How to solve the housing crisis?

bluethrunthru said:
yeah but the point I was making in 1974 a decent middle or upper middle class standard job got you that house - a decent middle class management job in Leeds will see you on £50-60k if you are lucky - x 5 is £250- £300k where is the other £250k coming from?
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Fully understand where you are coming from but in the 70s you typically had families with only one wage earner. By the late 80s there was a massive increase in women going into full time jobs and higher paid roles. Whilst that was great for social progress, what it did do was put more money into the pockets of those who were termed at the time as Dinks (Double Income No Kids).
With the extra money available this impacted housing which generally has always been seen as a good investment.
So we went from one good salary to get a nice house in a good neighbourhood to needing two good salaries.
Couple that with the ridiculously cheap money available and ease of getting buy to let mortgages and you get to where we are now.
In a capitalist economy the only way to fully address house prices is to either increase supply which won't happen in the nice areas or reduce the amount of cheap money available.
Taxation changes may help, for instance a reassessment of rateable value based upon present day values or a buy to let tax owners. But the former would only make all housing more expensive to live in and the latter will only free up supply at the very bottom end of the market, plus many self employed use buy to let's as part of their pension.
 
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There are too many empty houses which could certainly be used to alleviate the problems we currently face with a lack of habitable housing.

The government should impose time limits on how long houses are allowed to remain empty before being made habitable (to a basic minimum standard) and occupied, or knocked down in favour of new housing development.
 
Trevor Morley's Tache said:
There are too many empty houses which could certainly be used to alleviate the problems we currently face with a lack of habitable housing.

The government should impose time limits on how long houses are allowed to remain empty before being made habitable (to a basic minimum standard) and occupied, or knocked down in favour of new housing development.
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Are you referring to houses permanently empty or those that are empty for long periods as they are holiday /second homes?
I agree completely if you mean permanently empty properties.
 
East Level 2 said:
Are you referring to houses permanently empty or those that are empty for long periods as they are holiday /second homes?
I agree completely if you mean permanently empty properties.
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More permanently empty properties. Second homes/holiday homes are at least occupied for part of the time and also still contribute to the local economy, if only a small amount.
 
Trevor Morley's Tache said:
More permanently empty properties. Second homes/holiday homes are at least occupied for part of the time and also still contribute to the local economy, if only a small amount.
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They hardly contribute to local economy, they are exempt from council tax and occupants bring nearly all their weekly supplies with them
They might eat out locally but that only provides for minimum wage employment
Where I live the occupation of holiday homes is followed within 20 minutes by a tesco delivery van, hardly 'local economy'
Meanwhile the schools are closing because young families cannot afford to live where they were born
 
Just read somewhere about Micah owning shit loads of properties. Surely this is not right. I understand the concept of enterprise n all. But come on. When u have footballers and other rich fuckers owning like 20 properties. Surely something has to be done about it.

Right now, go through London, and every corner there are new property builds. At some point UK or London will run out of space.

And its the reason for the increase in stamp duty. Sorry doesn't work. Maybe increase taxes on people owning more than 3 properties. That should sort the shortages. Oh wait, even politicians are in on this also. What a fucked up world.
 
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