What's worse is how many of those then become immigrant land lords. Double the trouble, ban the whole thing. Everything comes down to immigration.
General UK politics
- Thread starter dee
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There isn't a one-size fits all solution to the housing market especially when demand exceeds supply and there is a growing population.
Why are people ignoring the elephant in the room?
Politics aside this is a practical problem.
I assume you mean immigration? It's a problem that would needs ways to solve it, if population increases, regardless of the source of the increase. You can try and curb population increases, but that may not always work, and you can still have housing issues. A sustainable approach to having a stable housing market is needed regardless.
There isn't a one size fits all, you're right. It's a lot more complicated than letting the market solve itself, which in itself would be fairly difficult, if not impossible, to actually achieve.
I just checked. She’s still dead. Thank fuck. She single handily fucked us over.
Imagine giving a way houses for votes, what a legacy. And nerve to have a go at socialism. How much would those 1.7m houses be worth on current market now? How many could they house on social housing ladder now. Irresponsible policy.
I bought one a few years ago. 15 times the amount when it was a right to buy.
The Netherlands between 1894 and 1962 and South Korea in the 70s and 80s.
It's not complicated at all. It's simple. All the complexity is the reason it doesn't work.
People want good houses they can afford to buy. Builders want to build houses people can afford to buy. Let them do it and it'll solve itself. Poor people can either live in council housing as built as part of the process, or are subsidised where necessary.
They were abandoned as land prices and speculation became too high. It's perhaps workable for periods when there is an abundance of available and under developed land near urban areas, and construction costs and standards are low. To get to that from here, you'd need a huge state influence, as with land banking the supply of available land is controlled, and also have tight controls on lending, as mortgage/credit would fuel price inflation as you'd need to loosen zoning (as well as centralising it).
Korea was a state led urbanization program, the state bought the land, serviced it, financed it, and then got private developers to build. The Netherlands had rent caps/subsidising, and similar land buying, servicing and financing. I'm guessing you don't actually mean a complete free market approach, but more a hybrid anyway, as I don't think there is any example of a pure one to reference, at least not in a modern, urbanised, world.
But only small part of these new housing is available for social housing and even that has had issues with big buiding companies getting around it. Also, land lords with big portfolios hasn’t helped either.
Oh dear...
www.independent.co.uk
Tories mocked over misspelling ‘Britain’ on chocolate bar at party conference
The Tories can’t even spell Britain right
A Tory source said the spelling mistake was a ‘printing error’
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Do you have a solution?
I have suggested some things above yeah.
"It needs to have a large government intervention to encourage affordability over profit. Discourage land banking, support smaller builders, discourage institutional buy/build to let, guaranteed returns to avoid peaks and troughs in building etc."
There is no quick fix, but putting the right mechanisms in place sooner rather than later could solve it over a number of years and, ensure it's not an issue in future.
Ha. I don't agree that Right to Buy was all bad, in that it helped create a lot of home owners who would have previously not had that opportunity. And surely we shouldn't be wanting to rely on the state to provide, as much as possible.
But the issue of course is that there will always be a need for some level of state housing provision, and there was not a structure in place for right to buy properties to be replaced. It's slightly easier now for councils to build houses (although there are actually a lot of councils that don't want to anyway), but it was more difficult at the time.
I'm unsure what 'large government intervention' means although Labour committed to building 1.5 million homes during this parliament (seems quite large to me) didn't they? So far official figures say 186k have been built - need 300k p.a to meet target.
Curtailing or abolishing due planning process to speed things along maybe?
I mean a free market. That works every time.
It means the things that follow it. Discouraging land banking and institutional purchases to help keep prices lower etc. Supports and subsidies to smaller builders to encourage building. Similar for smaller landlords, and for people trying to buy to live.
Yes, things need to be done with planning too, part of the problem is that it's all localised, and nimby-ism is a factor. A centralised government approach to zoning and planning would help.
It hasn't worked ever in a modern, urbanised market. The examples you gave ended half a century or more ago, and weren't even a free market. Private building never rises to the level needed, as they will always phase output to keep prices rising. It's in their interest to not meet demand.
From what I've seen there is no free market in anything... It's like a perfectly communist society, it doesn't exist.
I wonder if they can do these things legally?
Land banking could be subject to 'use or lose it' maybe?
Not sure about institutions as they tend to form cartels - a sells to b, b to c and rotating ad infinitum to avoid deadlines.
Smaller builders struggle with red tape not finance - I've had plans paused whilst local authorities decide (and usually restrict).
I wouldn't want to be a Landlord especially trying to meet MEES/EPC with an older property. Perhaps eliminate older properties from rentals or subsidise the compliance cost?
When you boil it down doesn't it direct us to appointing a National State Building Department where the central authorities decide what and where houses are built and who do not concern themselves with objections (from councils) and just meet the demand they decide? Controversial but it does sweep away NIMBYism.
Why do you think they can do that?! Shortage of building land! Caused by tight planning regs! Caused by the government!
In a free market with a reasonable amount of suitable land (almost every country) land prices would be low and stable and the only value to it would be as somewhere to build (or farm etc). Where this doesn't work (almost everywhere) it's because of too much regulation. It really is a simple issue.
Yeah, I think it's something like that. I'm not sure it's ignore all objections, but a macro view needs to be taken as you say.
There also has to be a tackling of the larger property buyers/hoarders, without that prices and affordability will constantly be moving in the wrong direction. Use it or lose it is definitely a great option. Higher taxes on large holdings to discourage it too, and the reverse for smaller. Larger groups can dictate the supply and prices, smaller ones, not so much.
Funding may become an issue if you try and stablise price increases, maybe not an issue now, but it could be. There's peaks and troughs with it, based on credit and global impacts, so there needs to be some agility to build sustainably though then.
That essentially exists already, doesn't it? Major developments are already dealt with centrally, so I guess that criteria could be extended.
Local authorities don't have a huge amount of power in most applications anyway and most applications they receive are approved, usually because councils have little choice.
Honestly it's fucking crazy to me that anyone believes housebuilders would be hoarding land and not building houses *if there weren't an artificial shortage of building land*.
What exactly do you guys think the value of that land derives from?? It can only be the demand for homes of the ultimate residents. The value is all in its ultimate use.
Think it through. Imagine a place with abundant land and no planning laws. Nobody could hold onto land with the expectation of it going up in value because the next available land would always be there to be built on. All these dodgy practices exist because it's so trivial for a few big players to distort the market when land is so scarce.
What exactly do you guys think the value of that land derives from?? It can only be the demand for homes of the ultimate residents. The value is all in its ultimate use.
Think it through. Imagine a place with abundant land and no planning laws. Nobody could hold onto land with the expectation of it going up in value because the next available land would always be there to be built on. All these dodgy practices exist because it's so trivial for a few big players to distort the market when land is so scarce.
Example: here in Tromsø, Norway you have land owners just sitting on land with old industrial buildings on, along the shore. Prime locations. They wait for prices to rise until they are happy, then they can sell to a developer. There is land elsewhere, but on the central island it is scarce, so they just wait.
People want to live where there are jobs, schools, no massive commute, cultural offers, hence in places where abundance isn’t there.
People want to live where there are jobs, schools, no massive commute, cultural offers, hence in places where abundance isn’t there.
Supermarkets will buy plots of land in urban areas where they also have a presence. That’s to stop rivals buying the land and being a competitor in the area. Land that could be used for housing, schools, etc.
But surely in those cases they can sell it for housing, schools etc, can't they? That would be for their benefit, ultimately.
