div>
Originally Posted by
Doris Mousdale
The point is nobody GAVE them anything. They bought the freehold on the land it was something like five pounds a year ground rent in the 60s. So they paid the landowner a couple of hundred to freehold.
When it was sold a smaller, less expensive house was bought for cash and that house has just been sold for four times what was paid for it in the 80s. The person buying has a bargain, nice well maintained house in a quiet well established area with good neighbours,plenty of shops and buses close by and so it goes.....
It wasn't the housing that was suspect- we all know you can do up a dump- it was the planning and lack of foresight as to what would happen to the neighbourhood, the breaking up of communities ,families, sent to raw barely finished newtowns and suburbs that planners and councils gave up on too soon. Those demolished tower blocks would be desirable to some if built now on the rolling green slopes of Netherfield Rd where they were originally set down.
Some good people coped with the change, flourished, treated their houses like little palaces,places of great pride,but you know it only takes one rubbish collector who stores broken down cars "for spares" one bad garden and a crowd of feral kids tagging fences, a couple of horrible dogs and an agressive loudmouth living in the street and it all turns to custard...
This makes so much sense it's hard to add anything... but one thing, the way house prices have gone means that the next time round, people can't afford the houses. The next generation is priced out.
All the time our parents were paying off and living in their homes the market was going mad. That is the fault of a system prepared to lend five times earnings on more than 100% mortgages.
---------- Post added at 01:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 PM ----------
Originally Posted by
Waterways
The problem was the planning system - only 7.7% of the land in the UK is settled. This created an artificial land shortage ratcheting up land prices. This put houses out of reach of low income people, meaning the state had to intervene. But they were also strapped by the same constraints, so cheap and nasty estates appeared.
All because of planning and land.
Accepting your 7.7% as settled for a second, that percentage may not be the percentage actually needed to sustain the population, have work, grow food, have transport, leisure, moors, mountains and other ‘un-settlable’ land. However, I think anyone who argues that this is not a crowded island is on distinctly shaky ground.
And the history of the post-war expansion into the countryside doesn’t back up a suggestion that land shortage increased prices or that there was a land shortage. Ok, the Lords Sefton and Derby did alright out of it I’m sure but the ensuing prices wouldn’t suggest that the price paid for the land was too high or that there wasn’t enough of it. The housing estates designed are of very low density (too low, possibly)
A higher density would have allowed lower prices, certainly. But too high a density would have put us back where we started - in the slums.
***
Notwithstanding that, there are 64,000 Hectares of 'brownfield site' in the UK. Estimates of what that might accommodate vary hugely, dependent on density. But are anywhere from 2m at low density (outer suburban Woking) to 17m in inner city London. That's not so much of a shortage as yet.
[incidentally - I should also mention that tower blocks have no higher density than two storey houses. The 'parkland' around the towers means the densities are about the same. Since they both use the same amount of land, tower blocks reduce cost of construction per dwelling, not their portion of the land value per dwelling]
***
State intervention via the various Housing Acts originated in the economic drivers behind early 20th century slum conditions ie., because people were paid so little, they couldn’t afford much. Not even the fare from places like Huyton, let alone the house.
You might say that the history of social housing has thus been about propping up the ability of poorer people to pay for decent homes.
Now, all the props are... not quite gone and we have had raging house price inflation fueled by irresponsible banks. That has been the major driver of higher prices. Not land shortage.
Bookmarks