The solution to the fundamental problem in the British housing market is, at bottom, not to try and tone it a bit with some twerking here and there, it’s to get all Adam Smith on its arse. Viciously so.
The solution to the fundamental problem in the British housing market is, at bottom, not to try and tone it a bit with some twerking here and there, it’s to get all Adam Smith on its arse. Viciously so.
Perfectly sensible if it was the increasing number of Britons putting pressure on the housing market, but as it is actually caused by importing people we don’t have houses for, a simpler solution suggests itself.
Good grief!
If you build it, they will come.
@Roué le Jour
“Perfectly sensible if it was the increasing number of Britons putting pressure on the housing market, but as it is actually caused by importing people we don’t have houses for, a simpler solution suggests itself.”
We often pay them to come by giving them free housing.
I was in Spain recently and the taxi driver told me that his daughter gets housing benefit in London.
What if we could sleep for free on commons?
Here’s my idea (and a form of LVT):
Announce that housing will be in one of two villages. The village that accepts the housing gets paid initially something like £2K/house and this will be paid by the village that wants their view over a field. A month later, it rises by 30% And every week after that, 30%. So, 2 months later, it’s £6K. Four months later it’s £65K.
And the money is paid when someone buys the house and not before. So no collecting the cash and then looking for bats. And not paid into some parish council pot, but hard cash split between all the residents.
You’d lose all protesting within about 2 weeks, maybe 5 or 6. Bulldozers can move in, villagers would welcome them with cups of tea and cake, so they get on with building and they can get their cash.
Two thousand houses were added to the village where I grew up. No extra infrastructure was built. This seems to be typical. They were those modern houses with three floors and tiny rooms so they can cram more in. I looked at one and doubted you’d get a bed into one of the bedrooms.
I don’t think it’s even possible to build enough houses given the scale of unwanted immigration we’re suffering. Abolishing the planning rules won’t fix the problem. If we build 1/4 of the required houses instead of 1/8th (numbers made up) are prices going to come down?
“Two thousand houses were added to the village where I grew up. No extra infrastructure was built. This seems to be typical.”
Its not typical. I am (or rather was) involved in a large urban extension project, I sold some of my land to the developer that is doing just a proportion of the whole thing, which is about 6 or 7 thousand houses. My former land only is going to have about 1500 houses, yet it will also hold a secondary school (admittedly to cover the wider area), several primary schools, doctors surgery, and small retail outlet areas. Also lots of open space and some allotments are also included. All of which is being funded by the developer out of the value created by the houses.
So if you ended up with 2000 wall to wall houses and nothing else, I can only conclude backhanders were in order.
Whatever is planned will first have to get the approval of whoever is running the country now (my guess is the Americans), because if you don’t they will fuck it over like they fucked over Truss’s budget.
About 1000 extra houses have been built around the outskirts of my town, similarly with no additional infrastructure. One developer even said there was no need for parking provision as there’s buses – pointing to a bus stop that hasn’t been used since the 1980s.
Not only do they skimp on the infrastructure support, they skimp on the infrastructure within the development. The bare minimum of adopted highways, and then the rest is laid out as shared carriageway with no footpaths, totally below par to be adopted as highway. And the buildings are tiny, every planning meeting has applications to build extensions or convert garages – on stuff that’s not even five years old.
Plus my perennial grumble – no fence/etc between the garden and the road. “Oh but it lets the frontage be open to the public road”. Yea, that’s the problem, it lets the frontage be open to the public road.
“One developer even said there was no need for parking provision as there’s buses”
Thats down to councils (or possibly national government legislation, either way its the State decreeing it, not developers) – eco-lunacy dictates that you can’t give houses multiple parking spaces now, even if the developers wanted to (which they probably would, as parking is a good selling point). All developments have to assume that people will have one car per household and all other transport will be undertaken by public transport, foot or bike.
And as ever our host in his Adam Smith article has completely ignored the cost of infrastructure when building new houses – while the cost to rebuild a house that has (say) burned down may be in the region of £120-150k (not sure you’d get much in the UK for that nowadays, have you seen materials and tradesmen costs recently?) but that ignores the cost of the infrastructure that surrounds the house – the roads, the storm drains, the sewers, the utility supplies etc etc. These are already in place when an insurance claim is made, but when you start with a green field then they all have to be installed from scratch, which is a cost on the new houses. And then there’s local services such as schools and the like, new developments have to contribute to their provision as well. This has nothing to do with the planning permission ‘chitties’ he bangs on about constantly, but just the overall costs of building new houses and providing them with all the local services and amenities they need in a crowded country such as ours (which he hasn’t lived in for decades). Unless of course he’s suggesting that people be allowed to build anything they like anywhere and not worry at all about the local area, what the road network can cope with all the new traffic, whether there’s enough sewer and water capacity, whether there’s enough school places or doctors surgeries etc etc. Just allow people to build wherever they like, and throw all the costs onto the other inhabitants of the area. The entire south of England would be like a 3rd world country in next to no time, gridlock because the roads couldn’t take all the extra traffic and no-one is prepared to pay to upgrade them, utilities that cannot cope as no-one has paid to upgrade them either, schools rammed to the gunnels etc etc.
They’ve just build a load of houses in Blandford and are still building. The only new infrastructure they appear to be getting is an enlarged Tesco, if the planning permission ever gets approved, and 2 zebra crossings, without lights, presumably so kids can walk safely to school which is on the opposite corner of the town.
My former land (which I did not pay to acquire) only is going to have about 1500 houses ..
Just curious but did the person you inherited it from express any wishes or leave any covenants over what might be done with that capital.
A developer once told me that the lack of adopted highways is often down to the council who don’t want to have to deal with them and pushed that all the cul-de-sacs be shared driveways. I did live in a new build and there was an issue in one area with a sewer line blocking and we found out that even after 8 years the council hadn’t formally adopted the infrastructure.
The real question is whether the proposed twerking here and there will be included under the advertising budget 🙂
The UK might consider looking to Chinese developers to solve their housing crisis. They can erect a ten story block in under 30hours.Why not build up instead of whinging about urban sprawl? If a hospital or something is needed, they can do that in a few days.
Yes. The author is right. The commenters are right about infrastructure.
The planning consent should be liberal but the Local Authority & Developers should have to show existing residents the plans to deal with the additional demand on public services. Not hard really. We all ready have all the beurocrats we just need to improve their productivity.
And the point about minimum size rooms is exactly right. Until there is a deep market in housing regulation will be required because buyers have no real choice.
“The planning consent should be liberal but the Local Authority & Developers should have to show existing residents the plans to deal with the additional demand on public services. Not hard really. We all ready have all the beurocrats we just need to improve their productivity.”
Its six of one and half a dozen of the other. If you give the local planners something to control developers with they will use it. It could be the planning laws themselves or it could be the requirement to make sure all developments have suitable infrastructure in place before starting building houses. Either way the planners will have a stick to beat developers with, and to use to try to force them to do what they want. And the planning process would move from reams of paper and hurdles to jump over regarding planning law to reams of paper and hurdles to jump over regarding infrastructure law. Both would be used to stymie development and push the developers in the directions the local authority wants.
“My former land (which I did not pay to acquire) only is going to have about 1500 houses ..
Just curious but did the person you inherited it from express any wishes or leave any covenants over what might be done with that capital.”
If you’re going to quote my posts, don’t edit them and make it look like I said something I didn’t.
the lack of adopted highways is often down to the council who don’t want to have to deal with them and pushed that all the cul-de-sacs be shared driveways
Mrs M (former property solicitor): rule no 1 for house purchase – never buy a house with a shared driveway.
“They can erect a ten story block in under 30hours…. If a hospital or something is needed, they can do that in a few days.”
There is this thing called “quality”. The chinese quick-builds are notorious for being “Not Fit For Purpose” and have the nasty habit of deteriorating fast.
But you will enjoy your government-assigned living space, Comrad!
Grikath, prices for Real Estate in Shanghai are some of the highest in the world, exceeding Hong Kong and London.