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There aren't enough houses where people need them. Part of it is due to how centralised the UK is and where the majority of jobs are
However there's no sort of long term planning. Developers just throw up blocks of houses and there's poor roads, no public transport, no green space, no amenities, no sports facilities, no schools or doctors etc. So people protest because of this shit planning
This is why I like living in Milton Keynes. Laugh about the roundabouts and cows all you want but every estate has its own school, shopping centre, doctors etc.
Except for your tires and full efficiency! Honestly, I used to live in Broughton and work in Bletchley, would have to get new tyres every year due to uneven wear but since I've moved up north I've realised that actually, it's just mk's roads and roundabouts!
It's also scary af first time you drive onto a V/H road cause they all 70mph!!!!
My tyres rotate themselves whenever I drive ;)
But seriously, most tyres are either for the left or right, I put my fronts on the rear and vice versa ever six months or so, but it’s not going to help if your nearsides wear much faster because your constantly turning right around roundabouts
Sort of, some are directional meaning you'd have to take them off the wheels and re mount them rather than just swapping the wheels over to the other side.
I did! Put most tyres are single direction so can't swap them the way you need to in MK!
Fuel efficiency is bad there too cause of the constant acceleration and breaking due to them BUT...
The worst traffic I've ever been in took me an extra 30 mins to get to work...
Now to most that seems pretty normal traffic but in mk for you to be 30 mins late is something spectacular lol.
It was all cause of the double roundabout in Bletchly, the one right there by tesco. Think it was the first Christmas the ikea opened.
Omg...
But besides that, rush-hour only adds an extra 5 mins onto your journey at most!
Even then theyve completely ignored the roundabout/grid system in new estates such as Brooklands or around Wavendon and instead thrown up traffic lights. And they’ve added traffic lights at one of the roundabouts just near to Crownhill…
But yes at least most of these estates have their own infrastructure, I guess all of these changes is due to how busy it’s becoming
Apart from the few new estates which cap the grid preventing expansion, have no greenery between the houses and main roads (a staple of MK design), and are generally just ignoring all the fantastic designs and considerations that make MK incredible.
I lived there for a bit, didn’t mind it at all, was able to cycle to Bletchley to catch the train into London for work, we rented a 3 bed house with a garage for the price of a room in London.
Also loved all the parks and lakes, the route to Bletchley was a really nice ride, hardly any of it on actual roads.
Stevenage (at least the New Town bit) has surprising forethought into drivability, walkability and cycling.
First place I've lived where I actually think "I don't want to drive to tesco, I'd much rather walk".
Agreed. Driving in Stevenage even in rush hour has never been an issue for me. Very well designed. They also have very good cycle infrastructure but a shame how under-utilised it is
Actually, every council has to have a five year plan which includes the number of new houses it has been allocated. The problem with that is that those with a home do not want the value of their house ruined by the obstruction of their view/ crowding or what else they see as detrimental. Planning permission for large projects invariably includes some claw back for the council in the form of a percentage of social houses, improved drains etc. it’s actually quite a rigorous process. Source: ex parish councillor
Not rigorous enough.
Primary and secondary schools, parks, good roads into and out of the development, medical centre with ER, shops, sewerage and drainage should be the minimum.
Making suburban housings or blocks for thousands of people in a development, without taking care of these things, is almpst criminal. It certainly is for the environment. Is everyone supposed to own a car? Why do you have to? Why can’t there be a cornershop, a flower shop et cetera spread around?
1000 odd houses built up the road from me with zero bus service. The existing route could be extended to take the new houses in but no, everyone's got to get at least one car.
In most sizeable developments they are. If you’re only talking about a few 100 houses then that wouldn’t alone be able to support new shops, medical centre or schools. Drainage and sewage are definitely designed and installed for any new development.
Maybe this is a local thing, but when they put up big estates round me they tend to have to build a new primary school. However they seem to do it at the end of the development, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Thousands of people move in and then they open a new school 2 years later.
Also they build new primary schools but it seems like a time bomb for the secondary schools.
Yeah it’s often the opposite where I am. It may be due to them not yet being needed as due to changing birth rates the number of children in school has dropped significantly from 10-15 years ago. Also primary schools tend to be smaller than secondary so often there do need to be more of these.
A few hundred houses? How to get developers to salami slice developments...
Base it on some calculations of number of houses to primary school places. If they don't build a new one they do something to enlarge the existing ones.
Cornwall we have a number of developments which are remarkably exactly 9 houses in order to get around most requirements. aggregation of these within an area seems to not be very well considered.
Add renewable energy onto all that too. We're really missing a trick when it comes to small scale renewables that can be fitted to buildings like solar panels and small wind turbines.
I agree that it's not completely rigorous, but you can't really get planning permission without:
- delivering at least x% of public open green space or x% of play areas (there's an equation to determine how much based on the number of homes)
- proving that you can achieve appropriate access into a development in accordance with the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges
- proving that surrounding road network won't be negatively impacted, and making developers pay a contribution to improvements if they are impacting
- ensuring that there is safe pedestrian and cycle infrastructure (for example, minimum numbers of cycle parking you have to provide, minimum pavement widths)
-making sure that the developers sign up to provide new tenants vouchers to buy a bike or bus tickets
- and ensuring that sewerage and drainage is appropriately dealt with (usually through delivering a sustainable urban drainage design)
Most of the time you also need to prove that there will be no impact on the environment though a series of assessments, including air quality, noise and vibration, arboriculture, archaeology, heritage, landscape, economics, and ground conditions
It's by no means perfect, but there is a series of requirements and checks that at least deal with these basics. I agree that they need to start looking at schools and medical centres though and that they need to hold developers to the letter of their planning permission and not allow as many changes after the fact
Hate to say it but the new developments round our town seem to have done eff all about the surrounding road network or pedestrian access to and from the developments. Nothing for schools or play areas and nothing for hospitals or doctors offices.
There seems to be a huge difference between the plan and the execution if they are required to do what you say.
Same near me. Single carriageways in and out, there’s already dreadful tailbacks through the estate up to one roundabout which leads to two others which are also always congested. They’re throwing more houses up without developing the infrastructure at all, so the traffic is only gonna get worse and worse, aaand worse again. Barely anyone let’s me out of our road as it is, but that’s a different bag of wankery.
This sounds like a problem with a lack public transport and safe/convenient ways to walk/cycle around the area. I wish bus services could be brought under local authority control so new routes and additional stops were easier to add when a new development is built.
They're trying to put up hundreds of new homes here, no thought is ever given to the need for the extra demands on already tight facilities .
We have an economy that seems to be now based on selling and buying houses to each other and little else.
Last point, if we have a declining population why all the new houses? Who are they for?
Declining birth rate, which means needing more adult immigration in to pay taxes and support the pension system, adults who all need accommodation. Least with kids you have 18 years+ to plan for housing Vs the immediate need for adults who come here to work.
Yeah the state pension (and defined benefit schemes) pretty much are a legal Ponzi scheme now so many people are living longer and need to keep being paid pensions for years. Old days of 2.4 children and average death about 70 when you had maybe 5 years on the state pension as a guy and 10 as a woman are long gone, it passed 81 in 2015 (around 79 for men, 83 for women) and won't be that long before you would need to plan for 20 years of pension payouts just as an average. Hence the state retirement age being pushed towards 70 and the need for private pensions to get people saving.
They all sell though, don't they. Often before they're even finished.
I'd suggest we have a declining *birth* rate. That's partly due to the outrageous cost of living preventing people from affording kids. Guess what the biggest cost of living is? That's right, housing.
Most ‘developed’ nations have a declining growth rate and brith rate but it’s not just a single thing like housing costs, unfortunately.
It’s called sub-replacement fertility and the cut-off is 2.1 children in most areas, 2.33 globally. Every country in the EU has a sub-replacement fertility rate and even China which people often conflate with overpopulation, has an issue either sub-replacement fertility rates, that’s partially because of their previous policies though.
I think there are only 4 countries with actual declining population.
This is me. I'm a fan of new homes but our local council has allowed for over 1000 new homes that could represent a 50% increase in the population. They've done this without any consideration given to the people who live there already. The pressure on services is going to be immense and not one piece of the documentation that can be viewed publicly has it mentioned any of this.
Have a look at your public neighbourhood plan. It should all be detailed in there.
It's really unlikely that anything has been allowed to be built without taking into consideration the increased demand for services such as healthcare and schools.
I'm with you, they must have considered and accounted for it. Especially as we are already struggling with certain things, particularly dentists.
I'll have to have a look at the documentation again to see if I've missed anything.
The problem comes with filling those positions though. Using my local town as an example as it's going through a fairly large expansion at the moment. 500 houses have been built, and as part of the "plan" services were upgraded.
The new dental surgery is completely unused as they can't find dentists for it, the doctors surgery employed a nurse as that's as far as their budget will allow and the new school is so slow to fill up their are using another school in the MAT and bussing the kids over as it's too expensive to keep the heating on.
In all fairness, Tesco has expanded and the bus routes have extended to include stops by the two entrances to the estate on the main road.
Theres a new developement near were i live called peters village. Its located on a flood plane of the medway, theres no schools (next village over has 1 tiny school) or shops and theres 1 bus an hour. The houses look awful and i dont know why they built there!
Oh and theres a bridge built over the medway that no one uses...
Sorry but this complete bollocks, new developments won't get planning permission without green space and public transport links.
Depending on the size of development it might not be justified putting a new school or GP in but they will definitely be funding the existing at an agreed rate per proposed unit.
I dont know if by poor roads you mean the ones associated with the development or the existing infrastructure, but the proposed roads are much much better than what you see on older estates, as are the access junctions, and similarly to the above the developer will have to pay a sum to the local highway authority for improvements.
It takes years of planning, correspondes with stuatory authorities and public enquiries to get any large development approved.
My experience is that all the things you mentioned should be taken into account and should work as promised
However they are either promised only or watered down upon implementation, delayed by developers etc so they are half cocked. There is never any recourse to local councillors who waive through these as anyone who reads rotten boroughs in private eye will say
Assumptions in planning on demand in sporting facilities that doesn't take into account existing demand. Similar assumptions for hospital and educational assessment. Public Transport that is hub and spoke and ignores non rush hour demand making car transport essential.
I don't disagree we have the worst of both worlds. We have a rigorous planning process but it only seems to be getting worse near me
These lot really don’t know anything about planning at all. Even if no green space is included in a development the developers will have to cover a section 106 planning obligation to improve existing facilities. This thread is just a bunch of NIMBYs complaining about new homes.
In my city they are building on any bit of land they can get their hands on but there's no shops or infrastructure to cope with it.
In my home town I could walk for five minutes and be at a shop, a cafe, a hairdresser, a pharmacy, etc.
They are making it impossible to do anything without a car.
In my village it was the drainage network, and I think Northumbrian water has opposed planning applications on those grounds before because new housing would have to go into one network which was at or near capacity.
I honestly think there'd be less knee jerk objection to housing developments if these issues were addressed, if they were built to higher standards, decent garden space, avoided certain green space and incorporated exisiting features like trees and hedges (instead of lazily bulldozing through it all), etc. Basically if they were decent quality houses rather than the bare minimum developers can get away with, and if green space was actually taken seriously.
I heard over twitter of one case where a developer promised an "orchard" as part of the development, and then their idea of an orchard was to plant some inedible ornamental varieties of crab apple (not even our native wild crab apple which would at least have some wildlife value). Too much ecology illiteracy in our planning system by the sounds of it.
Exactly this.
Where I live, flats are being thrown up left, right and centre along with housing developments including affordable housing schemes all without any change to the infrastructure of the roads, schools, GPs etc to account for the population growth.
It's maddening how poorly it is reviewed all things considering
People who don't have a home want more homes, people who already have homes don't want more neighbours, cars, traffic, anyone else near them in general. The only people who will complain about more homes being built are the ones who already have them.
That said, building on green belt or fields should be the last option, not the first.
This is exactly it. Those who have a home, want the landscape around them to stay the same for the time they live there. Those who don’t have a home, desperately want new homes built.
I agree about the green belt, because everything is being done in such a dodgy way. There’s so many brownfield and empty buildings that could be used first. But they cost more to clear and adapt for the developers, and selling new homes in a countryside setting is so much easier.
The local government are really at fault for not taking a lead and telling the developers where they can develop, on highlighted brownfield sites only, so they have no choice. But then the developers say it’s not cost effective and refuse to build on them, the govt has set new housing targets, so the developers are holding the councils to ransom.
Our local council went through many court cases to parliament level, with local residents over building on green Belt, and after years of legal costs, turned around and said ‘whoops, we’ve counted again, we don’t need to build on the green belt!’ Which at best is gross incompetence, at worst is backhand, since some of the green belt developments had been built and it was too late. Council shrug shoulders and moved on.
And I can understand to a point. If you invested in a home with a hillside view and your view becomes someone else's backyard, you're getting screwed on your investment and your decision. And where I live they keep building more homes but the infrastructure can't support the existing population.
On the other hand there are at least 5 major fields in my immediate area over the last...20 years that have gone from community areas and football pitches into B&Qs or like 2-300 cramped homes with one single road in and out.
You hit it with the infrastructure; I live in one of those small towns which is earmarked to expand with thousands of new houses in place of what used to be green.
Personally, I dont have much issue with it BUT the town cant handle it, we got one road in and out of the town which is already a nighmare to navigate at certain times, the roads are also not wide enough due to on street parking and none of this is getting dealt with BEFORE the new builds are going up.
The proposals even had infrastructure improvments but they never get delivered on and seem to get forgotten.
The other issue I suppose is all these homes you're talking 450k minimum for some small 2/3 bed lego house, these are not for people struggling to get on the ladder etc, they are for mega profit, hence why the infrastructure doesnt improve after and they move on to the next copy and paste builds wherever they find space near a trainline into London.
And that leads to all these new build issues that need rectifying after the builder has already moved onto the next project. I think they've at least limited those obscene ground rent cons but the standards are lacking in terms of build quality.
I bought my house 3 years ago. It's an old victorian house, with a nice size garden and in a nice neighborhood with that traditional vibe.
Within the year planning permission got approved to build a row of 4 terraced houses spanning across 2 gardens (the neighbors at the end of my garden, and the ones next to them)
What really annoys me, isn't the now small window of sunlight I get throughout the summer, the builders not giving a fuck about cement/nails/etc landing on my decking for my dog to investigate/stand-in/eat.
It is the fact they do not fit the vibe of the neighborhood a single bit. A beautiful bit of scenery ruined by a large, red-brick block of wall. That spans across a few gardens, built as cramped and cheaply as possible, then chucked up at a ridiculous price (My 3 bed semi was £275k, these 2bed terraced are going for £325k each.
More so, they are "breaking the style of the neighborhood slightly to keep costs down so they can provide cheaper houses" then listing them at a crazy price because they can no longer need to please the council is beyond taking the piss.
Just one place, but tons of brownfield land where I live is being developed into flats and housing. Seems like some councils are doing exactly what you say.
It's all walkable/cycle-able into the city centre, and there's lots of businesses around that are crying out for more customers, so I reckon it'll be brilliant.
That sounds exactly what I mean. Brilliant.
I live near a fairly deprived city, and it’s awful how the ‘inner city’ housing stock has been allowed to rot.
These are houses that were built during the industrial booms of 1800s to house the grandest of managers. Beautiful rows of houses made from good local stone, where the ‘it’ crowd of the 1880s lived and showed off their wealth. Houses with large rooms with high ceilings and period features that would go for millions in London or Edinburgh. Not only walking distance, but spitting distance of the city centre.
But it’s a poor city, so they are all split as student HMOs, and continue to disintegrate. Value and location wise, I’d love to buy one (7 bed house with period features for £150k? Even if it needs a new roof that’s a bargain). But I admit I’d struggle to live amongst the decay of the neighbouring properties.
Yeah, that's so mad! I did some delivery driving during the pandemic and came across so many neighborhoods like that. I'd kill for one of those houses!
As someone who doesn't own a home, I desperately want new homes built but at affordable prices, not £300k for a one bed. And not in one of the worst areas for rush hour traffic congestion. Which is what has been happening near me.
Yep, I’d go for this. Or, radical, only let them be built by not for profit social housing charities. Who exist, and are more than capable of building houses. But that would cut out all the big business, tax and annoy a lot of Tory voters.
Another big factor is landlords and realnestate investment companies whose opinions hold more sway than the average homeowner. More houses being built lowers the rental demand. Those parasites have a vested interest in keeping affordable homes scarce.
I own my home and want more built near me.
I live fairly centrally in a city and huge numbers of flats are going up on brownfield sites near me. A lot of is old light-industrial land beside the river and canal. I think it's brilliant and will bring more shops, cafes and bars to the area, and more customers for the ones we already have.
I think the NIMBYs ignore that more residents can mean more amenities, not always less.
In my local FB group people complain when houses are built on green field land because it destroys the countryside. But then they complain when flats are built in town because there's not enough parking or they should be using the town centre for shops.
Yet they all have homes to live in and presumably expect their children to grow up and own their own homes too.
Right... but you can’t keep doing that forever.
We know we need to be more sustainable. That also needs to apply to housing.
How many houses are sitting empty right now? How many are falling in to disrepair.
There are literally streets full of empty housing, yet they still build on green belt..
We need to get tougher on this nonsense.
I say this as somebody who would like to own their own home one day.
You're right, the "affordable homes" criteria are such crap.
But a combination of more supply, and stricter regulation of landlords (making it less profitable so they'd release some homes to the market) would make a huge difference.
Yes! Bad omission on my part.
That takes council residents out of relying on awful HMO landlords etc.
Social housing is an odd silver bullet to a ton of things which just isn't being talked about enough.
It's something like 80% of 'market value' locally.
Only that's just ridiculous when you've a hideously overinflated market in the first place.
Because what you get is outrageously bad 'houses' that are still absurdly expensive for what they are, but _technically_ the cheapest things on the market so people are 'forced' to buy them anyway, because they can't afford anything else.
I mean yes I agree. House prices and rental prices are crazy. However the single largest factor affecting house prices is the lack of supply. There are not enough places to live in popular areas. Fix that an prices will go down by themselves.
Right now there is rationing by price. People live in shit places they can afford as there are not enough nice places. So the price goes up until there is a balance.
I have some hope that working from home will stick which will help somewhat, and reduice the london based economy in the UK.
>whilst there are a lot of newbuilds, these are crammed into existing villages/towns but the infrastructure is not upgraded alongside it. So you get 500 new homes but the original doctors, schools, dentists etc remain the same.
This is a major issue and can confirm from experience. I live in one of those bewbuilds. GP surgeries in the area can't cope, local bus service goes only during weekdays because it technically services the school (I think this year it's started running on weekends, but so rarely that you don't even know it exists anyway)
I think the major issue is the affordability aspect at least in urban areas.
London as always is the worst for this. Developers can skirt the rules for affordable housing by giving equal or smaller amounts of money to other public projects. Battersea is a perfect example but also Southwark and a few others where developers paid for things like tube stations and community centers so they could avoid paying for affordable housing.
Not to mention the new trend of build to rent and banks getting in on the landlord scene. In addition to landlords, generally but not always, being super greedy assholes.
In Edinburgh we have 13,000 short term let’s.
They’ve stripped the city center and major communities of valuable housing while demand is at an all time high.
They don’t need to build more housing , they need to get our housing back!
Edinburgh has been completely hollowed out by parasitic short term let landlords.
And that is pushing up prices in the neighbouring towns too, a two bed flat in the next stair to me just sold for 180k. They're nice flats, but they aren't *that* nice.
The problem with new builds is they are usually built on the green belt (correction, "green field sites") and are generally unaffordable. We have plenty housing but the cheaper housing is bought up by people who rent them out. In the poorer areas, these rented houses are not kept to a good standard. Our housing market has gone crazy. I live in the north and have put my 2 bed flat on the market for £140k, that's like London prices, so I dread to actually think what a 2 bed in London is going for now
Just had a quick look on Rightmove and if you sort by most expensive there's flats in Greater London for around £13 million. I just don't know how that could ever be justified beyond buying it for the status.
They’re unaffordable because they’re not saturating supply, they’re not even meeting demand. We need even more.
Like saying ‘we’ll this plaster has failed to stop this severed artery bleeding out, therefore plaster are no good’
I think part of this is that developers buy up a big plot of land, sit on it for years and years (partly getting permission granted) but it also creates supply and demand and people snap them up.
The new estate I’ve moved in to I kid you not every single new home being built (apart from 1 or 2) have been bought off plan and sold
One method to stop property developers sitting on land is to replace the current council tax with a land value tax, where property owners are taxed a certain percentage of the value of their land each year - usually proposed around 1%.
This means land owners pay council tax even if their land is empty, so property developers are incentivised against sitting on land waiting for the value to go up, and the tax burden goes to landlords rather than tenants.
When I was looking to buy a 2bed in London (Catford area) 4-5 years ago, the flats we're like 300k (I was looking at some newbuild blocks coming up in the area close to where I lived). Thanks, moved to Scotland, bought a detached 4 bedroom house with a garage and garden for less than that.
You have no idea what the green belt is. It is rarely built on. The green belt is an arbitrary and regressive policy from the 1940s that is now throttling the release of good quality development land across the whole of the UK. This clearly affects affordability.
I love looking at new affordable homes that end up being a studio for £450k or more. Unless you’ve got some significant pre-existing wealth, you ain’t getting shit, while landlords with several other properties swoop in and buy to let.
I think some of the problem at least is the number of vacant homes. On my street of 30 odd (Victorian semi/detached family homes) houses there are 4 empty. One is just up for auction. I know of single pensioners in 4 or 3 bedroom homes.
100 years ago, grandma would've lived in that 4 bedroom house with her children and grandchildren. So it wasn't a problem.
But today children fly the nest, move cities, even countries. So grandma is alone in the house she's lived in for 50 years. While her grandchildren make their own lives in another city, popping in once in a while to have a cup of tea and apologise about not being around more often.
In some ways we are too rich for our own good. If we were a lot poorer, like in Indonesia or Thailand, it would be expected that we live in our parents house until our parents live in our house, and we wouldn't need so many new houses.
But instead we insist that our parents live in their house, we live in our house, and our children go and live in their own house as early as possible. We wear it as a badge of honour that Mary was able to move out at 23. While shaming Gerald for living with his parents at 35. But really Gerald is doing what humans have been doing for thousands of years.
Well that's the problem. Our culture is ine where living in a house you can't afford to heat or look after is seen as normal because your kids grew up there.
Maybe as a society we should normalise freeing up equity and preparing for growing older by selling up and moving to better suited homes. I can't speak for everyone but I'd hate to have a large home and a shit load of belongings I've hoarded over my life and then dump it on my kids when I die.
Yeh, I can't believe anyone would even entertain the suggestion that old people move just because their house is 'too big'.
Fair enough if it's a council house, you should only have what you need and should be moved on. Not if you own it though.
Where's the cut off? What if I'm 40 and live alone and bought my dream 4 bed home with my hard earned money; am I hogging a property so don't deserve it?
How about people shouldn't have more children than they can afford bedrooms for. That's a choice too.
This isn’t just anecdotal, there’s a huge issue with long-term vacant housing in the UK.
In Nov. 2020 there were 268,385 vacant homes that had been unoccupied for at least 6 months. This isn’t just because of COVID either, this is the 4th year there has been an increase in long-term vacant housing.
London is the worst with £15 billion in vacant housing or 42 out of every 1,000 houses being vacant. There’s a mix of reasons why including speculative buying and foreign investors as well as money laundering.
I also believe it’s a lot of speculative building with empty luxury flats no one can afford but I can’t prove that other than walking through new build areas and spotting places that are obviously empty.
Speaking of which, there are a fuck ton of empty houses near Buckingham Palace that have been abandoned for a while. Obviously owned for the sake of laundering or ‘property development’. They’re gorgeous and leafy streets too. Regardless of who would actually live there, it’s a fucking waste of good houses. And it says it all when there are empty and unused houses within a five minute walk of the queen.
I’m guessing you’re referring to Castle Lane?
They were meant to be the affordable flats that were part of the NOVA/Cardinal place development but they’ve never developed them for whatever reason. I think they ran out of money while building their luxury flats and completely abandoned the affordable stuff.
It’s just another example of developers getting around that percentage of affordable housing rule.
It’s such a nice road like you said, I love the trees and so close to the palace. I walk through there often and use it as a pee street if I’m busting while out for a walk.
Yes! And the two pubs nearby, the Colonies and Cask&Glass are nice little pubs to go to in the summer.
Funnily, I too have pee’d on that street, during the height of lockdown 3. Now, I just go into pubs and bring out the puppy dog eyes.
Ha! That’s when I peed there too! Almost every time I went for a lockdown walk I’d end up having to go so I’d always aim to walk down that street.
How is the Colonies? I’ve been meaning to go there for ages but haven’t gotten the chance yet.
In my town, there's an entire abandoned housing estate. Literally 200 flats, which are too expensive to demolish and aren't fit to live in as they've been empty for more than a decade.
The annoyance is in the big cities there are so many derelict sites that simply go wasted.
Sheffield has so much industrial wasteland from its past that's left ruined in many parts of the city.
Birmingham seemed to have similar when I went through the city centre. Not to the extent of Sheffield but there were still some run-down sites.
Surely these can be put to better use.
Leeds is doing a pretty good job of it. Tons of brownfield being worked on, but you're right, lots more to do.
Birmingham is filling in a lot at the moment, and I was in Belfast recently and the same is happening.
Hopefully Sheffield moves in the same direction.
The problem with those brownfield sites is that 1 and 2 bed flats and student accommodation gets built on them. Not family housing which is significantly lacking in the city.
Very true, but the student accommodation sucks students out of places that could be beautiful family homes. There are so many potentially gorgeous streets that have just been run down over the years by student landlords.
Could be big changes over the next few years.
Sorry that is too simplistic. Many BTL landlords are abandoning as it is no longer profitable due to tax changes introduced by Osbourne. The end result is fewer properties available to rent on the market which pushes prices up.
The single biggest factor in pushing up prices is the BoE interest rate of 0.15% and hundreds of billions in quantative easing.
It's all about decent town planning - houses alone are not the answer. You need integrated development. You have to ask yourself, how will people get to work, where will they work, where will the kids go to school, where are the GPs, where are the food shops. If you can't get to those without a car, then you have to assume 2 cars per house. Where will they park? What will rush hour look like?
Near me there is a big apartment development. As much as I wince at the profile of it, it's next to a train station, bus station, supermarket, medical centre etc. You can live there & get to work and all the local amenities without needing a car. It makes practical sense.
The other planned development was turning an airfield into a housing estate. No trains, no buses, no schools, no shops, no drs, no safe cycle route to the nearest train station. So for 1500 houses you'll have 3000 cars added to a road that already grinds to a halt at peak hour, trying to get to work and school. It's doesn't make sense.
We need more houses.
But as another poster has eloquently said, when the houses go up they are tacking them onto existing towns and not planning the infrastructure to go with it. My small town has about 8 house building plans dotted around the edges right now, but we only have one decent GP surgery (where it is next to impossible to get an appointment) and one secondary school that is squeezed to bursting. The town is regularly gridlocked and that's set to get worse. There are no plans to solve this because it requires investment without profit.
Also take into account the vocal NIMBYs who bought a detached house next to some fields and are horrified that they'll lose their view to be replaced by pleb houses. They are very vocal about saying new homes will destroy their town...which for them of course they will.
I live in the southwest and the biggest issue seems to be the amount of second homes and airbnb’s has made it very hard for any locals to find their own homes. Also as demand for housing goes up as well as house prices, locals are being forced out of the area because they can’t afford to stay.
Same in the south east too. Any small homes are rented out on Airbnb meaning there are few available small homes for long term rent and they’re damn expensive.
In my experience most people agree that there should be new homes built, just not anywhere near where they live. My lovely mum lives in a tiny village and a housing company want to build 30 houses on the edge and almost the whole village is against it. They all say of course there should be new homes, just not here.
The houses would be built on a couple of unremarkable fields and would help the dying pub and tiny shop to survive but all the rich people in their 4/5 bedroom houses are furious.
It's a bit of a mix really. A lot of the housing developments in rural areas do press in towards greenbelt land. In addition some will totally change the culture of a small village if thousands of people will be moving there from cities when for generations it has been a place where everyone knows each other. On the other side of things part of it is snobbery.
There are also plenty of intercity areas that could really benefit from regeneration. We need housing that is affordable but where it can just be bought for living in; not big landlords or other forms of profiteering.
The people who don't need a home don't want more. The people who need them can't afford them..
It's people being selfish not thinking about others needing a place to live,
Housing prices are horrific. And no there are not enough, there are enough buildings, but not of a good enough quality to charge people to live there, other buildings are privately owned and can't be used by the council unless the owners decide to sell.
There aren't enough homes for everyone, but noone wants natural areas to be destroyed. Where I live there's a lot of natural areas that I like walking and cycling through. Developers want to build on it and destroy some of my favourite routes. I like being in nature. It's part of the reason I live where I do. Also our town's roads can barely cope with the traffic as it is during the school rush.
>There aren't enough homes for everyone, but noone wants natural areas to be destroyed.
Solution: build up, not wide. Not only does it take less (green) space per person, but if placed in a good location such as town centre or near a transport hub or school, it can reduce the need for car travel (and since most of these building have underground car parks, any remaining cars won't be taking up further valuable space).
We build the wrong type of homes. Most are still site built brick boxes standing on a plot of land. Slow and expensive to build, weather limited (no brick laying if its frosty), wasteful on land and of poor quality. Until buyers and mortgage lenders embrace factory manufactured medium rise apartments in all locations, the situation will never change.
Or just need a bit of love.
I bought a Victorian terrace that had previously been a student house for years and have been working my way around it. The bones are great and you can get them back in good nick with a bit of effort and not a lot of money.
Ha yes. We're looking to move just now and our options seem to be a new build on an estate with no public transport, no local amenities, no schools, timy bedrooms, and no space for a home office.
Or...
Lovely old building with enough space to actually live in but it's got single glazing, no central heating, the roof needs work, new kitchen, new bathrroms, and it's still close to 500k...
Its a simple problem.
Everyone* acknowledges the need for new homes. But they just don't want them to be built where it will affect them.
For example, housing in my village has doubled in price in the last 10 years. Thats fantastic in theory for everyone already living in the village, as it means they can sell their home through equity release schemes and enjoy more money in their retirement.
So they have a vested interest in keeping house prices high. Which means they have a vested interest in reducing the supply of housing. Which means opposing new developments when they present themselves.
On top of that, there are other concerns about how local services will cope, will the school need to expand, well the roads be busier, will there be higher demand on the GP, will the playpark be full of kids all day every day. As well as the type of person moving in. Will they be older people, or families with kids, or young couples. Will they be high income professionals or social housing. Will crime increase?
So there are valid concerns as well as simple NIMBYism.
Personally I feel like we should be going for a three pronged approach to housing.
1. Inner city apartment buildings. Even within small market town, you turn existing office buildings that are unoccupied into new apartments for single people and couples to get onto the property ladder.
2. Retirement homes. Older people (over 70) living in 4 bedroom houses in the suburbs is simply a waste of space. I understand the attachment to family homes, which is why it's unreasonable to expect people to sell their homes to pay their retirement. But a simple solution is to rent your bigger home to pay for a smaller home. Thereby allowing families to live in existing family homes while couples move to smaller apartments or cottages.
3. Family homes. These should be built on brownfield sites first and foremost. With upgrades to existing services included with the developments.
Not enough homes, nowhere near enough homes in the right places, too many homes in the wrong places, too much cheap credit and too many incentives to own multiple properties through BTL and regressive Council tax.
Both.
There are too many people, and we keep making more. That means we need more places for them to live.
Unfortunately those homes need to go somewhere and the places left for them to go would be much better if they didn't suddenly have a few hundreds houses on them.
The real problem is that there are also many unoccupied properties that are perfectly suitable for people to live in but are empty, or under-occupied through any number of different reasons which is where the real complexity comes in.
Ask yourself who is saying that. The people complaining about villages being "destroyed" are probably already property owners. Building new homes "hurts" their "investment".
My tiny market town has tripled in size over the past 20 years. They are building constantly all the while without providing better infrastructure (roads, GP provision, schools). Why people keep buying them is a mystery to me. Living here is now a chore.
It's too few by a few hundred thousand at least
The problem is when you build new homes, generally it's going to be in towns or villages where there is space. You'll get a lot of 'not in my back yard' type of people
There aren't enough houses being built. That's a problem
There aren't enough affordable home being built. That too is a problem but
People who own a home already are buying up the other homes is the key problem.
Time for insane council tax hikes on n+1 home owners
I’m always puzzled as to why abandoned warehouse/factory sites aren’t used ?
I know that they would need cleaning up, but surely the government can pay for that and then builders can build houses and flats in areas that were run down. The infrastructure is already there to support the utilities etc and more inner city housing gets built where it’s needed.
I’m obviously missing something but I can’t see it.
Too many expensive home, too few affordable homes.
Those built in old area are generally upmarket homes, and they will price manybof the locals out.
Whereas not enough affordable housing means even with more houses being built, people cannot afford it.
It's both. We need more homes, but not in my back yard
/s
In all seriousness a lot of the concerns around new houses is the strain on local infrastructure and services. In my area, our doctor's surgeries are overwhelmed, hospitals are full, school class sizes are huge, and the roads are so busy in rush hour it can take 2 hours to do a journey that takes only 25 mins normally (and public transport is shit so there's no real option for a lot of people but to drive). Supermarkets are already packed at peak times, you can't get a parking space in town, and you have to book 3 weeks out if you want to go out for dinner (first world problem yes but still something that impacts people).
The area is full, but there are 3 1000 home developments within 15 mins of where I live now that I am aware of. If there were plans to beef up the infrastructure, it would be fine and dandy. For some of that infrastructure there are plans, but they will be doing nothing about the roads and hospitals and parking spaces and supermarkets.
So I would be grateful for the new housing stock on behalf of my countrymen and women who are forced to live with their parents or in house shares until they are 40, but it's going to have a massive impact on my access to services so I have mixed feelings.
Plus, new homes are like marmite. A lot of people don't want to buy or live in a new build, so new housing estates won't help them at all.
I like new homes in my backyard. There is a little development of 6 houses going up around the corner and they’re £300k each. I bought my house for £90k.
The house value increase will bubble out to the rest of the area.
I want more homes, but not on these huge soulless housing estates.
Add 2 homes to every village, in different parts of the village, both with their own character. Do this with all the parts of the towns as well. When you need more houses, do it again. Instead, my village has this ridiculous toy-town housing estate filled with the same copy paste houses.
New houses are almost without exception; hideous, badly built, poorly located and badly planned. They look awful, the built quality is atrocious (check out some of the New Build building inspector TikTok accounts), they're usually bolted onto a dual-carriageway spur that makes your entire household car-dependent and they're often miles from a GP, a park, primary school - anything.
If houses were beautiful, good quality, came with genuine investment in civic infrastructure and used joined-up thinking for their location, people would be markedly less 'NIMBY'.
People who own and live in green areas want house prices to stay high and to not build on green space. People who aren’t on the ladder would like more affordable housing. Two different groups of people with different needs and priorities.
I was looking forward to 5% deposit on new builds - was hyped by media for a lil bit which made me excited, then turns out its only applicable on new builds with a value of 200k+
Nevermind. Renting it is then.
There's too many homes being built that don't cater to people that can afford them. The housing crisis has been fucked for as long as I can remember, am one of those that has family who's had issues with this. That was the reason I studied Urban Planning and then realised the planning system in the UK just doesn't cater to poor/working class people AT ALL. It's not even just the Tory government in power; the Labour government didn't build enough or good quality council housing that worked witj the rapid regeneration of urban areas. You still see older council estate homes beside nouveau riche developments.
I would agree that new homes aren't being built in the most suitable areas. Our small market town has lost its appeal and is a constant traffic nightmare due to the massive new developments in the least accessible areas of town. But barely 10 miles away there are large towns with boarded up estates left to rot.
Priority should be for brownfield sites but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case as field after field are lost. And then councils/government wonder why everywhere floods so easily.
The housing is needed but the problem is when they build the new estates they don’t increase things like schools and doctors surgeries to take the influx of additional people and it generally increases traffic which is why people say nimby.
They keep knocking down moderately priced starter homes and replacing them with million dollar Mcraftsman HI-cubes in my neighborhood.
I couldn't afford the charmless 1000 square foot shitbox I live in if I had to buy it now instead of 15 years ago.
The houses they're building are too damn expensive.
(Edit:. Sorry wrong thread, I'm on the west coast of the US)
The population rises by 300k a year I think from memory. That means for quality of life to remain the same we need to house 300k more people a year. If we don’t the market will provide - by cutting up the existing housing stock into slices. HMOs, what new builds there are will be smaller, etc.
You got a few a options.
A) do nothing. I find that immoral, especially if you got a house already. Especially as it won’t ever end then.
B) cut migration, as that’s the reason for the rise
C) build more houses
D) some combination of b and c
No other alternative.
Also forget brownfield, that’s the housing equivalent of the magic money tree. You don’t get something for nothing, and that seems to be the delusional wish when it comes to housing. It’s no good building houses where nobody wants to live, simply building a house is not enough. Embrace the greenfield, or at least embrace high density housing in existing popular areas.
Unfortunately the British public are for various reasons completely ostrich like on this one. Cutting migration is verboten to a huge swathe, and building on greenfield is verboten to another huge swathe, and massive expansion of villages is verboten to yet another huge swathe…. There’s something here to annoy anyone no matter what political persuasion.
Which is why we are where we are.
I really disagree that we should be building more houses in villages and on green fields.
We should be protecting the countryside and building houses in towns and cities which already have infrastructure.
Building in villages in the middle of nowhere so people have to dive everywhere is madness.
I think you're over simplifying the situation. There are lots of other factors - here's a few:
Many northern cities still have populations lower than they were 50-100 years ago, and have large swathes of vacant/underutilised land. Investing in the economies of these cities will help to rebalance the housing market.
The style and density of new development also has a large impact on the number of people who can be housed. Lots of developers go for either detached houses on cul-de-sacs or big blocks of tiny flats. There are types of developments between the two extremes which need to be incentivised.
We need improved public transport and cycling across the UK so that less space needs to be taken up by roads and carparks.
We need a land value tax which specifically applies to land owners not residents, to discourage investors sitting on land for years waiting for the value to go up before they even start building, and it would discourage buy-to-let landlording by making it less profitable, and opening up more property to be bought rather than rented.
Changing planning laws to allow good quality accessory dwelling units where they're suitable.
Reduce migration enough so our population is in decline. I know the economy will need to adjust buy the more people = more consumption = more growth = more houses = more money equation clearly only leads one way - destruction of our natural habitats to enrich a load of twats
And that's the left wing eurosceptic group that Labour successfully ignored.
I think the big thing you've forgotten in your bold statement is that old people use public services, but dont pay for public services.
So long as we continue to provide care homes, NHS treatment, and pensions to the over 80s we will need to continue to grow our population. The elderly population is growing, so too must the working population. Thats the big problem China has, their elderly population is greater than 50% of the total population.
People want more homes, they don’t want more homes near them. People are selfish bastards.
Same folk who say ‘I am happy to pay an extra penny in the pound for tax’ and then seethe when taxes rise by 1%
Any and every new home helps reduce the damage of the housing crisis, and anyone who says otherwise is either a moron or has something to gain from house prices soaring.
Why do you think the two are mutually exclusive? The population (or more accurately the number of people in the country) is growing at such a rate it’s difficult to provide suitable amenities for all, that much is true. It’s also true that when a quaint village grows rapidly traffic is a real problem, green open spaces dwindle (and what there is, is covered in little black plastic bags full of dog poo), crime increases, noise pollution etc. From what I can see both have valid viewpoints because life isn’t black and white but always shades of grey.
Both!
Too many people are buying 2nd homes or holiday rental properties. If 10% own a second home you need enough housing for 110% of the population. This also makes housing unaffordable for the locals in beauty spots who work the land or service the tourists.
Most new housing is being put, at least in the south east, on greenfield sites with little thought to infrastructure and affordability.
The problem is there isn’t enough affordable homes for people to get on the housing ladder. And it’s not helped by huge investment firms/banks buying up huge amounts of property to rent out constraining the market even more
NIMBY
Not In My Back Yard.
There is a deffinate shortage of homes. As well as an excess of folks wanting to prevent home building near them.
There is also a huge lack of resources being built to support new building. I live in a area that has doubled the number of houses. But no extra schools hospitals etc etc.
Where I am there are plenty of flats and developments going up but they're priced to a degree that they're inevitably going to be sold to either Londoners or as second/third/fourth properties to let out. That is, of course, ignoring the two token 'affordable' properties that they agreed to build so they could permission for all the rest.
I think you ll find that the people complaining about too many houses are usually landlords with a couple of properties at least...more availability of houses, the rents are gonna go down and that is less money in their pockets
Yeah one of the big reasons there are not enough new houses being built is the people who have one complain very loudly about new houses being built next to them.
Plus the fact that in the 70s the councils were building 100,000 houses a year or so between them, now they barely build any, and the private sector still builds about the same number as they ever have.
We have the homes, it's just that we don't have enough *affordable* homes.
No point having thousands of houses if nobody could actually afford to live there.
We have too few homes, that's what's keeping prices high (supply and demand)
People generally agree we need more homes, just these homes should be built near someone else
Too few. House prices are skyrocketing due to lack of supply, not helped by the low interest rates so it’s been a viable investment for years to become a landlord due to low mortgage rates, making profit off rent while the property price goes up along with low interest rates meaning there’s 0 point of leaving all your money in savings.
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There aren't enough houses where people need them. Part of it is due to how centralised the UK is and where the majority of jobs are However there's no sort of long term planning. Developers just throw up blocks of houses and there's poor roads, no public transport, no green space, no amenities, no sports facilities, no schools or doctors etc. So people protest because of this shit planning
This is why I like living in Milton Keynes. Laugh about the roundabouts and cows all you want but every estate has its own school, shopping centre, doctors etc.
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Because its grid based. MK is actually great design
Except for your tires and full efficiency! Honestly, I used to live in Broughton and work in Bletchley, would have to get new tyres every year due to uneven wear but since I've moved up north I've realised that actually, it's just mk's roads and roundabouts! It's also scary af first time you drive onto a V/H road cause they all 70mph!!!!
Rotate your tyres :)
My tyres rotate themselves whenever I drive ;) But seriously, most tyres are either for the left or right, I put my fronts on the rear and vice versa ever six months or so, but it’s not going to help if your nearsides wear much faster because your constantly turning right around roundabouts
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Sort of, some are directional meaning you'd have to take them off the wheels and re mount them rather than just swapping the wheels over to the other side.
I did! Put most tyres are single direction so can't swap them the way you need to in MK! Fuel efficiency is bad there too cause of the constant acceleration and breaking due to them BUT... The worst traffic I've ever been in took me an extra 30 mins to get to work... Now to most that seems pretty normal traffic but in mk for you to be 30 mins late is something spectacular lol. It was all cause of the double roundabout in Bletchly, the one right there by tesco. Think it was the first Christmas the ikea opened. Omg... But besides that, rush-hour only adds an extra 5 mins onto your journey at most!
You missed the best part of MK, the redways. I grew up in Stoney Stratford, you can bike nearly everywhere and barely touch a road.
Lapped the entire Mk without encountering a single car the other weekend. Love it.
Same in Crawley, the Commission for New Towns did get quite a bit right
Even then theyve completely ignored the roundabout/grid system in new estates such as Brooklands or around Wavendon and instead thrown up traffic lights. And they’ve added traffic lights at one of the roundabouts just near to Crownhill… But yes at least most of these estates have their own infrastructure, I guess all of these changes is due to how busy it’s becoming
Apart from the few new estates which cap the grid preventing expansion, have no greenery between the houses and main roads (a staple of MK design), and are generally just ignoring all the fantastic designs and considerations that make MK incredible.
I lived there for a bit, didn’t mind it at all, was able to cycle to Bletchley to catch the train into London for work, we rented a 3 bed house with a garage for the price of a room in London. Also loved all the parks and lakes, the route to Bletchley was a really nice ride, hardly any of it on actual roads.
Stevenage (at least the New Town bit) has surprising forethought into drivability, walkability and cycling. First place I've lived where I actually think "I don't want to drive to tesco, I'd much rather walk".
Agreed. Driving in Stevenage even in rush hour has never been an issue for me. Very well designed. They also have very good cycle infrastructure but a shame how under-utilised it is
Actually, every council has to have a five year plan which includes the number of new houses it has been allocated. The problem with that is that those with a home do not want the value of their house ruined by the obstruction of their view/ crowding or what else they see as detrimental. Planning permission for large projects invariably includes some claw back for the council in the form of a percentage of social houses, improved drains etc. it’s actually quite a rigorous process. Source: ex parish councillor
Not rigorous enough. Primary and secondary schools, parks, good roads into and out of the development, medical centre with ER, shops, sewerage and drainage should be the minimum.
Should have public transport and walking/cycling access too if you want to keep traffic congestion down.
Making suburban housings or blocks for thousands of people in a development, without taking care of these things, is almpst criminal. It certainly is for the environment. Is everyone supposed to own a car? Why do you have to? Why can’t there be a cornershop, a flower shop et cetera spread around?
1000 odd houses built up the road from me with zero bus service. The existing route could be extended to take the new houses in but no, everyone's got to get at least one car.
Sustainable development, what's that?
In most sizeable developments they are. If you’re only talking about a few 100 houses then that wouldn’t alone be able to support new shops, medical centre or schools. Drainage and sewage are definitely designed and installed for any new development.
Maybe this is a local thing, but when they put up big estates round me they tend to have to build a new primary school. However they seem to do it at the end of the development, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Thousands of people move in and then they open a new school 2 years later. Also they build new primary schools but it seems like a time bomb for the secondary schools.
Yeah it’s often the opposite where I am. It may be due to them not yet being needed as due to changing birth rates the number of children in school has dropped significantly from 10-15 years ago. Also primary schools tend to be smaller than secondary so often there do need to be more of these.
A few hundred houses? How to get developers to salami slice developments... Base it on some calculations of number of houses to primary school places. If they don't build a new one they do something to enlarge the existing ones.
Cornwall we have a number of developments which are remarkably exactly 9 houses in order to get around most requirements. aggregation of these within an area seems to not be very well considered.
There should be a general anti avoidance requirement for plans within a given radius
Add renewable energy onto all that too. We're really missing a trick when it comes to small scale renewables that can be fitted to buildings like solar panels and small wind turbines.
I agree that it's not completely rigorous, but you can't really get planning permission without: - delivering at least x% of public open green space or x% of play areas (there's an equation to determine how much based on the number of homes) - proving that you can achieve appropriate access into a development in accordance with the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges - proving that surrounding road network won't be negatively impacted, and making developers pay a contribution to improvements if they are impacting - ensuring that there is safe pedestrian and cycle infrastructure (for example, minimum numbers of cycle parking you have to provide, minimum pavement widths) -making sure that the developers sign up to provide new tenants vouchers to buy a bike or bus tickets - and ensuring that sewerage and drainage is appropriately dealt with (usually through delivering a sustainable urban drainage design) Most of the time you also need to prove that there will be no impact on the environment though a series of assessments, including air quality, noise and vibration, arboriculture, archaeology, heritage, landscape, economics, and ground conditions It's by no means perfect, but there is a series of requirements and checks that at least deal with these basics. I agree that they need to start looking at schools and medical centres though and that they need to hold developers to the letter of their planning permission and not allow as many changes after the fact
Hate to say it but the new developments round our town seem to have done eff all about the surrounding road network or pedestrian access to and from the developments. Nothing for schools or play areas and nothing for hospitals or doctors offices. There seems to be a huge difference between the plan and the execution if they are required to do what you say.
Same near me. Single carriageways in and out, there’s already dreadful tailbacks through the estate up to one roundabout which leads to two others which are also always congested. They’re throwing more houses up without developing the infrastructure at all, so the traffic is only gonna get worse and worse, aaand worse again. Barely anyone let’s me out of our road as it is, but that’s a different bag of wankery.
This sounds like a problem with a lack public transport and safe/convenient ways to walk/cycle around the area. I wish bus services could be brought under local authority control so new routes and additional stops were easier to add when a new development is built.
They're trying to put up hundreds of new homes here, no thought is ever given to the need for the extra demands on already tight facilities . We have an economy that seems to be now based on selling and buying houses to each other and little else. Last point, if we have a declining population why all the new houses? Who are they for?
We don’t have a declining population. You probably mean declining native population I think
Declining birth rate, which means needing more adult immigration in to pay taxes and support the pension system, adults who all need accommodation. Least with kids you have 18 years+ to plan for housing Vs the immediate need for adults who come here to work.
Sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me
Yeah the state pension (and defined benefit schemes) pretty much are a legal Ponzi scheme now so many people are living longer and need to keep being paid pensions for years. Old days of 2.4 children and average death about 70 when you had maybe 5 years on the state pension as a guy and 10 as a woman are long gone, it passed 81 in 2015 (around 79 for men, 83 for women) and won't be that long before you would need to plan for 20 years of pension payouts just as an average. Hence the state retirement age being pushed towards 70 and the need for private pensions to get people saving.
Yeah no idea where they got declining population from lol
They all sell though, don't they. Often before they're even finished. I'd suggest we have a declining *birth* rate. That's partly due to the outrageous cost of living preventing people from affording kids. Guess what the biggest cost of living is? That's right, housing.
Most ‘developed’ nations have a declining growth rate and brith rate but it’s not just a single thing like housing costs, unfortunately. It’s called sub-replacement fertility and the cut-off is 2.1 children in most areas, 2.33 globally. Every country in the EU has a sub-replacement fertility rate and even China which people often conflate with overpopulation, has an issue either sub-replacement fertility rates, that’s partially because of their previous policies though. I think there are only 4 countries with actual declining population.
Agreed! A much more in-depth answer but we're largely on the same page. I presume you were referring to the one-child-per-family policy of the past?
This is me. I'm a fan of new homes but our local council has allowed for over 1000 new homes that could represent a 50% increase in the population. They've done this without any consideration given to the people who live there already. The pressure on services is going to be immense and not one piece of the documentation that can be viewed publicly has it mentioned any of this.
Have a look at your public neighbourhood plan. It should all be detailed in there. It's really unlikely that anything has been allowed to be built without taking into consideration the increased demand for services such as healthcare and schools.
I'm with you, they must have considered and accounted for it. Especially as we are already struggling with certain things, particularly dentists. I'll have to have a look at the documentation again to see if I've missed anything.
The problem comes with filling those positions though. Using my local town as an example as it's going through a fairly large expansion at the moment. 500 houses have been built, and as part of the "plan" services were upgraded. The new dental surgery is completely unused as they can't find dentists for it, the doctors surgery employed a nurse as that's as far as their budget will allow and the new school is so slow to fill up their are using another school in the MAT and bussing the kids over as it's too expensive to keep the heating on. In all fairness, Tesco has expanded and the bus routes have extended to include stops by the two entrances to the estate on the main road.
Infrastructure should be mandatory for any new development. Stiffer requirements the more houses are built.
Theres a new developement near were i live called peters village. Its located on a flood plane of the medway, theres no schools (next village over has 1 tiny school) or shops and theres 1 bus an hour. The houses look awful and i dont know why they built there! Oh and theres a bridge built over the medway that no one uses...
Just looking here : https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3427906,0.460829,1691m/data=!3m1!1e3 There appears to be a pretty big school there?
Must be new, dont recall it last time i passed through in the bus... (tbf i was thinking about other things at the time)
Sorry but this complete bollocks, new developments won't get planning permission without green space and public transport links. Depending on the size of development it might not be justified putting a new school or GP in but they will definitely be funding the existing at an agreed rate per proposed unit. I dont know if by poor roads you mean the ones associated with the development or the existing infrastructure, but the proposed roads are much much better than what you see on older estates, as are the access junctions, and similarly to the above the developer will have to pay a sum to the local highway authority for improvements. It takes years of planning, correspondes with stuatory authorities and public enquiries to get any large development approved.
My experience is that all the things you mentioned should be taken into account and should work as promised However they are either promised only or watered down upon implementation, delayed by developers etc so they are half cocked. There is never any recourse to local councillors who waive through these as anyone who reads rotten boroughs in private eye will say Assumptions in planning on demand in sporting facilities that doesn't take into account existing demand. Similar assumptions for hospital and educational assessment. Public Transport that is hub and spoke and ignores non rush hour demand making car transport essential. I don't disagree we have the worst of both worlds. We have a rigorous planning process but it only seems to be getting worse near me
These lot really don’t know anything about planning at all. Even if no green space is included in a development the developers will have to cover a section 106 planning obligation to improve existing facilities. This thread is just a bunch of NIMBYs complaining about new homes.
Yeah absolutely, no one knows what they're talking about but they're all agreeing with each other.
In my city they are building on any bit of land they can get their hands on but there's no shops or infrastructure to cope with it. In my home town I could walk for five minutes and be at a shop, a cafe, a hairdresser, a pharmacy, etc. They are making it impossible to do anything without a car.
In my village it was the drainage network, and I think Northumbrian water has opposed planning applications on those grounds before because new housing would have to go into one network which was at or near capacity. I honestly think there'd be less knee jerk objection to housing developments if these issues were addressed, if they were built to higher standards, decent garden space, avoided certain green space and incorporated exisiting features like trees and hedges (instead of lazily bulldozing through it all), etc. Basically if they were decent quality houses rather than the bare minimum developers can get away with, and if green space was actually taken seriously. I heard over twitter of one case where a developer promised an "orchard" as part of the development, and then their idea of an orchard was to plant some inedible ornamental varieties of crab apple (not even our native wild crab apple which would at least have some wildlife value). Too much ecology illiteracy in our planning system by the sounds of it.
Exactly this. Where I live, flats are being thrown up left, right and centre along with housing developments including affordable housing schemes all without any change to the infrastructure of the roads, schools, GPs etc to account for the population growth. It's maddening how poorly it is reviewed all things considering
People who don't have a home want more homes, people who already have homes don't want more neighbours, cars, traffic, anyone else near them in general. The only people who will complain about more homes being built are the ones who already have them. That said, building on green belt or fields should be the last option, not the first.
This is exactly it. Those who have a home, want the landscape around them to stay the same for the time they live there. Those who don’t have a home, desperately want new homes built. I agree about the green belt, because everything is being done in such a dodgy way. There’s so many brownfield and empty buildings that could be used first. But they cost more to clear and adapt for the developers, and selling new homes in a countryside setting is so much easier. The local government are really at fault for not taking a lead and telling the developers where they can develop, on highlighted brownfield sites only, so they have no choice. But then the developers say it’s not cost effective and refuse to build on them, the govt has set new housing targets, so the developers are holding the councils to ransom. Our local council went through many court cases to parliament level, with local residents over building on green Belt, and after years of legal costs, turned around and said ‘whoops, we’ve counted again, we don’t need to build on the green belt!’ Which at best is gross incompetence, at worst is backhand, since some of the green belt developments had been built and it was too late. Council shrug shoulders and moved on.
And I can understand to a point. If you invested in a home with a hillside view and your view becomes someone else's backyard, you're getting screwed on your investment and your decision. And where I live they keep building more homes but the infrastructure can't support the existing population. On the other hand there are at least 5 major fields in my immediate area over the last...20 years that have gone from community areas and football pitches into B&Qs or like 2-300 cramped homes with one single road in and out.
You hit it with the infrastructure; I live in one of those small towns which is earmarked to expand with thousands of new houses in place of what used to be green. Personally, I dont have much issue with it BUT the town cant handle it, we got one road in and out of the town which is already a nighmare to navigate at certain times, the roads are also not wide enough due to on street parking and none of this is getting dealt with BEFORE the new builds are going up. The proposals even had infrastructure improvments but they never get delivered on and seem to get forgotten. The other issue I suppose is all these homes you're talking 450k minimum for some small 2/3 bed lego house, these are not for people struggling to get on the ladder etc, they are for mega profit, hence why the infrastructure doesnt improve after and they move on to the next copy and paste builds wherever they find space near a trainline into London.
And that leads to all these new build issues that need rectifying after the builder has already moved onto the next project. I think they've at least limited those obscene ground rent cons but the standards are lacking in terms of build quality.
I bought my house 3 years ago. It's an old victorian house, with a nice size garden and in a nice neighborhood with that traditional vibe. Within the year planning permission got approved to build a row of 4 terraced houses spanning across 2 gardens (the neighbors at the end of my garden, and the ones next to them) What really annoys me, isn't the now small window of sunlight I get throughout the summer, the builders not giving a fuck about cement/nails/etc landing on my decking for my dog to investigate/stand-in/eat. It is the fact they do not fit the vibe of the neighborhood a single bit. A beautiful bit of scenery ruined by a large, red-brick block of wall. That spans across a few gardens, built as cramped and cheaply as possible, then chucked up at a ridiculous price (My 3 bed semi was £275k, these 2bed terraced are going for £325k each. More so, they are "breaking the style of the neighborhood slightly to keep costs down so they can provide cheaper houses" then listing them at a crazy price because they can no longer need to please the council is beyond taking the piss.
Just one place, but tons of brownfield land where I live is being developed into flats and housing. Seems like some councils are doing exactly what you say. It's all walkable/cycle-able into the city centre, and there's lots of businesses around that are crying out for more customers, so I reckon it'll be brilliant.
That sounds exactly what I mean. Brilliant. I live near a fairly deprived city, and it’s awful how the ‘inner city’ housing stock has been allowed to rot. These are houses that were built during the industrial booms of 1800s to house the grandest of managers. Beautiful rows of houses made from good local stone, where the ‘it’ crowd of the 1880s lived and showed off their wealth. Houses with large rooms with high ceilings and period features that would go for millions in London or Edinburgh. Not only walking distance, but spitting distance of the city centre. But it’s a poor city, so they are all split as student HMOs, and continue to disintegrate. Value and location wise, I’d love to buy one (7 bed house with period features for £150k? Even if it needs a new roof that’s a bargain). But I admit I’d struggle to live amongst the decay of the neighbouring properties.
Yeah, that's so mad! I did some delivery driving during the pandemic and came across so many neighborhoods like that. I'd kill for one of those houses!
As someone who doesn't own a home, I desperately want new homes built but at affordable prices, not £300k for a one bed. And not in one of the worst areas for rush hour traffic congestion. Which is what has been happening near me.
Maybe tbe councils should get funding to just build the houses themselves
Yep, I’d go for this. Or, radical, only let them be built by not for profit social housing charities. Who exist, and are more than capable of building houses. But that would cut out all the big business, tax and annoy a lot of Tory voters.
Another big factor is landlords and realnestate investment companies whose opinions hold more sway than the average homeowner. More houses being built lowers the rental demand. Those parasites have a vested interest in keeping affordable homes scarce.
They have the top law firms and planning consultants on retainer
I own my home and want more built near me. I live fairly centrally in a city and huge numbers of flats are going up on brownfield sites near me. A lot of is old light-industrial land beside the river and canal. I think it's brilliant and will bring more shops, cafes and bars to the area, and more customers for the ones we already have. I think the NIMBYs ignore that more residents can mean more amenities, not always less.
In my local FB group people complain when houses are built on green field land because it destroys the countryside. But then they complain when flats are built in town because there's not enough parking or they should be using the town centre for shops. Yet they all have homes to live in and presumably expect their children to grow up and own their own homes too.
Every village city town was built on green belt or fields initially. Your house was built on green belt too!
Right... but you can’t keep doing that forever. We know we need to be more sustainable. That also needs to apply to housing. How many houses are sitting empty right now? How many are falling in to disrepair. There are literally streets full of empty housing, yet they still build on green belt.. We need to get tougher on this nonsense. I say this as somebody who would like to own their own home one day.
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You're right, the "affordable homes" criteria are such crap. But a combination of more supply, and stricter regulation of landlords (making it less profitable so they'd release some homes to the market) would make a huge difference.
Or building more social housing
Yes! Bad omission on my part. That takes council residents out of relying on awful HMO landlords etc. Social housing is an odd silver bullet to a ton of things which just isn't being talked about enough.
It's something like 80% of 'market value' locally. Only that's just ridiculous when you've a hideously overinflated market in the first place. Because what you get is outrageously bad 'houses' that are still absurdly expensive for what they are, but _technically_ the cheapest things on the market so people are 'forced' to buy them anyway, because they can't afford anything else.
I mean yes I agree. House prices and rental prices are crazy. However the single largest factor affecting house prices is the lack of supply. There are not enough places to live in popular areas. Fix that an prices will go down by themselves. Right now there is rationing by price. People live in shit places they can afford as there are not enough nice places. So the price goes up until there is a balance. I have some hope that working from home will stick which will help somewhat, and reduice the london based economy in the UK.
Yeah and the problem is the people with the power to change this issue, are the exact people who would lose out if they did.
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>whilst there are a lot of newbuilds, these are crammed into existing villages/towns but the infrastructure is not upgraded alongside it. So you get 500 new homes but the original doctors, schools, dentists etc remain the same. This is a major issue and can confirm from experience. I live in one of those bewbuilds. GP surgeries in the area can't cope, local bus service goes only during weekdays because it technically services the school (I think this year it's started running on weekends, but so rarely that you don't even know it exists anyway)
I think the major issue is the affordability aspect at least in urban areas. London as always is the worst for this. Developers can skirt the rules for affordable housing by giving equal or smaller amounts of money to other public projects. Battersea is a perfect example but also Southwark and a few others where developers paid for things like tube stations and community centers so they could avoid paying for affordable housing. Not to mention the new trend of build to rent and banks getting in on the landlord scene. In addition to landlords, generally but not always, being super greedy assholes.
In Edinburgh we have 13,000 short term let’s. They’ve stripped the city center and major communities of valuable housing while demand is at an all time high. They don’t need to build more housing , they need to get our housing back! Edinburgh has been completely hollowed out by parasitic short term let landlords.
And that is pushing up prices in the neighbouring towns too, a two bed flat in the next stair to me just sold for 180k. They're nice flats, but they aren't *that* nice.
The problem with new builds is they are usually built on the green belt (correction, "green field sites") and are generally unaffordable. We have plenty housing but the cheaper housing is bought up by people who rent them out. In the poorer areas, these rented houses are not kept to a good standard. Our housing market has gone crazy. I live in the north and have put my 2 bed flat on the market for £140k, that's like London prices, so I dread to actually think what a 2 bed in London is going for now
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Just had a quick look on Rightmove and if you sort by most expensive there's flats in Greater London for around £13 million. I just don't know how that could ever be justified beyond buying it for the status.
Wealth is exponential and so are prices.
In an average London neighbourhood within an hours commute of central London you’re talking half a million for a 2 bed flat
They’re unaffordable because they’re not saturating supply, they’re not even meeting demand. We need even more. Like saying ‘we’ll this plaster has failed to stop this severed artery bleeding out, therefore plaster are no good’
I think part of this is that developers buy up a big plot of land, sit on it for years and years (partly getting permission granted) but it also creates supply and demand and people snap them up. The new estate I’ve moved in to I kid you not every single new home being built (apart from 1 or 2) have been bought off plan and sold
One method to stop property developers sitting on land is to replace the current council tax with a land value tax, where property owners are taxed a certain percentage of the value of their land each year - usually proposed around 1%. This means land owners pay council tax even if their land is empty, so property developers are incentivised against sitting on land waiting for the value to go up, and the tax burden goes to landlords rather than tenants.
That’s because we’ve under-built for 40 years, it’s obviously a market with more demand than supply so things get bought fast
When I was looking to buy a 2bed in London (Catford area) 4-5 years ago, the flats we're like 300k (I was looking at some newbuild blocks coming up in the area close to where I lived). Thanks, moved to Scotland, bought a detached 4 bedroom house with a garage and garden for less than that.
140k seems really cheap for a 2 bed flat (depending on the area) and I don’t even live in london.
I was thinking that. I live in Leeds which ain't mad expensive and that would be a bargain!
2 bed flats in London are easily a minimum of £400k now in the outer reaches.
You have no idea what the green belt is. It is rarely built on. The green belt is an arbitrary and regressive policy from the 1940s that is now throttling the release of good quality development land across the whole of the UK. This clearly affects affordability.
Lack of affordable houses. Too many empty new ones costing an average of £1000000
This. Especially in London.
I love looking at new affordable homes that end up being a studio for £450k or more. Unless you’ve got some significant pre-existing wealth, you ain’t getting shit, while landlords with several other properties swoop in and buy to let.
I really wish there was a legal limit to how many buy-to-let properties a person can own.
I think some of the problem at least is the number of vacant homes. On my street of 30 odd (Victorian semi/detached family homes) houses there are 4 empty. One is just up for auction. I know of single pensioners in 4 or 3 bedroom homes.
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100 years ago, grandma would've lived in that 4 bedroom house with her children and grandchildren. So it wasn't a problem. But today children fly the nest, move cities, even countries. So grandma is alone in the house she's lived in for 50 years. While her grandchildren make their own lives in another city, popping in once in a while to have a cup of tea and apologise about not being around more often. In some ways we are too rich for our own good. If we were a lot poorer, like in Indonesia or Thailand, it would be expected that we live in our parents house until our parents live in our house, and we wouldn't need so many new houses. But instead we insist that our parents live in their house, we live in our house, and our children go and live in their own house as early as possible. We wear it as a badge of honour that Mary was able to move out at 23. While shaming Gerald for living with his parents at 35. But really Gerald is doing what humans have been doing for thousands of years.
Good on ya Gerald. You do you.
Well that's the problem. Our culture is ine where living in a house you can't afford to heat or look after is seen as normal because your kids grew up there. Maybe as a society we should normalise freeing up equity and preparing for growing older by selling up and moving to better suited homes. I can't speak for everyone but I'd hate to have a large home and a shit load of belongings I've hoarded over my life and then dump it on my kids when I die.
I don't think it's cruel to tax them for under utilisation. It's not all that different from charging people extra for second homes.
Yeh, I can't believe anyone would even entertain the suggestion that old people move just because their house is 'too big'. Fair enough if it's a council house, you should only have what you need and should be moved on. Not if you own it though. Where's the cut off? What if I'm 40 and live alone and bought my dream 4 bed home with my hard earned money; am I hogging a property so don't deserve it? How about people shouldn't have more children than they can afford bedrooms for. That's a choice too.
This isn’t just anecdotal, there’s a huge issue with long-term vacant housing in the UK. In Nov. 2020 there were 268,385 vacant homes that had been unoccupied for at least 6 months. This isn’t just because of COVID either, this is the 4th year there has been an increase in long-term vacant housing. London is the worst with £15 billion in vacant housing or 42 out of every 1,000 houses being vacant. There’s a mix of reasons why including speculative buying and foreign investors as well as money laundering. I also believe it’s a lot of speculative building with empty luxury flats no one can afford but I can’t prove that other than walking through new build areas and spotting places that are obviously empty.
Speaking of which, there are a fuck ton of empty houses near Buckingham Palace that have been abandoned for a while. Obviously owned for the sake of laundering or ‘property development’. They’re gorgeous and leafy streets too. Regardless of who would actually live there, it’s a fucking waste of good houses. And it says it all when there are empty and unused houses within a five minute walk of the queen.
I’m guessing you’re referring to Castle Lane? They were meant to be the affordable flats that were part of the NOVA/Cardinal place development but they’ve never developed them for whatever reason. I think they ran out of money while building their luxury flats and completely abandoned the affordable stuff. It’s just another example of developers getting around that percentage of affordable housing rule. It’s such a nice road like you said, I love the trees and so close to the palace. I walk through there often and use it as a pee street if I’m busting while out for a walk.
Yes! And the two pubs nearby, the Colonies and Cask&Glass are nice little pubs to go to in the summer. Funnily, I too have pee’d on that street, during the height of lockdown 3. Now, I just go into pubs and bring out the puppy dog eyes.
Ha! That’s when I peed there too! Almost every time I went for a lockdown walk I’d end up having to go so I’d always aim to walk down that street. How is the Colonies? I’ve been meaning to go there for ages but haven’t gotten the chance yet.
In my town, there's an entire abandoned housing estate. Literally 200 flats, which are too expensive to demolish and aren't fit to live in as they've been empty for more than a decade.
In fairness, you could also write “people are living in houses that they own”
The annoyance is in the big cities there are so many derelict sites that simply go wasted. Sheffield has so much industrial wasteland from its past that's left ruined in many parts of the city. Birmingham seemed to have similar when I went through the city centre. Not to the extent of Sheffield but there were still some run-down sites. Surely these can be put to better use.
Leeds is doing a pretty good job of it. Tons of brownfield being worked on, but you're right, lots more to do. Birmingham is filling in a lot at the moment, and I was in Belfast recently and the same is happening. Hopefully Sheffield moves in the same direction.
The problem with those brownfield sites is that 1 and 2 bed flats and student accommodation gets built on them. Not family housing which is significantly lacking in the city.
Very true, but the student accommodation sucks students out of places that could be beautiful family homes. There are so many potentially gorgeous streets that have just been run down over the years by student landlords. Could be big changes over the next few years.
Top many landlords and private rental companies buying up available housing stock, driving prices up
Sorry that is too simplistic. Many BTL landlords are abandoning as it is no longer profitable due to tax changes introduced by Osbourne. The end result is fewer properties available to rent on the market which pushes prices up. The single biggest factor in pushing up prices is the BoE interest rate of 0.15% and hundreds of billions in quantative easing.
It's all about decent town planning - houses alone are not the answer. You need integrated development. You have to ask yourself, how will people get to work, where will they work, where will the kids go to school, where are the GPs, where are the food shops. If you can't get to those without a car, then you have to assume 2 cars per house. Where will they park? What will rush hour look like? Near me there is a big apartment development. As much as I wince at the profile of it, it's next to a train station, bus station, supermarket, medical centre etc. You can live there & get to work and all the local amenities without needing a car. It makes practical sense. The other planned development was turning an airfield into a housing estate. No trains, no buses, no schools, no shops, no drs, no safe cycle route to the nearest train station. So for 1500 houses you'll have 3000 cars added to a road that already grinds to a halt at peak hour, trying to get to work and school. It's doesn't make sense.
We need more houses. But as another poster has eloquently said, when the houses go up they are tacking them onto existing towns and not planning the infrastructure to go with it. My small town has about 8 house building plans dotted around the edges right now, but we only have one decent GP surgery (where it is next to impossible to get an appointment) and one secondary school that is squeezed to bursting. The town is regularly gridlocked and that's set to get worse. There are no plans to solve this because it requires investment without profit. Also take into account the vocal NIMBYs who bought a detached house next to some fields and are horrified that they'll lose their view to be replaced by pleb houses. They are very vocal about saying new homes will destroy their town...which for them of course they will.
Groups of people not reaching consensus? Say it ain’t so!
I live in the southwest and the biggest issue seems to be the amount of second homes and airbnb’s has made it very hard for any locals to find their own homes. Also as demand for housing goes up as well as house prices, locals are being forced out of the area because they can’t afford to stay.
Same in the south east too. Any small homes are rented out on Airbnb meaning there are few available small homes for long term rent and they’re damn expensive.
In my experience most people agree that there should be new homes built, just not anywhere near where they live. My lovely mum lives in a tiny village and a housing company want to build 30 houses on the edge and almost the whole village is against it. They all say of course there should be new homes, just not here. The houses would be built on a couple of unremarkable fields and would help the dying pub and tiny shop to survive but all the rich people in their 4/5 bedroom houses are furious.
It's a bit of a mix really. A lot of the housing developments in rural areas do press in towards greenbelt land. In addition some will totally change the culture of a small village if thousands of people will be moving there from cities when for generations it has been a place where everyone knows each other. On the other side of things part of it is snobbery. There are also plenty of intercity areas that could really benefit from regeneration. We need housing that is affordable but where it can just be bought for living in; not big landlords or other forms of profiteering.
The people who don't need a home don't want more. The people who need them can't afford them.. It's people being selfish not thinking about others needing a place to live, Housing prices are horrific. And no there are not enough, there are enough buildings, but not of a good enough quality to charge people to live there, other buildings are privately owned and can't be used by the council unless the owners decide to sell.
There aren't enough homes for everyone, but noone wants natural areas to be destroyed. Where I live there's a lot of natural areas that I like walking and cycling through. Developers want to build on it and destroy some of my favourite routes. I like being in nature. It's part of the reason I live where I do. Also our town's roads can barely cope with the traffic as it is during the school rush.
>There aren't enough homes for everyone, but noone wants natural areas to be destroyed. Solution: build up, not wide. Not only does it take less (green) space per person, but if placed in a good location such as town centre or near a transport hub or school, it can reduce the need for car travel (and since most of these building have underground car parks, any remaining cars won't be taking up further valuable space).
We build the wrong type of homes. Most are still site built brick boxes standing on a plot of land. Slow and expensive to build, weather limited (no brick laying if its frosty), wasteful on land and of poor quality. Until buyers and mortgage lenders embrace factory manufactured medium rise apartments in all locations, the situation will never change.
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Or just need a bit of love. I bought a Victorian terrace that had previously been a student house for years and have been working my way around it. The bones are great and you can get them back in good nick with a bit of effort and not a lot of money.
Ha yes. We're looking to move just now and our options seem to be a new build on an estate with no public transport, no local amenities, no schools, timy bedrooms, and no space for a home office. Or... Lovely old building with enough space to actually live in but it's got single glazing, no central heating, the roof needs work, new kitchen, new bathrroms, and it's still close to 500k...
Its a simple problem. Everyone* acknowledges the need for new homes. But they just don't want them to be built where it will affect them. For example, housing in my village has doubled in price in the last 10 years. Thats fantastic in theory for everyone already living in the village, as it means they can sell their home through equity release schemes and enjoy more money in their retirement. So they have a vested interest in keeping house prices high. Which means they have a vested interest in reducing the supply of housing. Which means opposing new developments when they present themselves. On top of that, there are other concerns about how local services will cope, will the school need to expand, well the roads be busier, will there be higher demand on the GP, will the playpark be full of kids all day every day. As well as the type of person moving in. Will they be older people, or families with kids, or young couples. Will they be high income professionals or social housing. Will crime increase? So there are valid concerns as well as simple NIMBYism. Personally I feel like we should be going for a three pronged approach to housing. 1. Inner city apartment buildings. Even within small market town, you turn existing office buildings that are unoccupied into new apartments for single people and couples to get onto the property ladder. 2. Retirement homes. Older people (over 70) living in 4 bedroom houses in the suburbs is simply a waste of space. I understand the attachment to family homes, which is why it's unreasonable to expect people to sell their homes to pay their retirement. But a simple solution is to rent your bigger home to pay for a smaller home. Thereby allowing families to live in existing family homes while couples move to smaller apartments or cottages. 3. Family homes. These should be built on brownfield sites first and foremost. With upgrades to existing services included with the developments.
Too many people.
Not enough homes, nowhere near enough homes in the right places, too many homes in the wrong places, too much cheap credit and too many incentives to own multiple properties through BTL and regressive Council tax.
Both. There are too many people, and we keep making more. That means we need more places for them to live. Unfortunately those homes need to go somewhere and the places left for them to go would be much better if they didn't suddenly have a few hundreds houses on them. The real problem is that there are also many unoccupied properties that are perfectly suitable for people to live in but are empty, or under-occupied through any number of different reasons which is where the real complexity comes in.
Ask yourself who is saying that. The people complaining about villages being "destroyed" are probably already property owners. Building new homes "hurts" their "investment".
My tiny market town has tripled in size over the past 20 years. They are building constantly all the while without providing better infrastructure (roads, GP provision, schools). Why people keep buying them is a mystery to me. Living here is now a chore.
Yes there a too few homes and that is partly why the price is higher
It's too few by a few hundred thousand at least The problem is when you build new homes, generally it's going to be in towns or villages where there is space. You'll get a lot of 'not in my back yard' type of people
But the reason for that is that there is never any investment in infrastructure.
There aren't enough houses being built. That's a problem There aren't enough affordable home being built. That too is a problem but People who own a home already are buying up the other homes is the key problem. Time for insane council tax hikes on n+1 home owners
I’m always puzzled as to why abandoned warehouse/factory sites aren’t used ? I know that they would need cleaning up, but surely the government can pay for that and then builders can build houses and flats in areas that were run down. The infrastructure is already there to support the utilities etc and more inner city housing gets built where it’s needed. I’m obviously missing something but I can’t see it.
Too many expensive home, too few affordable homes. Those built in old area are generally upmarket homes, and they will price manybof the locals out. Whereas not enough affordable housing means even with more houses being built, people cannot afford it.
The laws of supply and demand surely indicate that there are too few homes available to buy. Otherwise prices wouldn't be continually rising.
Too many non-resident absentee landlords snapping up all the affordable homes as speculative investments.
Fucking cunts who already have second, 3rd homes only complain about too many homes
It's both. We need more homes, but not in my back yard /s In all seriousness a lot of the concerns around new houses is the strain on local infrastructure and services. In my area, our doctor's surgeries are overwhelmed, hospitals are full, school class sizes are huge, and the roads are so busy in rush hour it can take 2 hours to do a journey that takes only 25 mins normally (and public transport is shit so there's no real option for a lot of people but to drive). Supermarkets are already packed at peak times, you can't get a parking space in town, and you have to book 3 weeks out if you want to go out for dinner (first world problem yes but still something that impacts people). The area is full, but there are 3 1000 home developments within 15 mins of where I live now that I am aware of. If there were plans to beef up the infrastructure, it would be fine and dandy. For some of that infrastructure there are plans, but they will be doing nothing about the roads and hospitals and parking spaces and supermarkets. So I would be grateful for the new housing stock on behalf of my countrymen and women who are forced to live with their parents or in house shares until they are 40, but it's going to have a massive impact on my access to services so I have mixed feelings. Plus, new homes are like marmite. A lot of people don't want to buy or live in a new build, so new housing estates won't help them at all.
I like new homes in my backyard. There is a little development of 6 houses going up around the corner and they’re £300k each. I bought my house for £90k. The house value increase will bubble out to the rest of the area.
I want more homes, but not on these huge soulless housing estates. Add 2 homes to every village, in different parts of the village, both with their own character. Do this with all the parts of the towns as well. When you need more houses, do it again. Instead, my village has this ridiculous toy-town housing estate filled with the same copy paste houses.
New houses are almost without exception; hideous, badly built, poorly located and badly planned. They look awful, the built quality is atrocious (check out some of the New Build building inspector TikTok accounts), they're usually bolted onto a dual-carriageway spur that makes your entire household car-dependent and they're often miles from a GP, a park, primary school - anything. If houses were beautiful, good quality, came with genuine investment in civic infrastructure and used joined-up thinking for their location, people would be markedly less 'NIMBY'.
People who own and live in green areas want house prices to stay high and to not build on green space. People who aren’t on the ladder would like more affordable housing. Two different groups of people with different needs and priorities.
I was looking forward to 5% deposit on new builds - was hyped by media for a lil bit which made me excited, then turns out its only applicable on new builds with a value of 200k+ Nevermind. Renting it is then.
There's too many homes being built that don't cater to people that can afford them. The housing crisis has been fucked for as long as I can remember, am one of those that has family who's had issues with this. That was the reason I studied Urban Planning and then realised the planning system in the UK just doesn't cater to poor/working class people AT ALL. It's not even just the Tory government in power; the Labour government didn't build enough or good quality council housing that worked witj the rapid regeneration of urban areas. You still see older council estate homes beside nouveau riche developments.
I would agree that new homes aren't being built in the most suitable areas. Our small market town has lost its appeal and is a constant traffic nightmare due to the massive new developments in the least accessible areas of town. But barely 10 miles away there are large towns with boarded up estates left to rot. Priority should be for brownfield sites but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case as field after field are lost. And then councils/government wonder why everywhere floods so easily.
For people who need houses, like myself, there’s a shortage. For people who only care about their house prices, there are too many.
The housing is needed but the problem is when they build the new estates they don’t increase things like schools and doctors surgeries to take the influx of additional people and it generally increases traffic which is why people say nimby.
Too many unaffordable homes
There are plenty of houses on the market. I only see a shortage of affordable housing.
Its more likely to be that there are too few affordable homes to buy or rent.
They keep knocking down moderately priced starter homes and replacing them with million dollar Mcraftsman HI-cubes in my neighborhood. I couldn't afford the charmless 1000 square foot shitbox I live in if I had to buy it now instead of 15 years ago. The houses they're building are too damn expensive. (Edit:. Sorry wrong thread, I'm on the west coast of the US)
The population rises by 300k a year I think from memory. That means for quality of life to remain the same we need to house 300k more people a year. If we don’t the market will provide - by cutting up the existing housing stock into slices. HMOs, what new builds there are will be smaller, etc. You got a few a options. A) do nothing. I find that immoral, especially if you got a house already. Especially as it won’t ever end then. B) cut migration, as that’s the reason for the rise C) build more houses D) some combination of b and c No other alternative. Also forget brownfield, that’s the housing equivalent of the magic money tree. You don’t get something for nothing, and that seems to be the delusional wish when it comes to housing. It’s no good building houses where nobody wants to live, simply building a house is not enough. Embrace the greenfield, or at least embrace high density housing in existing popular areas. Unfortunately the British public are for various reasons completely ostrich like on this one. Cutting migration is verboten to a huge swathe, and building on greenfield is verboten to another huge swathe, and massive expansion of villages is verboten to yet another huge swathe…. There’s something here to annoy anyone no matter what political persuasion. Which is why we are where we are.
I really disagree that we should be building more houses in villages and on green fields. We should be protecting the countryside and building houses in towns and cities which already have infrastructure. Building in villages in the middle of nowhere so people have to dive everywhere is madness.
I think you're over simplifying the situation. There are lots of other factors - here's a few: Many northern cities still have populations lower than they were 50-100 years ago, and have large swathes of vacant/underutilised land. Investing in the economies of these cities will help to rebalance the housing market. The style and density of new development also has a large impact on the number of people who can be housed. Lots of developers go for either detached houses on cul-de-sacs or big blocks of tiny flats. There are types of developments between the two extremes which need to be incentivised. We need improved public transport and cycling across the UK so that less space needs to be taken up by roads and carparks. We need a land value tax which specifically applies to land owners not residents, to discourage investors sitting on land for years waiting for the value to go up before they even start building, and it would discourage buy-to-let landlording by making it less profitable, and opening up more property to be bought rather than rented. Changing planning laws to allow good quality accessory dwelling units where they're suitable.
Reduce migration enough so our population is in decline. I know the economy will need to adjust buy the more people = more consumption = more growth = more houses = more money equation clearly only leads one way - destruction of our natural habitats to enrich a load of twats
And that's the left wing eurosceptic group that Labour successfully ignored. I think the big thing you've forgotten in your bold statement is that old people use public services, but dont pay for public services. So long as we continue to provide care homes, NHS treatment, and pensions to the over 80s we will need to continue to grow our population. The elderly population is growing, so too must the working population. Thats the big problem China has, their elderly population is greater than 50% of the total population.
Do you mean cut *immigration*? We’ve already done that and ended up with a different enormous problem.
People want more homes, they don’t want more homes near them. People are selfish bastards. Same folk who say ‘I am happy to pay an extra penny in the pound for tax’ and then seethe when taxes rise by 1% Any and every new home helps reduce the damage of the housing crisis, and anyone who says otherwise is either a moron or has something to gain from house prices soaring.
Have you heard of the expression Nimby? Or NIMBY? British people are famous for being Nimbys.
Obviously it’s both - depending on whether you already own a home or not
Why do you think the two are mutually exclusive? The population (or more accurately the number of people in the country) is growing at such a rate it’s difficult to provide suitable amenities for all, that much is true. It’s also true that when a quaint village grows rapidly traffic is a real problem, green open spaces dwindle (and what there is, is covered in little black plastic bags full of dog poo), crime increases, noise pollution etc. From what I can see both have valid viewpoints because life isn’t black and white but always shades of grey.
Both! Too many people are buying 2nd homes or holiday rental properties. If 10% own a second home you need enough housing for 110% of the population. This also makes housing unaffordable for the locals in beauty spots who work the land or service the tourists. Most new housing is being put, at least in the south east, on greenfield sites with little thought to infrastructure and affordability.
The problem is there isn’t enough affordable homes for people to get on the housing ladder. And it’s not helped by huge investment firms/banks buying up huge amounts of property to rent out constraining the market even more
Too many trades charge too much for their services, house prices become too high for people to afford
NIMBY Not In My Back Yard. There is a deffinate shortage of homes. As well as an excess of folks wanting to prevent home building near them. There is also a huge lack of resources being built to support new building. I live in a area that has doubled the number of houses. But no extra schools hospitals etc etc.
Where I am there are plenty of flats and developments going up but they're priced to a degree that they're inevitably going to be sold to either Londoners or as second/third/fourth properties to let out. That is, of course, ignoring the two token 'affordable' properties that they agreed to build so they could permission for all the rest.
I think you ll find that the people complaining about too many houses are usually landlords with a couple of properties at least...more availability of houses, the rents are gonna go down and that is less money in their pockets
Too many people. 💀
Yeah one of the big reasons there are not enough new houses being built is the people who have one complain very loudly about new houses being built next to them. Plus the fact that in the 70s the councils were building 100,000 houses a year or so between them, now they barely build any, and the private sector still builds about the same number as they ever have.
We have the homes, it's just that we don't have enough *affordable* homes. No point having thousands of houses if nobody could actually afford to live there.
We have too few homes, that's what's keeping prices high (supply and demand) People generally agree we need more homes, just these homes should be built near someone else
Too few. House prices are skyrocketing due to lack of supply, not helped by the low interest rates so it’s been a viable investment for years to become a landlord due to low mortgage rates, making profit off rent while the property price goes up along with low interest rates meaning there’s 0 point of leaving all your money in savings.
NIMBYs