Peel are primarily land speculators. They do little investment. They are not much different to Harry Hyams.
Printable View
Architects were building down to a price for sure. Housing mistakes? You can't separate planning and land when looking into it. There is a deep-root problem, but no one here has hit they button of what it is.
Planning laws create artificial land shortages. This distorts the free-market - rigging the market.
Land The Mother of All Monopolies
It is quite true that land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies - it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. It is quite true that unearned increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit which individuals are able to secure; but it is the principal form of unearned increment which is derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but which are positively detrimental to the general public.
- Winston Churchill
What Churchill was saying, was that each piece of land is unique, it cannot be moved. Just because one piece of land is worth double what another is, you can't move the lower value land to the higher value land to equalise the price. Land is unique and special being completly different from movable objects like machinery, equipment and raw materials. If the price of cement rises in one location than another the cheaper cement will move to the location where the prices are higher equalising the price of cement (making cement cheaper) - moveable goods and service equalize the price (value). In that sense land ownership is the mother of all monopolies. That is anyone who owns land, even the owner/occupier.
If we had planning and land laws the served the people not the large landowners and speculators then matters would be very different to housing. Sink estates would not exist.
Housing mistakes is what the thread's about. I think it was you who jumped in two feet first against architects? Yes it was.
And I will continue to rise that because it colours everything you say about housing and what a lot of people believe are the housing mistakes. What you say about housing is, it’s **** because it was badly designed by architects. And that’s all you say. You don’t even substantiate that.
But you do deny what did go on. If you don’t think people dropped TVs (or beds) out of 20 storey windows go and ask people - talk to the police and council who had to deal with it (I have. Have you?)
And you're not back ‘on tag’, you're still having a go!
***
Nevertheless... the purpose of an architect is to design and provide the documentation to deliver a building in accordance with a brief from a client. He also inspects the work but he is not responsible for how well the builder builds. It's the builder's job to build and to build well.
The brief includes money. “Money crops up so many times in the posts”. Yes it does - as it does in life. You cannot ignore money. How would it be if someone wanted to build you a shed for £500 and it turned out to be £1000 before you even got started? or do you imagine the money for the Florence Institute for example, dropped from the sky?
“Please don't go back to the obeying rules and regulations speel, indicating others in badly designed housing.” What do you want? Do you want that shed bigger and better even though bigger and better is not required and you haven’t got the money to pay for bigger and better?
“Radcliffe was a disgrace” I’m still waiting for you to tell me why (when you’ve got a minute) - a leak in a roof?
“speculaters and carpet baggers”. No. We don’t want people coming here spending their money, investing in things, creating jobs and places to live. Bugger that. Send them home. They can invest elsewhere. Manchester perhaps.
***
“You weren’t aware that you were attacking anything”?!!! (Maybe it was the pit-bull). Rather than tilting at windmills, you might do better to stop living in cloud-cuckoo land and get real.
There’s no hand-outs. No gimmees. There’s no such thing as a free ride. If you can’t pay for what you want - you don’t get it. The belief that you can is maybe the housing mistake. We need to find ways of affording houses of the quality we want, not bashing people for providing what we can afford (and as it turns out, were not that bad in the first place)
***
And no apologies for giving the issues their due. I haven't descended to the sound-bite solution culture yet.
---------- Post added at 12:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:06 PM ----------
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 ----------
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.
Hi Ged,
This is going over old ground for you and me. I think we both know here we stand. :PDT11
I'll leave PEEL out of future discussion on this thread and get back to Housing Mistakes. Another apology.
I'm going back to kicking the can,
I'm still not happy with Peter's replies, He relies too much on references, has he ever taken a walk on the wild side? He comes cross as a wide, not wise, boy. ( jiust my opinion)
Tara, Ged,
Chas:PDT11
You've said a lot. Not substantiated much. Been quite wantonly insulting. Not answered anything. You run away when you can't answer. But you're not happy...
Come on. What do you have to say about housing mistakes (rather than about architects)?
(by implication, you could even throw in a little bit about how it might be better).
---------- Post added at 03:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:18 PM ----------
Well, so far they bought MDHC and they've paid for the development of the proposals for Liverpool and Wirral Waters and all the land they own between here and Manchester as the Ocean Gateway. They developed the Trafford Centre. They also developed Media City. They've invested in this port and other ports. They have an impressive development portfolio. But they are 'just speculators'. ok.
As I said, send them, their money, their jobs and their prosperity elsewhere. Terrific.