To be sick of hearing about 'the housing crisis'?

What I just can not understand about the so called housing crisis is why the village I have lived in all my life has doubled in the last 5 years (and so too have all the surrounding villages) and yet only 10% of these new builds are set aside for social housing. The rest are 4-5 bed houses all started around £400-500k, we've had 9 luxury homes build right opposite our house, all selling for £700k.

Is there only a housing 'crisis' amongst the rich, and have they all been sofa surfing up till now?

I agree with you op, they keep building yet none of the infrastructure or public services are matching the influx of new residents. In our area there are plans to build a garden city, with approx 9k new houses. Only a fraction of those houses will be cheap/affordable.

There will still be a continued housing crisis if our government keeps agreeing to this madness.

We currently live in a flat with 2 children (in the middle of selling and buying a house) and honestly the pressure I have had from family and friends over the past few years to move is astounding, no-one thinks it is acceptable to raise children in a flat. I have to disagree - we spend more time out in nature taking the kids for walks etc than most people I know, and most importantly they are happy. My main reason for moving is the children are older and different sexes so cant really share, and there are no 3 bed flats in my area. From an investment side, the flat was a poor choice though, it has not increased in value at all in the past 10 years. A cultural change in which people who lived in flats are not judged I think would make a big difference.

I know at least 6 couples in their 50/60s who live in 4 bed houses with no children at home anymore, they think about downsizing but still want the entertaining space so don't bother. There is probably a big gap in the market for 2 bed houses, with larger kitchens, dining etc.

Because people don't get paid enough. But we need more and more housing as our population grows by a million people every year due to migration and the globalists do it to keep wages down, which in turn means people can't afford the housing costs.

But yeah, like a lot of things the issue with housing/social housing goes back to the short-sightedness of Thatcherism.

Yes this is true, but will building all over green spaces solve this? The families in this situation still won't be able to afford the kind of houses the developers are building. To be brutally honest, many people can't afford anything. So what's to be done?

And will the projected numbers of immigrants entering the country be able to afford these houses too? I suspect not, in almost all cases.

I think this could happen anyway - the return to office just isn't happening as expected (and is largely driven by landlords and commercial property companies wanting to see a return on the investments they made pre-covid) and eventually commercial landlords are going to have to look at other uses for those buildings or they'll just sit empty.

Totally agree. No need to build on the green belt when the population is set to decline anyway and plenty of properties will become available as the baby boomer generation passes on.

If the housing crisis is really so bad, why isn't the Government taking more of an innovative approach? How many town centres/high streets have empty shops that could be converted to residential use? Or properties that have stood empty for years and haven't been brought back to market? Surely just through that, there would be an enormous surplus of homes available, and less need to concrete over more and more of the countryside?

This is sound common sense.

Not to mention the astonishing number of empty homes, most of them second or third homes. I know of a family with 5 empty houses, just getting more and more dilapidated. These people should be dealt with first.

What do you think happens to properties when landlords sell up? They don't evaporate into thin air. The more houses on the market, the lower the prices. The vast majority of families want stability which means home ownership, but are stuck in insecure renting situations because house prices are so high.

High Streets is a whole other thread but let's be realistic, it's no longer a viable business model when it's so very easy to find whatever you want and have free delivery tomorrow at a lower price without leaving the house. Rail against it, mourn the experience of shopping on the high street, but it's not coming back.

a couple of single room ex shops will not solve the massive housing problem.

The political class are utterly clueless.

You can't just keep on building a million houses every year so you can keep on importing millions.

New build flats are actually really good quality, especially the likes of retirement flats and Uni student flats. All compliant with modern rules and regulations.

My son spent his Uni years in three different modern purpose built student flats and we were really impressed at the quality, particularly safety and security standards, sound proofing, etc. Even though he had other students rooms immediately each side of him and above him, he said he never heard anything from them, even when they were playing loud music, partying, or doing other "noisy" activities - the sort of thing he could hear in the corridor, outside his room door, but not within the room itself. Not even hearing the shower or toilet in the bathrooms. The rooms in all three buildings had brick/block walls and concrete floors, which is no doubt why the sound proofing was so good.

Same with over 55 flats. We went to look at a couple of flats last week in a relatively new build complex, and really impressed with the build quality, safety aspects (fire and security systems etc). Didn't notice any noise from adjoining flats, but we only spent a few minutes in each. Same construction though - concrete floors and brick/block walls in the rooms so I imagine sound proofing would be good.

The houses in my hometown are totally unaffordable for first time buyers. The cheapest ones go for at least £250,000, which we cannot afford. There aren’t any cheap and cheerful, less than £100,000 fixer uppers any more, cos they all go straight to auction, and the buy to let crowd snap them up in two seconds, cos they have the cash funds to be able to do so. I wish they would ban the buy to let brigade from buying more than one or two properties. Some of these landlords have 10-15 houses. How is that fair?! It’s a disgrace. If I can’t afford a house in my 30’s, my daughter certainly won’t be able to afford a house, when she’s old enough. It’s incredibly depressing.

The thing is we now have an oversupply of commercial properties so it isn't really all the lucrative for many commercial landlords anymore. This is especially true for retail and office space. Why on earth aren't we condensing high streets and converting unwanted retail units into flats? The same goes for office space that isn't needed anymore. The government should be encouraging this as it regenerates urban areas and will make a big dent in the housing crisis.

Don't build on green spaces and let existing brown field sites rot.

And finding somewhere suitable & affordable to rent is almost impossible in some places.

There are over 30K children currently living in temporary accommodation right now. More land in the UK is currently used for golf courses than building new homes. That’s a housing crisis.

My son is on work experience this week with the local councils homeless team. He's lived in the same property (owned) with his dad & I for his entire 17 year's. He & most probably you will be in for a shock! There is very little affordable housing & it's an absolute nightmare for low income families. It's a long term issue that no government has tried to tackle.

Typically older people secure in their own homes dont believe that there is a housing crisis. Also some peopel deny their is a climate crisis because its cold today

We need more bungalows! Genuinely. They all get snapped up when they go on sale round here. But the downside is that they're not an economic use of the space.

Because it’s the only way you get security.
it’s so hard having kids in private rental. I had 6 weeks to move once, we’d been there 7-8 years and had no clue, imagine the upheaval and upset. The year before the landlord had put up the rent 40% in one month.

your tied to an area because of school and children’s friends yet at the mercy of landlords. Imagine every couple of years having to find a rental within a few streets just to be able to stay in the catchment for your kids to go to the same school or the same secondary as their friends.
your paying more than some are on mortgages yet have little to no say.
it Eats into every decision you make, buying a sofa, the kids trampoline. Might fit this house, might not the next.

pets, well you can’t really have them as the next landlord might not want them. so your kids will be heartbroken or have to move out of catchment.
simple things like being able to plant a fruit tree in the garden but never being their long enough to see it fruit. Never seeing planted bulbs flower.
or decorating your kids bedrooms, putting up a picture or worrying every time they do a craft activity it might lose your deposit.

that’s the life of a family in private rental.

Its amusing that in your OP you specifically talk about the many many houses being built, and it is heavily implied that they ARe in fact being filled (traffic increases, more people etc) which I think makes it obvious that in fact these new homes absolutely ARE needed.

Of course, infrastructure needs to be there to support the house building and I'd agree this is where we're not doing a good enough job. Where we are, there was a huge issues with schools for while - simply not enough placse for the number of children. But that appears to be under control now (for now anyway) with the opening of a new primary school 15 years ago, conversion of 3 schools to full primaries (vs infant or junior) and notably expanding the intake in the local secondary schools. But we're still struggling with doctors/hospitals, and support services like social service etc are bulging at the seams.

I also completely agree that we need to get a bit more creative about the types of homes and communities we build. Again, in our area, the two newest large developments have been done extremely well with a lovely mix of homes of different sizes and types - a few free standing houses, lots of semi-detached or modern terrace style and then also some apartments, all set in nice grounds. They aren't exactly affordable though in most instances. There's also a third one that was built a bit earlier and it's not quite as lovely in terms of the surroundings, but they did a good job on maximising the spaces. Older ones are definitely less nice and/or more crowded.

Well yeah but we haven't got a large enough working population to sustain our burgeoning pension-age population, so immigration is set to continue. The housing challenge is partly because we're all living longer, so the housing assets aren't coming back onto the market at the rate that they used to.

On holiday abroad, the hotel we were staying in had rented out apartments to the local population / weekenders and a local Estate Agent was advertising this in their window. Could this be the answer for areas particularly where hotels have closed down? The apartments abroad have all the amenities needed, bathroom, bedroom, living room, cooking area and balcony for 'outdoor living'.
I must admit that I found it a little odd to be holidaying in a hotel which did this - we had all the facilities of breakfast, pool bar, swimming, playground etc but probably because of the hotel demographics there was no entertainment or evening bar.

And then when it comes to downsizing in later life, there is a lack of suitable properties for people to move to, which is one reason why you get older people remaining in unsuitable houses they can't cope with. Plus they have been lived in the "we don't like flats and must have a garden" culture so are mentally unwilling to move into one.

Two main problems with town centres, both of which could be "cured" if the Government were serious.

Firstly, local councils are reluctant to grant residential planning permissions for ex-retail premises, including the "flats above shops" on older town centre properties (where they used to be flats, but which were repurposed to storage/staff rooms when the chain stores took over). Local councils often have "local plans" which prohibit conversion of retail into homes, and that extends to the "flats above" by virtue of them being associated with the shop for decades and not lived in since the 70s or 80s. Added to that is the problem of building regulations which also come into play upon "conversion" from retail to residential, whereas if they'd been residential continuously, the same building regs wouldn't apply as there'd be no "conversion".

Secondly, a huge amount of town centre retail premises are owned by pension funds as an investment. Pension funds are heavily restricted as to what the properties can be used for, so, say, a pension fund owning a huge multi-floor ex department store building on the High Street, may not actually be allowed under Pension laws to convert it to residential flats - they'd have to sell it and invest the proceeds somewhere else, and given the glut of empty retail, it's not easy to buy another retail property that will actually generate revenue.

As I say, government could change the laws/rules to cure these problems if they wanted to. But sadly Raynor is obsessed with building more, and not showing any interest at all in bringing existing sites back into residential use.