similarly long lives, so there's little hope that there'll be much coming our way for some time.
By the time that it does, there's a fair chance that it'll "need" to skip past its to help our children out with getting on the housing ladder (as our housing situation would be pretty much sorted by us funding it ourselves by then).
I think you'll find that 51 years separate 1971 and 2022. Does that change your calculations?
It changes it to about 200,000 per year, which is only just about what has been managed to be delivered for quite a lot of the years. It still means a need for a higher target, maybe not as high as 500,000, but still higher than the current one.
Depends on your definition of limited. My service charges are approximately £50/month.
The estimate for the concrete works was about £7k. At some point the doors and windows for the block will get replaced, I can’t do those independently.
In my last house it cost me in average £25 per month for the replacement of my doors and windows, however that was done 14 years ago, so inflation would mean that those costs would be much higher. Therefore, if you're passing about £50 per month for your maintenance you're probably not that far off what someone in a freehold would be paying for their maintenance and so the extra (even if we assumed it was £25 per month) is fairly limited.
Especially compared to what some are charged, given the average is supposedly £1,500 per year (£125 per month).
The £50 per month is the routine stuff. Big items like the doors and windows will be on top.
Not sure if stats back this up, but from my observations in the Bristol area there appears to be a growing amount of city centre and inner suburb 'dwelling space' taken up by hotels and student accommodation, ie occupants who have another bedroom somewhere else - or in the case of many students two bedrooms somewhere else with separated parents and a bedroom with each of them.
Perhaps some of the answer is a reform of 'mass higher education', with a shift towards more locally based post-secondary education rather than the current distribution of 18-22 year olds all around the country.
Perhaps some of the answer is a reform of 'mass higher education', with a shift towards more locally based post-secondary education rather than the current distribution of 18-22 year olds all around the country.
Though if Bristol is like Oxford, a fair chunk of the purpose built student accommodation is designed to take students out of the general housing market, freeing up homes for the rest of us?
GusB
Established Member
Perhaps we should have a supply of accommodation that suits younger, more transient people. A supply that's secure enough that people don't have to constantly worry about being kicked out of their current accommodation.
One thing that pisses me off is that certain government figures complain about people being unwilling to move to find jobs - make it easier to get a house and people will move. If you've been on a waiting list for a council house for years and are successful, you're unlikely to give up what it took so long to achieve.
HSTEd
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Most student housing will not consume significant floor area as a fraction of the total available.
It is extremely dense by comparison to more normal housing, the floor area per occupant will be a small fraction of that found elsewhere.
Even in terraced houses being used by students they are packed in, halls of residence will be a whole other level.
The inescapable reality is that the supply of housing is woefully insufficient, you can tweak around the edges somewhat but you aren't going to free the millions of housing units needed.
And that's before we get into the staff and resource inefficiency of attempting to disperse post secondary education to allow everyone with parents to live with them.....
WelshBluebird
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As someone who is lucky enough to have bought a house in Bristol last year, it isn't students who are causing two bedroom terraced houses to be over £300k (and sometimes over £400k) in relatively normal areas (e.g. Totterdown, Windmill Hill etc).
I also severally doubt it is students who caused 2 bed flats to go from £850 a month in 2020 to £1300-1500 a month and more in 2023.
That would work if we had more of a focus on vocational training (as we probably should), but universities are intended to be centres of research, which requires a certain critical mass of academic staff and research facilities.
CaramellDansen
On Moderation
250,000 houses lay empty long term (many more in the short term), existing only to artificially drive up housing value for landlords and speculators while people die on the streets.
Even if the issues of homelessness and landlord parasites were solved, there are many more places to build housing than over railways. This is at best cruel indifference, and more likely malice towards the railways which do not serve ruling class interests. Even if we weren't building over historic railways, single family homes are the most destructive, most inefficient, most societally harmful and least effective form of housing for everyone but the automotive and construction industries. We should be building medium-density row homes, "missing middle" mixed use, and dense public housing.
The housing market (and housing costing money) is perhaps one of the greatest sins of capitalism that we just accept as a part of our day-to-day lives.
HSTEd
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That's something like 0.9% of the housing stock, it is not enough to have any meaningful impact on house prices.
Indeed there is little evidence that empty housing stock exists at levels greater than we would expect in any functioning market.
CaramellDansen
On Moderation
You really did just strawman the entire point I made, huh?
It's a local phenomenon. When a place has higher land value, it's local: houses in that area get more expensive, not every house ever.
Not to mention, you don't see it wrong that a human need is put to the market? Shall we do the same to the NHS?
Regardless, there are many places to build houses in the country. Over our few remaining historic railways should not be one of them.
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Also, if we assume 50% of the 140,000 homeless children are connected to their parents (i.e. would live with them if housed), added to the 390,000 homeless adults, we could house ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE FOR FREE with the current number of just long-term empty houses! We have enough houses.
Human need is not driving these houses being built or the empty houses being left empty, only landlord greed.
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You were arguing that all these empty houses are being used to artificially raise prices. Actually, prices rise quickest in areas where there are fewer empty houses as there's less supply available to meet demand. It also requires the landlord to have a large number of properties so the increased rents from the rest cover the lost income from the empty property. The average number of properties per landlord is 3, so that seems rather unlikely as a strategy.
Most human needs are part of a market unless you live in a communist state. Should we nationalise all the supermarkets? Surely food as a basic human need would be better provided by the state?
There may be many places to build houses, but people don't want to live in most of them. Why should the fact someone once built a railway along a route mean it can nevermore be used for any other purpose? If it was a useful railway route it wouldn't have been closed for over 30 years. There are other railway lines in the vicinity, so it's not as if that area is completely cut off.
You may consider that the current set of longterm empty houses might solve homelessness, but have you considered our rising population? We need to be building that many homes every year to keep up.
CaramellDansen
On Moderation
This is the last I'm mentioning of this.
Supply is low because they MADE THEM STAY EMPTY. How do you not understand this??
Here's why: because you could build it anywhere else!!!
Yes.
No. You can't buy empty houses that landlords don't put on the market.
Supply is low because they MADE THEM STAY EMPTY. How do you not understand this??
The average wage in Britain is £33,402 - does that mean billionaires don't exist? This line of argumentation is incredibly dishonest.
Why not? Sounds good!
Let's destroy all of our heritage, eh? Anything to feed the market.
Here's why: because you could build it anywhere else!!!
Few millionaires actually earn a million a year. According to the government there's 18,700.
In comparison there's 31.7 million tax payers (i.e. those who earn over £12,570). It doesn't take many earning £32,000 (714) to allow someone else to earn £1 million and still keep the average at the same value. Let alone those earning less than that.
In comparison there's less than 3 million people who are landlords in the UK, whilst there's less than 5 million rental properties.
According to government data, about 43% of all landlords own just one property. Whist there's 18% of landlords which own more than 5 properties the account for 48% of tenancies.
However there's even more of a breakdown, those who own over 100 properties make up 3.5% of the overall rental market by number of tenants (they account for 0.1% of all landlords), at 5 million rentals (and it's a bit below this) they own about 175,000 properties.
Whist someone with 100+ properties could potentially have an impact on a small town, few are going to be able to impact even a city, let alone a region or even the whole country.
Basically the number of properties overall is just too few to make much of a difference. Unlike wages, where there's so many that even small reductions from the average by enough people will allow massive amounts above the average for a few.
A lot of underutilized properties are more likely to be second homes.
However it still comes down to the fact that whist such empty and underutilized properties will mean that more houses would need to be built, we are only talking about 1 or 2 years worth of normal housebuilding. Which whilst it will have an impact, probably isn't as big an issue as implied.
Numbers taken from here:
CaramellDansen
On Moderation
I didn't ask to be in this thread, I was moved here by the censors for disagreeing with the status quo. I don't care about debating this issue. There's no debate.
renegademaster
Established Member
How many London waiting list people would accept a house in liverpool which has abandoned for a decade?
GusB
Established Member
Quite a few, I'd guess. Having a roof above one's head is rather important and people will move if necessary. It may not be the ideal move, though. Have you ever been on a housing list?
renegademaster
Established Member
Yes, and most of the housing list have a roof over there heads but are sofa surfing or been put in hotels. Its controversy enough when Croydon council offload social housing tenants to Crawley or Worthing, people generally want to stay near their families.
Even the "propper" homeless still generally have support or medical services they have got to stay by
Pre-Covid, IIRC, a big issue was that 'London people on benefits' were being moved out to lower-rent Luton to 'ease the housing shortage'.
Even the UK government 'accepts' that more new homes are needed (https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...eed-for-homes/fact-sheet-1-the-need-for-homes ) and that addressing vacant homes will not meet the need.
Of course people like to stay close to people and places they know, and to work and schools; but their neighbours are NIMBYs and want to keep 'their' views and they win the vote. Sad fact- We get the government and the built environment and railways we 'deserve'. Tax cuts coming ...
Even the UK government 'accepts' that more new homes are needed (https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...eed-for-homes/fact-sheet-1-the-need-for-homes ) and that addressing vacant homes will not meet the need.
Of course people like to stay close to people and places they know, and to work and schools; but their neighbours are NIMBYs and want to keep 'their' views and they win the vote. Sad fact- We get the government and the built environment and railways we 'deserve'. Tax cuts coming ...
I find it amazing that almost everyone agrees with the laws of supply and demand....except when it comes to housing
Anyway the Financial Times did a great article last week showing that in the US, the cities of Austin and Houston massively increase housing supply and.... prices dropped (of course) This was by densifying existing cities by the way (As usually when anyone compares Texas, or anywhere in the US, with the UK, they tend to say but they have so much more space than us)
Anyway the Financial Times did a great article last week showing that in the US, the cities of Austin and Houston massively increase housing supply and.... prices dropped (of course) This was by densifying existing cities by the way (As usually when anyone compares Texas, or anywhere in the US, with the UK, they tend to say but they have so much more space than us)
Austin and Houston of course are much less densely built in the first place than UK cities, and have lots of low-rise space and empty lots to densify into.
In terms of supply and demand, you can make rents more affordable short term by releasing a glut of property into an area. Longer term though for places like London and Austin, there is no shortage of people looking to move there, or comparatively rich children wanting to move out of their parents homes.
The only way to make a lasting supply side impact is by continuously adding a glut of properties every year, which isn't something you can do by fiddling around with second home taxes and hammering landlords.
I think it's really important not to overlook the demand side though. Somebody with rich parents who fancies a wee semi for themselves, or indeed an older person who doesn't feel like moving out of a four bedroom house, shouldn't be able to outbid a family who would fill that space. You need a more equal society and sensible taxes to fulfill those objectives, and ultimately you need people to buy into them rather fantasizing about hammering landlords and property developers.
You also need a regional policy which doesn't accept the relentless drift into cities and into the southeast, and which keeps the whole country liveable.
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