we all agree on the need for more houses but just not here !!

Our town with a population of just under 10k now has a new housing estate of 265 3/4/5 bedroomed houses being built. The estate will probably house an extra 800 plus new residents. There are no plans for school places, increased GP capacity, the new estate has one entrance /exit route on to a busy road so commuter rush hour is going to be fun.

If smaller estates were slotted into existing towns and villages, using brownfield sites and underutilised high streets, perhaps the impact could be mitigated.

The outskirts of Edinburgh have been swamped by huge estates of cheaply built boxes with narrow roads, no garden boundaries, no community, no amenities. The estates all have names like Bluebell Meadows, Woodland Way, Beechwood, Green Lea, but the natural features they're named after have all been subsumed by the behemoth estates.

First port of call should be to bring all empty housing stock up to standard and back into circulation and to stop overseas investors buying off plan and sitting on empty properties. Then thought should be given to building communities, not just houses.

And here we are; the first post to blame immigration
Didn't take long

You shouldn’t be so greedy in the first place HTH.

I also think colleges don’t support or advertise alternative routes anymore. They want more of their students to go to uni for their figures.

Agreed

@louddumpernoise

I have a Victorian flat that I rent out and it's a C rating . I was astonished tbh but the assessor said it helped that it's ground floor with a basement flat below and 1st floor above .

So where are you going to become an immigrant and change the makeup of the country, and not for the better?

There is enough housing in the UK if they took proper care of 2nd homes and crappy holiday let markets like AirBnb. We don't need any more being built but people in this country have a misguided idea that property is the best investment to have and they are entitled to keep it...

The town I live in has literally doubled in size in the last 10 years. The infrastructure of the town hasn't changed at all. The doctors, dentist, schools are absolutely fit to burst. The roads are gridlocked at school run/rush hour time.

It's great to build housing but these developers must be made to improve the infrastructure of the towns they are building in.

Its very difficult to get to an EPC of C in any older property, you re looking at heat pumps, underfloor insulation, solar ie 10k to 20k.

A friend of mine bought a house for a close relative to live in, as she'd been evicted, its a D atm but costs to bring it up to a C are huge, she will have to evict her and sell...

this will see private rents sky rocket.

Well done whoever dreamt up that rule in Westminster #outoftouch

If its not a requirement for a home owner, why should it be a much higher level for a rented property?

Not true . People could hold onto second properties due to high tax costs of selling .
The need is surely driven by the demographic shift to many more people living alone , marrying later , divorce , longer living , singletons . And immigration.

I don't want our countryside built on. We need to protect the environment for everyone. We need trees and grassland and wildlife habitats.

I am not against immigration in an anti-immigrant way (I think well-managed immigration is hugely positive for a country) but I don't see how the current level is sustainable. We don't have the infrastructure to support that level of influx.

My solutions would be:
-get rid of stamp duty (preferably altogether but at least if the home you are buying is cheaper than the one you are selling) to encourage downsizing
-very high property taxes on empty properties
-very high property taxes on second homes

If taxation acted as a deterrent against second home ownership, we wouldn’t be needing to build so many new homes on greenbelt.

There are currently homes being built on fertile agricultural land that we need to be growing food on, for the UK’s food security.

@Eeeeeeeeeekohno maybe true in the SE but not everywhere. This house is reasonably priced for it's size at £340k. Other very similar ones in the surrounding area also linger. I only know because I've been watching the market locally for a couple of years as we plan to move.

They were talking about this earlier and the reason given for not being able to convert town centre shops etc is EPC has to be a C level by 2030 and you can't do it in these properties . Developers will therefore look to green land as it's cheaper . Even brownfield could cost £££& in decontamination costs if petrol stations / car parks etc .

The only reason houses don't sell is because they're priced stupidly, a house will sell in weeks if the price is low enough (but that might be a lot lower than what someone thinks of as "market rate")

I don't understand the plan to build new estates and new towns. We have dying town centres right across Britain. Why build miles from them, when we all know they won't provide frequent and reliable improved public transport or create new health and education infrastructures. So everyone has to get in their cars if they have them, if they want or need to go anywhere, or be stranded in a poorly served newbuild wasteland. And we all know how those places deteriorate fast.

Way better to repurpose the heart of towns and cities. Empty office blocks can come down if necessary and new homes built near to the schools and hospitals and shops and offices where people actually work. Shorter commutes, walking distance to amenities, reinvigorates the town centres.

A town near us has done this recently and it is transformed. There are loads of new flats right by the main high street. What was boarded up wasteland for decades is now thriving. It makes sense.

No - i'm very pro EU and the UK s part in Europe inc trade, education and always have been.

The main reason we are bringing in soooo many people from SE Asia and Africa is down to Brexit - but unlike EU citizens, they'll never go back.

Immigration is the reason we are building houses, no other reason, our birth rates of white british is falling.

I'm not getting too excited about these changes / announcements. Yes we need more housing but it'll be crammed into the South East where no-one can afford them . We already have new build housing estates half occupied due to affordability .
There won't be the numbers of social housing as developers site building costs etc . There won't be infrastructure to go with them .
They won't achieve the numbers anyway , insufficient planners , insufficient tradesman to build . They'll be poor quality in the rush to throw them up .
The sentiment is very good , practically it won't happen .

@TheLimeHedgehog you won't need those bedrooms when you can't climb the stairs and are sleeping downstairs in a bed in the dining room.

Capital gains tax rate on residential property that is not your main home has been cut, made cheaper not more expensive.

It is also quite a low rate with the lower tax bracket paying 18% of gain minus all improvement costs and the higher tax bracket paying 24% of gain minus all improvement costs. (It was cut from 28% in 2019).

It’s a massive unearned amount of cash, how can you even think you should not be taxed on it?

We don't need more homes, there's plenty already sitting empty.

We need to ban second home ownership in areas of housing stress and a ban on foreign national non-residents stashing their (often dodgy) cash in family homes, artificially inflating local market.

Did you vote for Brexit? If so, then give yourself a big pat on the back for making it harder to bring in skilled labour for short periods of time, and for making it more expensive for our businesses to trade, create wealth, and employ more people in the UK.

I don't mean to distract from the point of this thread, which is about housing and not immigration, but you did bring it up.

Some of the problem is everyone wants to live in the same place, there's no shortage of family homes in many parts of the country.
I'd like to downsize but houses just don't sell here. Lovely 4 bed, 3 reception detached round the corner in the market nearly 2 years now. Not unusual here.