Housing

[Betterdeedthan red]

Don't blame the governments. We are the one's buying and selling houses. It's us that did it. Let's take some responsibility for once.

What should people do then.
Live in a tent

 

[Cheadle_hulmeBlue]

I am noticing more houses being built in certain areas. One of the main issues is that they are completely unaffordable for most people and often they are much higher in price then the houses already in the same location.

We need more council houses, but councils and successive governments seem unwilling to do anything about it. They want a quick pay check alongside developers

 

[BrianW]

This is a textbook example of market failure.

Certain politicians want to leave everything to the market. Housing in the UK shows that this is madness. The problem can only be solved by significant state intervention.

Sadly, we don't have politicians with the bollocks to do it as it would upset a lot of powerful vested interests.

 

[inbetween]

This is a textbook example of market failure.

Certain politicians want to leave everything to the market. Housing in the UK shows that this is madness. The problem can only be solved by significant state intervention.

Sadly, we don't have politicians with the bollocks to do it as it would upset a lot of powerful vested interests.

State intervention is indeed the only answer because the property market actually isn't a supply and demand market, housing is wholly dependent on access to finance. The housing market slows when that access slows. We've just seen it in recent years as higher interest rates have bitten a chunk out of housing growth.

Many people talk of building more houses but supply really isn't the issue because have you ever heard of a buy-to-let landlord who struggles to find a house to buy to rent out? However, there will be hundreds of thousands who can't find the 5-10% deposit for a mortgage. Building more houses doesn't change anything for these people, it will only do that if land values go down and that's never going to happen. Nobody sells land for less, instead they keep it until the time is right.

A window of opportunity here is that most people can afford the monthly repayments as rent payments are usually more than mortgage repayments so help with the deposit is perhaps key. This is where lenders and the BoE could help but they don't and that only leaves the government to implement some form of schemes.

I suppose more council houses are another solution but how many people are bursting to rent a council house? It also begs the question which is most people who work full time and earn above the minimum wage wouldn't be eligible for a council house anyway. Those who are eligible will certainly have bigger worries than saving for a house deposit.

 

[Blue Maverick]

State intervention is indeed the only answer because the property market actually isn't a supply and demand market, housing is wholly dependent on access to finance. The housing market slows when that access slows. We've just seen it in recent years as higher interest rates have bitten a chunk out of housing growth.

Many people talk of building more houses but supply really isn't the issue because have you ever heard of a buy-to-let landlord who struggles to find a house to buy to rent out? However, there will be hundreds of thousands who can't find the 5-10% deposit for a mortgage. Building more houses doesn't change anything for these people, it will only do that if land values go down and that's never going to happen. Nobody sells land for less, instead they keep it until the time is right.

A window of opportunity here is that most people can afford the monthly repayments as rent payments are usually more than mortgage repayments so help with the deposit is perhaps key. This is where lenders and the BoE could help but they don't and that only leaves the government to implement some form of schemes.

I suppose more council houses are another solution but how many people are bursting to rent a council house? It also begs the question which is most people who work full time and earn above the minimum wage wouldn't be eligible for a council house anyway. Those who are eligible will certainly have bigger worries than saving for a house deposit.

Why dont councils buy up shitty houses and then do them up? There’s loads that go up for auctions could that not be cheaper than building them?

 

[bluethrunthru]

Why dont councils buy up shitty houses and then do them up? There’s loads that go up for auctions could that not be cheaper than building them?

have you seen how much funding the Tories took off councils? Libraries and swimming baths closed - schools falling down and some even going bankrupt. Councils were encouraged to be more "entrepreneurial" to generate wealth with their funds. Never ends well.

 

[ell]

Another problem is people have mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs trying to buy a half decent house, so any fall in prices will piss off a lot of voters. A tricky situation created by years of neglect once again

 

[Blue Maverick]

have you seen how much funding the Tories took off councils? Libraries and swimming baths closed - schools falling down and some even going bankrupt. Councils were encouraged to be more "entrepreneurial" to generate wealth with their funds. Never ends well.

Labour could reverse that possibly? It’s going to take 3 terms in office to even show a glimmer of hope, unfortunately people want instant results these days and it won’t happen and they just vote those dicks back in as they have short memories

 

[inbetween]

Why dont councils buy up shitty houses and then do them up? There’s loads that go up for auctions could that not be cheaper than building them?

The problem again comes down to values.

The housing problem is worse where population density is highest and where population density is highest the values are highest. As a result a really shitty house in London can go for as much as £300k but that's where houses are needed most.

If the country is short of say even 100,000 houses and let's say the average house price of those shitty houses was £100k (it'll be far more) then the government needs to find at least £10bn and that doesn't include the price of doing each one up.

The easiest solution is to forget all of this because it'd be far cheaper for the government to just pay people's deposits for them and gift them the equity. My deposit was £25k which would be a damn sight cheaper than the government forking out for a £100k do'er up'er.

However, fairness now comes into play because how is it right that so many people now get their deposit for free whereas muggins here had to save for 5 years?

 

[BerkshireBlue]

have you seen how much funding the Tories took off councils? Libraries and swimming baths closed - schools falling down and some even going bankrupt. Councils were encouraged to be more "entrepreneurial" to generate wealth with their funds. Never ends well.

They then did that and lost it all investing in stupid concepts like Iceland banks and other collapses.

The whole system is broken and out of control. It's only benefiting banks and hurts everyone else.
There's loads of stuff that needs fixing, rent caps, house price caps, building shit loads of proper council homes, compulsory buying rogue landlord's properties for £1, halving of property value (it's all a fake market anyway). It will take decades to fix unfortunately and will cause pain to a generation but you have to start somewhere and fix it for future generations.

 

[Kompany Car]

The housing problem is worse where population density is highest and where population density is highest the values are highest. As a result a really shitty house in London can go for as much as £300k but that's where houses are needed most.

Which is why having cheap efficient public transport should be a priority. You then move people away from the city and make new commuter towns. 5k per year for a 30 min train ride from Stevenage to London for instance is too much.

Additionally decentralisation of the UK economy away from the South East should also be prioritised. Development of new businesses and foreign investment with more high value jobs should be significantly incentivised in Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle.

The policy decisions should be around using the housing stock more efficiently, not having vast swathes of boarded up houses that nobody wants in places like Burnley, Hartlepool, Rotherham. Whole areas of the midlands and northern England shouldn't just be cheap places to locate gargantuan warehouses that employ a handful of people on minimum wage.

So many politicians talk about "levelling up" but dont put in place policies that force it to happen.

 

[Blue Maverick]

Another problem is people have mortgaged themselves up to the eyeballs trying to buy a half decent house, so any fall in prices will piss off a lot of voters. A tricky situation created by years of neglect once again

I bought a house just before the crash in 2008, I lost £35k on it when I sold 10 years later, I found out the builder had got someone to overvalue them for a brown envelope years later, maybe some sort of price control in areas can be done somehow, a house in oldham is not worth £250k no one but rich landlords is affording that, a reasonable price although still expensive is £150k, that’s still 5 times the average wage.

 

[BrianW]

It is very difficult, in a capitalist state, to persuade businesses to move to sub-optimal locations. There are a host of reasons, transport, availability of skilled labour, location of university research departments, accessibility to markets, the perceived view that an area is not where senior management wants to live and so on.

In a socialist state, you'd just say the HQ of the People's IT Development Company shall be in Oswaldtwistle (or Stoke, or Huddersfield or wherever) and that would be it.

Here we have to 'incentivise' companies which is a costly business. It has been tried in the past and largely failed.

I would be really radical. I would move parliament and the entire government structure to somewhere provincial. Say Stoke. This would leave London to the private companies and its economy would cool. Of course, there is no particular reason why civil servants have to work in one place. To some extent, there have been transfers to the provinces. The Mint at Llantrisant and DVLA at Swansea to give two examples. You could shift the whole lot out to different towns, bar those needed to directly service the politicians. IT can do the rest. Similarly, the whole BBC - all of it - could be moved out of London. This would inject a great deal of money and investment into various towns and you wouldn't be dragooning the private sector at all.

 

[inbetween]

It is very difficult, in a capitalist state, to persuade businesses to move to sub-optimal locations. There are a host of reasons, transport, availability of skilled labour, location of university research departments, accessibility to markets, the perceived view that an area is not where senior management wants to live and so on.

In a socialist state, you'd just say the HQ of the People's IT Development Company shall be in Oswaldtwistle (or Stoke, or Huddersfield or wherever) and that would be it.

Here we have to 'incentivise' companies which is a costly business. It has been tried in the past and largely failed.

I would be really radical. I would move parliament and the entire government structure to somewhere provincial. Say Stoke. This would leave London to the private companies and its economy would cool. Of course, there is no particular reason why civil servants have to work in one place. To some extent, there have been transfers to the provinces. The Mint at Llantrisant and DVLA at Swansea to give two examples. You could shift the whole lot out to different towns, bar those needed to directly service the politicians. IT can do the rest. Similarly, the whole BBC - all of it - could be moved out of London. This would inject a great deal of money and investment into various towns and you wouldn't be dragooning the private sector at all.

This isn't the fault of capitalism. Where do you see this different in any other country? Has Beijing relocated the Chinese government to some random province of China? Is Pyongyang diversifying into the wilderness? The economic model makes no difference. Businesses don't invest in sparse areas because they don't have the people and logistical systems in place to thrive. The location of Parliament is totally irrelevant to this.

Nobody wants to relocate to Stoke because there is nothing there for them, there is therefore also nothing for businesses. If I wanted to start a high-tech company then Stoke would be bottom of my list.

The last thing that the people of Stoke need is the government moving Parliament or the BBC there. All it means is that MP's and BBC employees would have to be bussed in every week from London at the taxpayers expense. Look at the BBC in Salford, did Gary Lineker move to Manchester? No we pay for him to be chauffered in. It's just extremely ineffecient.

If you want true worthy regionalisation then we need to target regional strengths. The strongest and easiest target industry is manufacturing, we need to give people their livelihoods back and a reason to get out of bed. Not a single government understands this. They just think that regionalisation means a faster train to London, total bollocks.

 

[PPT]

have you seen how much funding the Tories took off councils? Libraries and swimming baths closed - schools falling down and some even going bankrupt. Councils were encouraged to be more "entrepreneurial" to generate wealth with their funds. Never ends well.

Unfortunately, councils also have a habit of pissing tax-payers money away:

https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/w...ent_of_council_owned_art_is_on_public_display

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

It is very difficult, in a capitalist state, to persuade businesses to move to sub-optimal locations. There are a host of reasons, transport, availability of skilled labour, location of university research departments, accessibility to markets, the perceived view that an area is not where senior management wants to live and so on.

In a socialist state, you'd just say the HQ of the People's IT Development Company shall be in Oswaldtwistle (or Stoke, or Huddersfield or wherever) and that would be it.

Here we have to 'incentivise' companies which is a costly business. It has been tried in the past and largely failed.

I would be really radical. I would move parliament and the entire government structure to somewhere provincial. Say Stoke. This would leave London to the private companies and its economy would cool. Of course, there is no particular reason why civil servants have to work in one place. To some extent, there have been transfers to the provinces. The Mint at Llantrisant and DVLA at Swansea to give two examples. You could shift the whole lot out to different towns, bar those needed to directly service the politicians. IT can do the rest. Similarly, the whole BBC - all of it - could be moved out of London. This would inject a great deal of money and investment into various towns and you wouldn't be dragooning the private sector at all.

I've said it before but I think the advent of working from home should be seen as a huge opportunity for improved regionalisation of white collar jobs which can bring wealth to more areas of the country. There really is no reason these days for a lot of people to be in London 7 days a week. It is already happening naturally but in a smaller way, more senior folks I work with these days live quite a long way out of the city and come in a few days per week.

The more time people spend outside of London, the more of their money is also spent outside of London, which brings more commerce to other areas of the country.

I think this could potentially be harnessed and promoted further. The people in professional services who still live near to the centre of London are the younger folks, many of which have been brain drained from other parts of the country. They don't have the position or means to commute down from Yorkshire once a week, so they moved here. I did this myself 6 years ago. These are people who often go on to be high earners. If we can find a way to stop these young people from having to move permanently in the first place, I think it could do a lot of good.

 

[ChicagoBlue]

If society doesn’t want so many rental
properties, then society has to disincentivize rental properties and incentivize single homeownership!

Then, they need to open up land on the edge of towns, where there is still a good transportation infrastructure and allow housing to be built. Specify what will and will not gain planning permission, and let the market take over.

Creat “enterprise zones” for builders, such that they receive tax/govt breaks for building cheaper, lower profit homes and then have a “first time buyer” low down payment, low interest, fixed rate mortgage program to get them into the homes.

In England, it seems like the tax system is often used to be punitive, whereas it can also be used to be beneficial in advancing the agenda of the govt/general population.

In addition, “permission impossible” needs to be put to bed.

I fly over the UK all the time and to think there are 60 million people all squeezed into such high density living given the amount of open space seems ridiculous.

Of course, there needs to be green space, but that shouldn’t mean nothing can be built anywhere!

I looked into buying a plot for a home we could use when we come over, as we approach retirement. The hurdles, from buying the land to getting ANY KIND OF PERMISSION FOR ALMOST ANYTHING was eye watering!

Another time, we were out walking and I saw a farmers field. My Sis-in-Law works in commercial real estate. I said, “I wonder what that farmer would sell that 2 acre grass field for?” She just laughed and told me if I had thoughts of ever wanting to build a house there I was mental and that the only thing that field was good for was hay or grazing.

I understand the need for zoning, but the strangulation on supply as demand continues to increase is playing into the hands of a few at the expense of many. That expense, in my mind, is far greater than any expense that would come from converting “close in” selective green space into building use. Even if only one or two homes per acre, the taxes and fees can be used to help subsidize lower cost homes elsewhere.

Any society needs a nice mix of residential
Properties, but with so much of the housing stock in England being an outgrowth of long since past growth periods, when terracing and (at best) semi-detached homes were built, it begs for greater supply.

One of the problems now, of course, is that the recent spurt of inflation has increased the price of the raw materials of construction at the same time as construction wages have had to increase to help cover inflation. All of this has made housing even more expensive even without the significant force of demand.

Good luck, Labour! I hope you can help start fixing this problem with targeted tax relief and increases…such as an increase in tax on rental income or a reduction in taxes on purchases of single family homes.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

I bought on The Wirral because it was cheaper than a big city. I’ve Liverpool nearby (sorry) but also Cheshire Oaks for shopping. I’ve an average background and have worked since I was 20. It can be done.

 

[Scottyboi]

I bought on The Wirral because it was cheaper than a big city. I’ve Liverpool nearby (sorry) but also Cheshire Oaks for shopping. I’ve an average background and have worked since I was 20. It can be done.

You was fortunate enough to buy a house with your mum for 90 bags in London and sold for like 4x that, it can be done lmao it is a massive help.

 

[Blue Maverick]

If society doesn’t want so many rental
properties, then society has to disincentivize rental properties and incentivize single homeownership!

Then, they need to open up land on the edge of towns, where there is still a good transportation infrastructure and allow housing to be built. Specify what will and will not gain planning permission, and let the market take over.

Creat “enterprise zones” for builders, such that they receive tax/govt breaks for building cheaper, lower profit homes and then have a “first time buyer” low down payment, low interest, fixed rate mortgage program to get them into the homes.

In England, it seems like the tax system is often used to be punitive, whereas it can also be used to be beneficial in advancing the agenda of the govt/general population.

In addition, “permission impossible” needs to be put to bed.

I fly over the UK all the time and to think there are 60 million people all squeezed into such high density living given the amount of open space seems ridiculous.

Of course, there needs to be green space, but that shouldn’t mean nothing can be built anywhere!

I looked into buying a plot for a home we could use when we come over, as we approach retirement. The hurdles, from buying the land to getting ANY KIND OF PERMISSION FOR ALMOST ANYTHING was eye watering!

Another time, we were out walking and I saw a farmers field. My Sis-in-Law works in commercial real estate. I said, “I wonder what that farmer would sell that 2 acre grass field for?” She just laughed and told me if I had thoughts of ever wanting to build a house there I was mental and that the only thing that field was good for was hay or grazing.

I understand the need for zoning, but the strangulation on supply as demand continues to increase is playing into the hands of a few at the expense of many. That expense, in my mind, is far greater than any expense that would come from converting “close in” selective green space into building use. Even if only one or two homes per acre, the taxes and fees can be used to help subsidize lower cost homes elsewhere.

Any society needs a nice mix of residential
Properties, but with so much of the housing stock in England being an outgrowth of long since past growth periods, when terracing and (at best) semi-detached homes were built, it begs for greater supply.

One of the problems now, of course, is that the recent spurt of inflation has increased the price of the raw materials of construction at the same time as construction wages have had to increase to help cover inflation. All of this has made housing even more expensive even without the significant force of demand.

Good luck, Labour! I hope you can help start fixing this problem with targeted tax relief and increases…such as an increase in tax on rental income or a reduction in taxes on purchases of single family homes.

Not just housing has to be built they’ve tried to build about 600 houses on green belt near me and it’s been knocked back, no extra schools, doctors, dentist’s included in this so say there’s 400 kids move into those new houses, where they going to school, no nhs dentist or doctors available. We have pretty bad drainage in the area that would be only get worse, it’s all a bloody nightmare