Quote Originally Posted by Waterways View Post
So they have given your mother indirectly a windfall. That is the case i all rent vs owning land. Your mother's house, the bricks dropping in price, like a car, it was the land that increased in value.

This explains it well:



I know it is the land value rather than the bricks and mortar which rises in value.
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.....
My point is it was a leap of faith, a change from going with what was expected back then.
What has happened in the meantime is we have two generations reliant on social housing which was meant as a stop-gap. In some cases both parents and grown children have been in long term secure work but still feel their place is in a "corpy house" and that's fine that's their choice but what happens,years later, when a more needy family comes along, more deserving of your lovely little house and garden and legally all you are entitled to is a one bedroom flat in a run down block what rights do you have?
So back to the mistakes in housing.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.
So is it architects, planners,the council, the tenants or what?
The greening of Liverpool 5 has taken 50 years during which time council houses have come and gone as have the population and yet in other places there are hundred year old houses looking better than ever ( Woolton Village)
I don't know the answer but maybe a good rent to buy scheme for tenants who look after the property, bonds with interest payable every five years if the property is in good order or guaranteed good downsizing when the time is appropriate, whatever it takes to put the landlord/tenant question under the spotlight.