By wins for LAB in the byelections – politicalbetting.com

nico679 said:

It’s notable that Starmers word de jour is “ humble “.

He mentioned this several times today.

darkage said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Piss easy to do.

The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.

Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.

The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.

In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000

£50,000 land with services.
£250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm
£50,000 developer profit (16.5%)

I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.

In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up

Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.

Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.

I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.

Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.

60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.

So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.

If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.

I don't see how you can have a 60 sq meters semi detached house. That's only about 20-25 sq meters of usable space per floor.

Now, 60 sq meters is fine for an apartment/flat, but there you don't lose space to stairs.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137759765#/floorplan?activePlan=1&channel=RES_BUY

Here is a 50 sqm house - with about 20% of the floor area being lost to stairs.

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

In DC, Jim Jordan being nominated for Speaker by . . . wait for it . . . Kevin McCarthy.

This oughta be good . . . in some manner of speak(er)ing.

Remind me of how, in the May 1940 "Norway Debate" in HoC, the closing speech in support of Neville Chamberlain was give by . . . Winston Churchill.

Except that back then, WSC was on the way up . . . whereas KMcC is on the path to . . .

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

kinabalu said:

darkage said:

Malmesbury said:

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.

Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.

The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.

Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.

It is.

Deal with the planning issue that adds 1000% to the cost of unplanned land on average, and the problem is solved.

Its been done in countries around the planet.

Getting the state involved in housebuilding is no solution and just further politicises that which needs to be depoliticised. Getting the state to fix the problem blocking housebuilding is a solution.

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Piss easy to do.

The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.

Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.

The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.

In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000

£50,000 land with services.
£250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm
£50,000 developer profit (16.5%)

I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.

In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up

Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.

Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.

I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.

Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.

60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.

So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.

If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.

There are a few points here.
Size - 70sqm is the minimum possible size for a 2 storey house under the technical housing standards. Most family sized houses are more like 90-100 sqm.
The build cost calculator you linked to is from a website marketing tradesmans services. A better one is on the website 'build-it' linked to below. But the figure of £1700/£1800 sqm is generally possible in theory in the North.
The increase though is exponential with 10 years ago, they have doubled.

Build costs are only technically about building, you still have to resolve other issues, like services, in addition to land. Obviously there are planning payments/contributions as well IE through the community infrastructure levy, but if you remove them, how do you fund for the new roads/motorways?

https://www.self-build.co.uk/build-cost-calculator/

OnlyLivingBoy said:

northern_monkey said:

Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...

Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".

No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.

I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.

My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.

The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.

https://conservativehome.com/2023/10/20/labour-wins-the-tamworth-and-mid-bedfordshire-by-elections/

If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.

SandyRentool said:

Anabobazina said:

twistedfirestopper3 said:

.

JosiasJessop said:

tlg86 said:

@Jossiasjessop - on flooding, the GWML is now a canal:

https://twitter.com/networkrailwest/status/1715298658491486393

The water's over the top of the railhead; can't run trains...

Compare to ye olde pictures of steam engines roaring through floodwaters (yes, I know things were different and less electronic back then..)

https://twitter.com/colorized_pics/status/1469547545189916674

Trains through Loughborough to Leicester all cancelled. The wrong water on the track.

Luckily nobody in Loughborough wants to go to Leicester, they can all go to Nottingham as usual.

Very true. When I lived in Luffy, I went to Nottingham probably 5 times as often as Leicester.

Sandpit said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Nigelb said:

.

LostPassword said:

Sandpit said:

williamglenn said:

Sandpit said:

AlistairM said:

These losses that Ukraine claims Russia suffered yesterday are massive. They can probably take the loss of men but how can 120 IFVs and 55 tanks be sustainable? I have a small hope that Russia is making one last throw of the dice in their recent offensives, like the Battle of the Bulge in WW2, but so far they have not achieved anything.

These are the indicative estimates of Russia’s combat losses as of Oct. 20, according to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

https://x.com/KyivIndependent/status/1715277446860148923?s=20

It’s only 300k men and 5,000 tanks, did they think war would be easy?

The discussions of the past few weeks have been that the Russians have been bringing forward an awful lot of men and kit, to either defend existing lines or to push them forward, and that they’re going to keep doing this until winter bogs everything down and they can resupply. The risk is that they end up with nothing behind the front line, and suffer a total collapse of dozens of kilometres of ground in very short order, if the defenders can get past a few strategic minefields and trenches.

Putin's spin on ATACMS sounded pretty desperate. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to make another tactical retreat soon.

ATACMS is a proper game-changer. There’s nowhere in occupied Ukraine that’s safe from them, so ammo dumps and command posts need to be moved back all the way to Russia if they don’t want to get blown up.

There’s good reason that Zelensky was asking for it 18 months ago.

Maybe. But on the other hand it seems as though they've only sent the cluster munition version of ATACMS. So that was great for hitting exposed targets at the airfield outside Berdyansk, but it won't be so good at hitting a hardened ammunition dump or command post that is out of Storm Shadow range...

That is possibly as much to do with funding authorisation as anything else. The cluster munition version is due for disposal, so has little or no (perhaps even negative) book value.

That is quite breathtakingly cynical of the US.

Yes, their daily politics is about the value of stuff sent to Ukraine, but with no discussion about how their valuations are derived.

A bunch of stuff that was going to be scrapped next year anyway, is worth nothing to any company that does accounts. Shipping it to Ukraine costs a few tens of thousands, not tens of billions. So send every ATACMS and HIMARS left in the stocks, we’ve already seen how good they are in theatre in Ukraine.

Luckyguy1983 said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

northern_monkey said:

Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...

Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".

No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.

I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.

My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.

The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.

https://conservativehome.com/2023/10/20/labour-wins-the-tamworth-and-mid-bedfordshire-by-elections/

If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.

Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.

Luckyguy1983 said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

northern_monkey said:

Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...

Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".

No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.

I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.

My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.

The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.

https://conservativehome.com/2023/10/20/labour-wins-the-tamworth-and-mid-bedfordshire-by-elections/

If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.

Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Piss easy to do.

The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.

Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.

The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.

In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000

£50,000 land with services.
£250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm
£50,000 developer profit (16.5%)

I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.

In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up

Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.

Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.

I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.

Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.

60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.

So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.

If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.

Malmesbury said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Chris said:

boulay said:

Chris said:

Chris said:

tlg86 said:

Chris said:

tlg86 said:

Chris said:

tlg86 said:

kyf_100 said:

tlg86 said:

AlistairM said:

Stark_Dawning said:

Regarding Greta, is she in some kind of spat with Octopus Energy? If so what?

She has now deleted her tweet. Read into that what you will.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1715284878919340056?s=20

Edit: Here's why:

It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings.

We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable. That is why I deleted the last post.
https://x.com/GretaThunberg/status/1715355506078892505?s=20

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Brilliant. I'd have been oblivious to that too, but then I don't hang around people who are clearly antisemitic.

A lot of it is contextual. Is an octopus always antisemitic? Well, clearly not, when it's Octopus Energy's logo, or similar.

Then look at this Martin Rowson cartoon from earlier this year that looks more like something from Der Sturmer.

https://www.thejc.com/news/news/guardian-cartoonist-admits-controversial-car-crash-drawing-was-antisemitic-4RwFhlKTWtwkKY0RFKRRv9

Not all octopuses are antisemitic, but they can be used in an antisemitic way.

The fact she's put out an apology would suggest she doesn't think it was an unfortunate coincidence.

You really must be pretty stupid if you can say that, having read that she said she "was completely unaware of" the antisemitic interpretation.

But I don't want to make any unwarranted assumptions. Maybe you can't read or something.

Fair enough. I think she should be braver and leave it up in that case.

You're really too thick to understand someone not wanting to offend people, even unintentionally?

I know this is a bit circular, but as @kyf_100 notes, the rest of it was pretty offensive too.

What, specifically, about it was "pretty offensive"?

I mean what in this photo is "pretty offensive", apart from the soft toy?

At first glimpse I did think Metallica had gone all political.

And looking at the clothes the members of the band are wearing, the Nazi references are extremely clear.

And by extension, that clearly makes Greta Thunberg a Nazi too.

I apologise for ever doubting it. I must confess I didn't understand how the new social media logic worked!

Worse than a Nazi, Greta's a hypocrite. She wants us to stand with Gaza but she is sitting down.

Piece of advice about Metallica. Be careful. Or their drummer will come round your house with 10,000 lawyers.

Stocky said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

northern_monkey said:

Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...

Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".

No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.

I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.

My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.

The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.

https://conservativehome.com/2023/10/20/labour-wins-the-tamworth-and-mid-bedfordshire-by-elections/

If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.

Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.

There is a common feeling of despair among habitual Conservative voters despite 13 years in government. This is curious but I *think* that these voters feel that although in government their party has not been in power. If that makes any sense?

JosiasJessop said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Who knew you could have a fury wank over a kid's stuffed octopus? Never ever underestimate PB.

Makes you wonder what PB would do if I put a pic of my stuffed koala on.

I really hope that's not a euphemism...

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Who knew you could have a fury wank over a kid's stuffed octopus? Never ever underestimate PB.

Makes you wonder what PB would do if I put a pic of my stuffed koala on.

JosiasJessop said:

Carnyx said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Who knew you could have a fury wank over a kid's stuffed octopus? Never ever underestimate PB.

Makes you wonder what PB would do if I put a pic of my stuffed koala on.

I really hope that's not a euphemism...

Luckyguy1983 said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

northern_monkey said:

Interesting post from ConHome. I very rarely go there and schadenfreude is a terrible emotion but it's been a long 13 years so I beg your understanding...

Having been involved in canvassing in Tamworth, aside from the obvious disgust with the conduct of Pincher, the complaints I heard were overwhelming about the lies and incompetence of Johnson and Truss, the failure to deliver public services and, above all, the struggle to survive week by week that is not a product of inflation but a pre-existing issue to do with lack of growth, wage stagnation and taxation. People are also feeling much bolder about describing Brexit as a mistake. One man told me that we should "grow up and stop exaggerating gender stuff".

No-one mentioned immigration or net zero to me. That's not to say it wasn't raised. Few felt any love for Rishi.

I see a lot of posters here demanding more action on immigration and a move to cutting the State. I think that Starmer would welcome that. Much as many here would like it to be, the United Kingdom electorate are not right wing to the extent that some seem to hope and now that the economic pain, waiting lists and deteroting infrastructure is affecting not just our traditional scapegoats people see the effects for themselves.

My own feeling is that 2024 is lost and that a lurch further right will lose 2029 too.

The issue is not traditional Conservative policy. The issues are gross incompetence amongst the current parliamentary party, a series of poor economic decisions (not least Brexit), the foolishness of giving power to Johnson and simple longevity in power.

https://conservativehome.com/2023/10/20/labour-wins-the-tamworth-and-mid-bedfordshire-by-elections/

If the Tories have any sense they'd do well to listen to this kind of analysis. Mind you, if the Tories had any sense neither they nor the country would be in the absolute state they are now.

Translation: I'd never vote Tory, but I'd like them to align with all my political views, and then lose bigly in the election so my guy can come in, kthxbye.

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

In DC, Jim Jordan being nominated for Speaker by . . . wait for it . . . Kevin McCarthy.

This oughta be good . . . in some manner of speak(er)ing.

Remind me of how, in the May 1940 "Norway Debate" in HoC, the closing speech in support of Neville Chamberlain was give by . . . Winston Churchill.

Except that back then, WSC was on the way up . . . whereas KMcC is on the path to . . .

Already lost with plenty of votes to go, and Brian Fitzpatrick confirmed as a further loss by Jordan (as he'd indicated yesterday).

viewcode said:

"Mid-term"

(OK, being fair to him is that actually true? It's 3yrs and 10mths since GE2019. Is this technically "mid-term"?)

Scott_xP said:

@benrileysmith

JUST IN: Rishi Sunak's first comments on the pair of by-election defeats. "Obviously disappointing results"

“It’s important to remember the context. Mid-term by-elections are always difficult for incumbent governments and of course there are also local factors at play here"

Gardenwalker said:

darkage said:

rcs1000 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Piss easy to do.

The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.

Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.

The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.

In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000

£50,000 land with services.
£250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm
£50,000 developer profit (16.5%)

I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.

In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up

Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.

Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.

I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.

Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.

60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.

So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.

If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.

I don't see how you can have a 60 sq meters semi detached house. That's only about 20-25 sq meters of usable space per floor.

Now, 60 sq meters is fine for an apartment/flat, but there you don't lose space to stairs.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137759765#/floorplan?activePlan=1&channel=RES_BUY

Here is a 50 sqm house - with about 20% of the floor area being lost to stairs.

A one bedroom “house”.
I’d call this a granny-flat.

williamglenn said:

https://www.reuters.com/world/finland-contacts-china-russia-regarding-baltic-sea-pipeline-investigation-2023-10-20/

An investigation into the damage to the Balticonnector gas pipeline is currently focused on the role of the Chinese NewNew Polar Bear container vessel, Finland's National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said on Friday.

kinabalu said:

nico679 said:

It’s likely the Tories might head even further to the right if they feel threatened by the Reform Party .

Which means we should expect more hate and division peddling by this cesspit government.

Hopefully they lose more sane Tories and that costs them .

I think having Sunak as leader rather caps the number of Reform voters they can win back.

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Piss easy to do.

The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.

Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.

The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.

In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000

£50,000 land with services.
£250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm
£50,000 developer profit (16.5%)

I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.

In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up

Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.

Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.

I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.

Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.

60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.

So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.

If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.

There are a few points here.
Size - 70sqm is the minimum possible size for a 2 storey house under the technical housing standards. Most family sized houses are more like 90-100 sqm.
The build cost calculator you linked to is from a website marketing tradesmans services. A better one is on the website 'build-it' linked to below. But the figure of £1700/£1800 sqm is generally possible in theory in the North.
The increase though is exponential with 10 years ago, they have doubled.

Build costs are only technically about building, you still have to resolve other issues, like services, in addition to land. Obviously there are planning payments/contributions as well IE through the community infrastructure levy, but if you remove them, how do you fund for the new roads/motorways?

https://www.self-build.co.uk/build-cost-calculator/

I didn't say 2 bed Semi, I said starter home.

60-70 sqm is fine for a flat as a starter home, which as we've determined is from less than £90k build costs, including labour. So can you get a 60-70 sqm flat in London or Manchester for not that much more than £90k? Or a 100sqm semi from not much more than £140k?

If not, why not?

Could the answer be . . . land + consent?

malcolmg said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

darkage said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

.

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Piss easy to do.

The cost of land with planning consent is the biggest cost in the entire project, the cost of land without planning consent is a fraction of the cost. Eliminate that unnecessary cost differential, and you can eliminate a major cost of the building.

Eliminate the requirement to get planning consent, you can eliminate all the consultations, legal fees, massive binders of documents required, years of delays as neighbours and Councillors unnecessarily get involved in other people's business.

The cost of labour is a major cost of all development. The cost of housing is the biggest cost of living for that labour. House costs come down, living costs come down, labour can be more affordable.

In the very hypothetical scenario where your proposed abolition of the planning system works out (although we actually have established in previous exchanges that you are not abolishing planning, you want a liberalised system of zoning with design codes)... the cost of a 100 sqm house will still be about £350,000

£50,000 land with services.
£250,000 total build cost at £2500 /sqm
£50,000 developer profit (16.5%)

I keep making the point on here that the biggest problem is build costs... labour is a big part of it but but regulation is a big factor also. It is the same thing all over Europe. if you look at the costs of new housing where there is a surplus of land ie in Scandinavia, the cost of new build away from premium locations is in line with what I estimated above. And that is even with high tech, low labour modular building.

In the UK there were high development land values for many years based on high prices and low build costs but now we prices have gone down and build costs gone up

Considering that houses are getting built and sold for below £200k near me even with the planning system as it is, I think your numbers are complete bullshit.

Build costs are not remotely what you claim they are.

I think these houses sold for £200k are low spec starter homes by volume house builders, probably entry level (so about 60-70sqm), normally semi detached. This pricing is essentially a product of massive economies of scale in terms of land acquisition and build costs, they can build housing for £1.5k per sqm, even less. So obviously these players are not the enemy, they are key to any solution to the housing crisis, because their business model enables them to build for far, far cheaper than any self or custom build project.

Build cost data in general is all well known, it is in a BCIS index, reflected in peer reviewed viability statements for new developments published online by local authorities.

60-70sqm is plenty for a starter home, as is semi-detached, and even self-builds (with hired trades) can be £1400 as per the source I shared.

So anywhere in the country a home ought to be affordable for £1500 * 60 = £90,000 build cost. Even making it 100sqm which is above the national average still means from £140,000 in build costs. Which includes parts and labour, including the profit on the labour, and would bring prices right back in line with historical norms.

If house prices are considerably higher than that, its because of problems elsewhere in the supply chain. Problems which can be fixed, like land & planning.

There are a few points here.
Size - 70sqm is the minimum possible size for a 2 storey house under the technical housing standards. Most family sized houses are more like 90-100 sqm.
The build cost calculator you linked to is from a website marketing tradesmans services. A better one is on the website 'build-it' linked to below. But the figure of £1700/£1800 sqm is generally possible in theory in the North.
The increase though is exponential with 10 years ago, they have doubled.

Build costs are only technically about building, you still have to resolve other issues, like services, in addition to land. Obviously there are planning payments/contributions as well IE through the community infrastructure levy, but if you remove them, how do you fund for the new roads/motorways?

https://www.self-build.co.uk/build-cost-calculator/

I didn't say 2 bed Semi, I said starter home.

60-70 sqm is fine for a flat as a starter home, which as we've determined is from less than £90k build costs, including labour. So can you get a 60-70 sqm flat in London or Manchester for not that much more than £90k? Or a 100sqm semi from not much more than £140k?

If not, why not?

Could the answer be . . . land + consent?

Another squadron of pigs flew past my window, when will they sedate you. Like a broken record.

Malmesbury said:

viewcode said:

"Mid-term"

(OK, being fair to him is that actually true? It's 3yrs and 10mths since GE2019. Is this technically "mid-term"?)

Fair? fair?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzZO4lxCRys

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

MarqueeMark said:

SirNorfolkPassmore said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

In DC, Jim Jordan being nominated for Speaker by . . . wait for it . . . Kevin McCarthy.

This oughta be good . . . in some manner of speak(er)ing.

Remind me of how, in the May 1940 "Norway Debate" in HoC, the closing speech in support of Neville Chamberlain was give by . . . Winston Churchill.

Except that back then, WSC was on the way up . . . whereas KMcC is on the path to . . .

Already lost with plenty of votes to go, and Brian Fitzpatrick confirmed as a further loss by Jordan (as he'd indicated yesterday).

Jordan has lost three more Republicans.

Another episode of Shitshow beckons.

I'm not sure there's a way forward for him with 194 votes on that one, down from 200 and 199 in the first two. McCarthy never dropped below 200 in the 15 votes in his Speaker battle in January. The very aggressive tactics have also clearly deeply upset a group of Republicans. It's hard to see a route, and I wonder if Jordan is gone.

HYUFD said:

OldKingCole said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

HYUFD said:

GIN1138 said:

HYUFD said:

GIN1138 said:

Pulpstar said:

Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.

So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.

So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.

Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.

The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.

Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.

Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.

Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation

I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)

Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.

She was considered unelectable in 1975

Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.

The Old Guard and Wets didn't, they largely voted for Heath and Whitelaw.

It was the party right that got her elected. The media coverage against her initially saw her as unelectable and lightweight and extreme and Callaghan was expected to beat her comfortably

That’s not how I remember it. And I was there.

Thatcher was the most rightwing Tory leader since at least Bonar Law when she was elected, that is just the reality. Few gave her a hope of beating Wilson or then Callaghan when she became leader.

Indeed a year or 2 into her leadership some Tory MPs even wanted to bring back Ted Heath

GIN1138 said:

Scott_xP said:

@benrileysmith

JUST IN: Rishi Sunak's first comments on the pair of by-election defeats. "Obviously disappointing results"

“It’s important to remember the context. Mid-term by-elections are always difficult for incumbent governments and of course there are also local factors at play here"

What else can he say? He's the biggest serial loser in British politics since Gordon Brown and his "response" is very Brownian...

Burgessian said:

HYUFD said:

OldKingCole said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

HYUFD said:

GIN1138 said:

HYUFD said:

GIN1138 said:

Pulpstar said:

Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.

So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.

So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.

Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.

The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.

Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.

Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.

Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation

I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)

Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.

She was considered unelectable in 1975

Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.

The Old Guard and Wets didn't, they largely voted for Heath and Whitelaw.

It was the party right that got her elected. The media coverage against her initially saw her as unelectable and lightweight and extreme and Callaghan was expected to beat her comfortably

That’s not how I remember it. And I was there.

Thatcher was the most rightwing Tory leader since at least Bonar Law when she was elected, that is just the reality. Few gave her a hope of beating Wilson or then Callaghan when she became leader.

Indeed a year or 2 into her leadership some Tory MPs even wanted to bring back Ted Heath

I can remember that there was a sense that Labour were doing OK under Callaghan who seemed experienced and reassuring. The Winter of Discontent did for that, and for him. Nothing inevitable at all about Mrs T winning in 79. The hubris of the unions is wot won it.

GreenHeron said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

darkage said:

Malmesbury said:

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.

Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.

The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.

Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.

Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.

We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.

Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.

Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.

But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.

We need to BUILD MORE HIGH QUALITY AND ATTRACTIVE HOUSES WHERE PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE. If we just focus on numbers, like we did in the 50s and 60s, we'll just end up with prefab slums, many of which are either barely inhabitable or have to be pulled down in a few decades, and all of which are eyesores. Big developers and government only care about short-term profits and numbers respectively.And if we build them places where nobody wants to live (e.g. much of the North), we'll just attract the dregs and they'll become sink estates.

Whitehall is so captured by the big developers and so contempuous of the people who pay its salaries that this staggeringly obvious solution isn't on the agenda, but it's difficult to see how to fix the housing crisis sustainably and long-term without a big expansion of self-build, from 10% now to the levels seen in France or Germany (60%) or Austria (80%).

35 years ago, just under 40% of all new houses were built by SME housebuilders. Now that figure is 10%. A major issue is that the red tape surrounding the whole process is so gargantuan and expensive that only the largest housebuilders can cope. Planning only forms one part of this, and focussing on this alone will not solve the overriding issue.

Large housebuilders will focus only on very large developments (where numbers of units are in their 100s), and, yes, sure, these sort of plots are becoming harder to find. But there are massive numbers of smaller plots (where, say, 20-50 houses could be built) that SMEs could buy, obtain planning and develop, were it made viable for them to do so.

The biggest thing a government can do is to make it an attractive option for people to set up small housebuilding companies, and make it easier for current SMEs to cope with the ever burgeoning regulations. Get that ratio between large/small housebuilders back up from 90/10 to 75/25 Sadly, I don't see either
main party remotely grasping this, and suspect it'll only get worse.

Peter_the_Punter said:

Burgessian said:

HYUFD said:

OldKingCole said:

HYUFD said:

Benpointer said:

HYUFD said:

GIN1138 said:

HYUFD said:

GIN1138 said:

Pulpstar said:

Seems a nigh on certainty Starmer will be the PM after the next GE.

So that'll be 14 years of power for the Tories, having followed 13 years for Labour and prior to that 18 years for the blue team.

So... judging by historic principles the next Tory PM will be back in around 2037 or 8.

I don't think that's necessarily the case.

The long run of Labour government from 1997 to 2010 was mostly down to the popularity of Tony Blair and for most of their run they had a good economy yielding plenty of revenue so they could spend on pubic services and people were quickly able to see the results.

Neither of these factors will be true in the 2024>2029 Parliament.

The Conservatives could get back within one term IMO, but a lot will depend on how they react to being in opposition. If they spin off to the hard right (as Labour ten to spring off to the hard left when they lose powert) they will consign themselves to a decade or more in Opposition.

Depends more on the economy. Thatcher was considered the hard right candidate when she won the leadership in 1975, yet 5 years later because of the poor economy she beat the more centrist Callaghan.

Even if the Tories had elected the centrist Clarke in 1997 Blair would still have been re elected comfortably in 2001 as he and Brown managed the economy relatively well in their first term.

Remember too even Foot and Ed Miliband had poll leads initially despite being the leftwing candidates for the Labour leadership due to the economic situation

I thought Maggie was pretty "centrist" in her early years (advocating EEC membership, etc?)

Thatcher was well right of where Heath had been, certainly on the economy and immigration and even right of where Whitelaw would have been.

She was considered unelectable in 1975

Bullshit. If she had been considered unelectable the Tory MPs would never have voted her leader.

The Old Guard and Wets didn't, they largely voted for Heath and Whitelaw.

It was the party right that got her elected. The media coverage against her initially saw her as unelectable and lightweight and extreme and Callaghan was expected to beat her comfortably

That’s not how I remember it. And I was there.

Thatcher was the most rightwing Tory leader since at least Bonar Law when she was elected, that is just the reality. Few gave her a hope of beating Wilson or then Callaghan when she became leader.

Indeed a year or 2 into her leadership some Tory MPs even wanted to bring back Ted Heath

I can remember that there was a sense that Labour were doing OK under Callaghan who seemed experienced and reassuring. The Winter of Discontent did for that, and for him. Nothing inevitable at all about Mrs T winning in 79. The hubris of the unions is wot won it.

In hindsight, it is easy to believe the Unions were doing it on purpose.

GreenHeron said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

darkage said:

Malmesbury said:

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.

Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.

The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.

Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.

Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.

We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.

Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.

Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.

But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.

We need to BUILD MORE HIGH QUALITY AND ATTRACTIVE HOUSES WHERE PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE. If we just focus on numbers, like we did in the 50s and 60s, we'll just end up with prefab slums, many of which are either barely inhabitable or have to be pulled down in a few decades, and all of which are eyesores. Big developers and government only care about short-term profits and numbers respectively.And if we build them places where nobody wants to live (e.g. much of the North), we'll just attract the dregs and they'll become sink estates.

Whitehall is so captured by the big developers and so contempuous of the people who pay its salaries that this staggeringly obvious solution isn't on the agenda, but it's difficult to see how to fix the housing crisis sustainably and long-term without a big expansion of self-build, from 10% now to the levels seen in France or Germany (60%) or Austria (80%).

35 years ago, just under 40% of all new houses were built by SME housebuilders. Now that figure is 10%. A major issue is that the red tape surrounding the whole process is so gargantuan and expensive that only the largest housebuilders can cope. Planning only forms one part of this, and focussing on this alone will not solve the overriding issue.

Large housebuilders will focus only on very large developments (where numbers of units are in their 100s), and, yes, sure, these sort of plots are becoming harder to find. But there are massive numbers of smaller plots (where, say, 20-50 houses could be built) that SMEs could buy, obtain planning and develop, were it made viable for them to do so.

The biggest thing a government can do is to make it an attractive option for people to set up small housebuilding companies, and make it easier for current SMEs to cope with the ever burgeoning regulations. Get that ratio between large/small housebuilders back up from 90/10 to 75/25 Sadly, I don't see either
main party remotely grasping this, and suspect it'll only get worse.

BartholomewRoberts said:

GreenHeron said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

darkage said:

Malmesbury said:

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.

Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.

The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.

Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.

Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.

We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.

Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.

Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.

But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.

We need to BUILD MORE HIGH QUALITY AND ATTRACTIVE HOUSES WHERE PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE. If we just focus on numbers, like we did in the 50s and 60s, we'll just end up with prefab slums, many of which are either barely inhabitable or have to be pulled down in a few decades, and all of which are eyesores. Big developers and government only care about short-term profits and numbers respectively.And if we build them places where nobody wants to live (e.g. much of the North), we'll just attract the dregs and they'll become sink estates.

Whitehall is so captured by the big developers and so contempuous of the people who pay its salaries that this staggeringly obvious solution isn't on the agenda, but it's difficult to see how to fix the housing crisis sustainably and long-term without a big expansion of self-build, from 10% now to the levels seen in France or Germany (60%) or Austria (80%).

35 years ago, just under 40% of all new houses were built by SME housebuilders. Now that figure is 10%. A major issue is that the red tape surrounding the whole process is so gargantuan and expensive that only the largest housebuilders can cope. Planning only forms one part of this, and focussing on this alone will not solve the overriding issue.

Large housebuilders will focus only on very large developments (where numbers of units are in their 100s), and, yes, sure, these sort of plots are becoming harder to find. But there are massive numbers of smaller plots (where, say, 20-50 houses could be built) that SMEs could buy, obtain planning and develop, were it made viable for them to do so.

The biggest thing a government can do is to make it an attractive option for people to set up small housebuilding companies, and make it easier for current SMEs to cope with the ever burgeoning regulations. Get that ratio between large/small housebuilders back up from 90/10 to 75/25 Sadly, I don't see either
main party remotely grasping this, and suspect it'll only get worse.

In other countries houses aren't built (or more importantly rebuilt) 20-50 at a time, or 100+ at a time, but more 1 at a time.

Which means houses are built for those who want them, to their specs and cost, where they want them, not for the demands of others.

eek said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Chameleon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Phil said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

eek said:

stodge said:

El_Capitano said:

It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.

And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?

I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.

It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.

The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?

Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...

One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.

Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years

That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.

It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.

The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.

A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.

The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.

HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.

We must do something
This is something
We must do it.

Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.

Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.

Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.

"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"

LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.

If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?

The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.

Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.

That's a different argument, and one I think is also wrong. But it has zero bearing on stupid phrases like "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", that you are so attached to. HSR is not yesterday's solution, and it is very much trying to help this century's problems in every country where it is built.

"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"

The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.

"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "

As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.

And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.

Yeah, you just keep believing that. You have consistently ignored the arguments against the economic benefits of HS rail because they don't fit your pre-conceived ideas so I certainly don't expect you to change now. Just like you never changed when you kept denying the massive projected cost increases even when it becaume obvious that they themselves were huge underestinates. I well remember you scorning the idea that costs for it could get anywhere near £85 billion. That seems positively cheap now compared to the final projected costs for the whole thing.

The only good thing out of all of this is that we have finally broken the narrative which was forcing us down the road of a ridiculously expensive waste of money. One thing (perhaps the only one) that I can praise Sunak for. It is just a shame he didn't do it sooner and cancel the whole thing.

I constantly ignore the arguments on the economic benefits of HS rail, as you put it, because many of them are rubbish, pulled out of various anti's odorous posteriors.

Again, if the economic benefits of HS rail are so poor, as you think, then why is every major country, bar the US, building them? What do you know that they do not?

As for HS2's cost over-runs, they are themselves overplayed; you may want to read the following thread:
https://twitter.com/kitchentowel/status/1712546872802599273

Also remember that the WCML Upgrade of the early 2000s was delivered years late after massive disruption, under-specification (*) and ten times over budget.

(*) No new signalling system and no 140MPH running

LOL. I never knew the OECD was oderous anti. Nor the EU. Both of whom have produced reports showing that HS rail systems in France such as the TGV Mediterranean had little to no impact on overalll GDP and certainly nothing recordable for the region itself.

And just to remind you that you were the one pouring your normal scorn on the £85 billion cost projection a couple of years ago - which is now considered to be an underextomate even by the most ardent advocates of the programme.

Why should we trust you on this when you have been so consistently wrong?

Um I love to know where you are getting your figures from because HS2 costs haven't actually increased. Most people who understand the finances of the project know that Rishi is playing incredibly fast and loose with the finances to justify cancelling HS2.

I really did think you were far more intelligent and far less likely to be taken in than your posts today on HS2 have shown....

Wulfrun_Phil said:

eek said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Chameleon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Phil said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

eek said:

stodge said:

El_Capitano said:

It must be really chastening for Rishi Sunak, who by any odds has had a remarkably successful and lucrative career, to realise he just isn’t any good at this. Oxford. Fulbright Scholar. Goldman Sachs. Chancellor. First Asian-extraction British PM.

And he just can’t do it. Whatever he tries doesn’t work. How do you get up every morning and start work knowing you’re not going to succeed?

I've been harsh on Sunak in the past and I once said he was a man who had never failed at anything or had known defeat. If you go into politics there's a fair chance that will change.

It could be a positive and character building experience for him and remember he's only 43 (Blair's age in 1997). In twenty years time opinions of him could be very different and he might be the respected elder statesman.

The truth is there may be nothing as ex as an ex-MP (as someone once said) but there's really nothing as ex as an ex-PM. Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Truss, Johnson - all still with us, all still able to contribute to the national debte but do they? If they do, does anyone listen or are their past sins thrown back at them and used as an excuse to ignore them?

Nope in 20 years time his screwing round with HS2 will be regarded as a sign of utter incompetency highlighting the reduction of the UK's status as it's seen as incompetent...

One of the very first things I was taught in my economics degree was that knowledge is everything so if a skill set is required retaining that knowledge is very important.

Which means that you should have a continual set of projects going (rail electrification. nuclear power station developments, roads....) so that you aren't starting afresh all the time needing to import foreign expertise because no-one in the UK has done this in x0 years

That works fine when the projects you want to build are both economially viable and necessary. There were lots of programmes that could apply to. HS2 was not one of them and indeed it sucked money away from other more important and useful projects.

It’s possible (reasonable even) to argue that HS2 itself was misconceived from the start. But the fact remains that rail transport in this country, both passenger & freight, would benefit greatly from a N<->S high speed passenger rail line. The other routes are full to capacity - the demand is clearly there.

The underlying problem seems to be that we are completely unable to build projects that are of clear economic benefit at all thanks to a Treasury that cannot see beyond the next budget & a planning system that drives up the cost beyond all reasonable measure. The only way to get HS2 through parliament at all was to turn it into some gold-plated national monument to Britain. It’s no way to run a railway, or an economy for that matter.

A high speed rail project like HS2 should cost something like a third the HS2 budget: the HS2 costs are a symptom of wider problems in the UK economy. Every major infrastructure project spends interminable years trapped in a planning system that not only imposes insane costs all by itself, it drives up the cost of the final project by $billions.

The problem being that we need East/West and intra-region capacity a lot more than we need North/South (which actually just means London to the rest of the country). We could find far more useful and viable projects for every penny of that which was going to be spent on HS2 - whether it was the original £37.5 billion or the pre-abandonment £180 billion.

HS2 was the infrastructure equivalent of that old problem that plagues politics.

We must do something
This is something
We must do it.

Shouldn't have been an either/or! If the UK properly cracked down on the benefit scrounging pensioners (if you want to be voluntarily unemployed fine, but the state shouldn't pay for it) and put the state pension back to 19/20 levels we'd be able to build a new Crossrail every year with the savings.

Just shows where the Tories have gone wrong this parliament - prioritised benefits for the bone idle boomers over capital spending.

Even if it wasn't an either/or it was/is still an unecessary white elephant finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems.

"finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems"

LOL. You keep on saying that, and it gives me a good laugh. Thanks.

If high-speed rail is "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", then why are most major economies in the world (aside from the USA) investing heavily in it? What do you know that they don't?

The pandemic hurt railway usage; but the rebound has been quite staggering. And working from home or telecommuting has not hurt it as much as I feared either. AIUI, long-distance travel is actually up since the end of the pandemic.

Because they are much larger countries where it makes a difference. I am all in favour of a huge expansion in railcapacity but it should not be the High Speed white elephant and it should not be all focused on London. Build more lines going where people want and need to go - more cross country and intra-region. Build more lines suitable for frieght and get stuff off the roads.

That's a different argument, and one I think is also wrong. But it has zero bearing on stupid phrases like "finding yesterday's solutions for the last century's problems", that you are so attached to. HSR is not yesterday's solution, and it is very much trying to help this century's problems in every country where it is built.

"Build more lines going where people want and need to go"

The capacity problem on the southern WCML show that's exactly where people want and need to go. Now, that does not mean I'm against other projects such as NPR or EWR - quite the opposite. We should build them all as part of an integrated network.

"Your desperate attachment to HS2 is illogical and damaging to the economy. "

As if my belief that HS2 is a good idea has any influence! But if you extend that honour to me, I shall do the same to you: your irrational dislike of the project is irrational and hurts the country.

And as for your utter devotion to Brexit over decades - that's hurt the country, financially, politically and economically, orders of magnitude more than any infrastructure project.

Yeah, you just keep believing that. You have consistently ignored the arguments against the economic benefits of HS rail because they don't fit your pre-conceived ideas so I certainly don't expect you to change now. Just like you never changed when you kept denying the massive projected cost increases even when it becaume obvious that they themselves were huge underestinates. I well remember you scorning the idea that costs for it could get anywhere near £85 billion. That seems positively cheap now compared to the final projected costs for the whole thing.

The only good thing out of all of this is that we have finally broken the narrative which was forcing us down the road of a ridiculously expensive waste of money. One thing (perhaps the only one) that I can praise Sunak for. It is just a shame he didn't do it sooner and cancel the whole thing.

I constantly ignore the arguments on the economic benefits of HS rail, as you put it, because many of them are rubbish, pulled out of various anti's odorous posteriors.

Again, if the economic benefits of HS rail are so poor, as you think, then why is every major country, bar the US, building them? What do you know that they do not?

As for HS2's cost over-runs, they are themselves overplayed; you may want to read the following thread:
https://twitter.com/kitchentowel/status/1712546872802599273

Also remember that the WCML Upgrade of the early 2000s was delivered years late after massive disruption, under-specification (*) and ten times over budget.

(*) No new signalling system and no 140MPH running

LOL. I never knew the OECD was oderous anti. Nor the EU. Both of whom have produced reports showing that HS rail systems in France such as the TGV Mediterranean had little to no impact on overalll GDP and certainly nothing recordable for the region itself.

And just to remind you that you were the one pouring your normal scorn on the £85 billion cost projection a couple of years ago - which is now considered to be an underextomate even by the most ardent advocates of the programme.

Why should we trust you on this when you have been so consistently wrong?

Um I love to know where you are getting your figures from because HS2 costs haven't actually increased. Most people who understand the finances of the project know that Rishi is playing incredibly fast and loose with the finances to justify cancelling HS2.

I really did think you were far more intelligent and far less likely to be taken in than your posts today on HS2 have shown....

So basically you're calling Richard thick and gullible.

As you no doubt think the Guardian's Transport Correspondent is.

From last month, before the cancellation:
"When it was first given the go-ahead by the government in 2012, the whole network was supposed to cost £32.7bn, including a north-eastern leg going to Leeds. Exact figures now are hard to pin down but the latest published Department for Transport update said the cost could reach £71bn, at 2019 prices – without any north-eastern leg. Given the official commitment to a spur to the east Midlands, and general inflation since 2019, a current estimated cost of about £100bn at 2023 prices seems reasonable. And that’s before you buy trains. Others believe it could be much higher."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/25/why-has-hs2-ended-up-being-so-expensive

turbotubbs said:

rottenborough said:

HS2 to Manchester was a manifesto commitment in 2019.

I had forgotten that.

Sunak breaks manifesto.

Pretty sure social care fix was also. Again cancelled by Sunak.

I’m loathe to defend him as he is shit, but circumstances at the time of writing that manifesto are very different now, the pandemic and war have seen to that.
And let’s be honest - do you actually believe manifesto promises?

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

darkage said:

Malmesbury said:

darkage said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

david_herdson said:

Nigelb said:

.

malcolmg said:

Nigelb said:

The madness of councils going bust from the expense of private rented housing, when they could have built their own.

Rising tide of homelessness could bankrupt seaside town
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67076914

What idiot thought selling of social housing for peanuts was a good idea?

The idea of selling council stock was a good one.

Central government nicking most of the proceeds, and legislating to prevent councils building more to replace it was utter idiocy - motivated purely by Thatcher's dislike of local government. But then left unchanged by her successors.

The problem is not so much the lack of social housing as the lack of housing overall. Had much more been built, to meet demand, prices would never have soared as they have in both rental and purchase sectors.

You do need lots of properly funded social housing. If the residential property space is nearly all private sector you're too much in the hands of developers, financiers and landlords whose priorities are not aligned to what should be our national objective: a decent affordable place to live for everybody, homes as homes not money making instruments.

If you have a shortage of housing, then you will have people living in tiny, shitty properties. Plenty of evidence historically.

If you don't want that, do what the Victorians and Edwardians did. Build whole towns and suburbs, with actual space for people to live.

The ownership is next to immaterial - look at how much council accommodation is flipped into the rental sector.

We do need to increase supply - very much so - but doing only that won't solve the housing crisis. It will help a lot but it won't anywhere near meet the aspiration of a decent affordable home for everyone. The split between private and public sector is also important (if we do have this aspiration). We need a good sized, well funded social housing sector to serve people who can't afford to buy or rent in the private sector. There'll always be plenty of these (unless we're planning a radical overhaul of our whole economic model).

If you have adequate supply, prices will fall. A long way. Check out other countries which dot have housing shortages.

Trying to “wall off” public sector housing as cheaper just creates a subletting market.

I'll pass over your 2nd para (nitpicking imo) in order to agree strongly with the 1st - yes yes yes we must build build build. Increase supply wrt demand and all other things being equal prices will fall. Which we definitely want. It's a crazy unhealthy unfair situation we've allowed to develop.

Although prices are falling now, as it happens, not because of lots of new product but because we're into a new era of 5% money - triple what everyone had got used to. So it looks like we're getting those lower prices anyway. Fwiw I'm expecting a one third fall in real terms over the next 2 to 3 years, half in nominal terms, inflation doing the work for the other half.

If prices fall by a third, then supply is unlikely to increase - unless you can find ways of building for cheaper.

Perfectly possible to get increasing supply in a market with falling prices.

Which is why Panasonic, Sony etc are making televisions on a vast scale.

The new build sale market relies on properties being sold at a premium and a profit margin for the developer of 20% being achieved on the project, and also for them to take risks in doing it, being able to borrow money cheaply etc. None of these conditions are in place at the moment.

Yes, it's a great central point that we need to build far more houses but people are being a little too simplistic and evangelical in making out that (i) it's easy to do that with the private sector business model we have and (ii) that even if we do manage it the housing crisis gets voila solved. The government has to roll its sleeves up and get in there, acting for the long term, changing the way we look at and fund residential property.

Countries without housing shortages manage to build lots of properties. Therefore we need to do what those Dastardly Furrrineeers do.

We need to remove the bottlenecks in the supply chain of housing. Currently we have permissions stacking up. The reason is largely oligopoly in the property construction market. It is noticeable that in areas where there isn't that oligopoly and substitution is possible - flats in various areas of London - the throttling of the build process is much less evident.

Most don't explicit government intervention in the housing market to play games with price - apart from the usual planning stuff and some social housing.

Again, I 100% agree Supply is key - but there other important factors. We've touched on a few: Rates. Social Housing. Developers Business Practices. Private Sector Landlords. Financialization vs Place To Live. It's not just Supply. We have a particular (and rather weird) approach to the whole topic in this country. It reminds me of our private schools fetish slightly. I think it comes from the same place. I don't suppose you know what I'm talking about. I wonder if I do? Yes, I think so but one can never be sure.

But ok, there's only one way to finish this, forget all of the above and let me say here and now with no clutter or caveat - we should BUILD MORE HOUSES. There.

It's a bit like tulips. Mad scarcity vs demand and they become a financial instrument. Sufficient supply and they go back to being nice flowers.