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

Totally agree. We have 3 rental properties but don't charge stupid rents - everything you see in the estate agent windows these days are for rent at £1000pm or more!! There should be a cap - greedy landlords would sell and make houses available and the rest would charge reasonable rents. It shouldn't be cheaper to buy than to rent!

And yes to the town centres and abandoned business premises etc. The problem is that you can get the VAT back on a new build, whereas you don't if you convert an existing building. No builder can make much money on a conversion. How the various recent governments haven't noticed this is beyond me.....

Corporate investors are buying up family homes in the USA as well as here. The rental sector benefits being recognised. I've just watched a podcast which was an eye opener. Pension funds have bought a lot as well. I started googling. It's alarming.

YABU
My town centre is dead. But I would rather the rent/business rates were lowered to attract small businesses back into the town, so people visit. Turning empty units into dwellings just means less people coming into town centres and visiting what few shops are actually left.

If you are sick of hearing about the housing crisis, then I guess you are happy in your own secure accommodation? I remember trying to find somewhere to rent.... I liked the first place I viewed, and the other people that wanted to see the place were told it was now let. That was over 15 years ago.
Nowadays, trying to rent a place is like trying to get a job. My DP was served a Sec21, and it still took him a few months after to get a place. He viewed and expressed interest in so many places. Each time, there were about 30 other people also wanting to view. And his rent is almost half of his take home pay.

Is it affordable housing being built near you?

@ Kindofembarrasing

Your comment is truly shocking! How do you define English exactly? Most children in schools are born in England and are English.

Do you know how many generations it actually takes to not be considered BAME?

Three of my daughters grandparents are White British, my husband and I are English, our daughters are English yet my daughters count as BAME (One grandmother born in the Caribbean) so I struggle to understand your comment!

Being English doesn’t depend on your religion, or your skin colour. It’s your nationality, and throughout history England has been a place that people have emigrated to and from. If you do an ancestry DNA test you will find that your ancestors moved around and that not all of your genetics are from the area you live in now!

In the last 100 years immigration allowed the creation of the NHS by providing staff, built our motorways, rebuilt this country after WW2, Bought with them food, celebrations and for many of us families to join!

I therefore find your comments at best ill informed. and at worst racist!

I take exception to the idea that unless you are white and go to an Anglican Church you are not English!

The comments made remind me of the abuse friends at school received for being Catholic and Irish from kids at a nearby state school. They were of course English as their parents were born here as were they! I hoped such horrible behaviour was a thing of the past left behind in the 80s but it seems that some people just want to pass on the pain to another generation!

Finally immigrants saved me and my daughters life when I needed an emergency C section on a bank holiday, Both the lead surgeon and anaesthetist chose to come to the UK and work for the NHS and save lives….

Nobody in my building has been able to sell in the past two years because everyone is put off by the service charge and random leaks that no one will take responsibility for. I tried to sell mine but the only feedback I got was 'lovely flat but... the service charge'. So I've ended up effectively trapped and have no choice but to pay whatever bill is thrown at me. Some people have had to take second jobs. I don't even have it that bad compared to some leaseholders I've met, such as those whose flats are unmortgageable (like the cladding scandal blocks), and people who've received £15-20k bills for things like a new roof on a modern building because it wasn't done properly in the first place.

I will never buy another flat. Which will mean relocating hundreds of miles away because I can't afford a house in this region, but I'd rather that than find myself in this situation again.

It's such a shame because it can work really well, and does seem to in some parts of Europe.

Too many people innit

Many of us who bought several decades ago had 2 salaries! Very few of our friends bought with 1 salary. Now loads expect to and wonder why there’s a problem. It’s not easy with 2 but there’s more chance.

Mortgages are often less than rent for the same property, the issue is saving the deposits, stamp duty etc

Exactly this. We spent a lot to move from a built up area into a medium sized village, to get better quality of air, more space.
Developers have built on the 2 car parks in the village, and there is more traffic and less places to park, leading to crazy dangerous parking around the village school, and at least 3 children have been hit by cars due to this. Luckily none seriously, but it's only a matter of time before there is a serious accident.

I'm not sick of hearing about the housing crisis.

However, like the OP I would like a range of solutions. If you ended most short term holiday lets and even half of all second homes, you could create a lot of new year round homes by proxy. Some empty shops could be converted.

I would also have the house sale and purchase process in England and Wales the same as in Scotland, instead of the spivs and chancers charter we have now.

This is a great idea. It's so hard to recruit good carers, and it doesn't pay much, so could incentivise by offering reduced cost accomodation to carers and their families to live in same development as elderly people needing support. No commuting costs or time, lower priced housing for those often on minimum wage

Because they put a lot of time, effort, and money into moving into the countryside and want it to stay that way.

It’s more the loan to wage value. So an average wage can’t buy an average home in many areas.

the house prices shot up when mortgages were available without considering income multiples. This then became the glass floor for prices on which the house prices are built now. They should have allowed a correction in 2008/2009 instead of bolstering the market. It would have been awful for some, now, it would be catastrophic for many.

There is a housing crisis in that people cannot afford to buy them! The amount needed for a deposit and monthly mortgage is crippling.

Posts like the OP's make me want to stick a prefab on every spot of greenery in the country.

If they really think the country is so overbuilt why don't they knock down their own house?

Yes sorry was multi tasking.

badly.

luckily you knew what I meant!!
it should be criminal to increase it that much. The uncertainty puts people off.

This is being done on mass in both the town I live in and the town I work in (50 miles apart).

Town centre apartments are going up under permitted development rules.

As PP has said, this does nothing for the strain on health services and schools etc.

In addition, the rents tend to be sky high due to the central location.

My own view is that it is as others have said very much an affordability crisis- hence why not enough rented of decent standard at genuinely affordable rates on average incomes - more people on the waiting lists because they can't afford to buy in anywhere but the cheapest areas and private jets proving very insecure/elusive to get in recent years

My suggestions as follows

1 bring back self declaration mortgages at 85% with the proviso of a clean credit record - a huge swathe private renting are self employed- due to how you account if self employed it ends up with you either over declaring in order to get mortgages by not using all your allowances - it's actually really difficult to get mortgages if self employed - even though the reality is an employee could lose their job tomorrow with a business going bust whereas if self employed you at j oh east know the state of your business-this would free up many decently earning self employed to buy.

Offer huge tax breaks to the big insurance/pension companies to build for long term rent - houses as well as flats, all at social housing levels plus 25% on top ringfenced for any works and services - rather than service charges - build proper communities/developments - and landscape them!!

100% cancel right to buy

Being back DIYSO -(shared ownership on the open market) up to a certain average value level for that area.

@ThinWomansBrain similar scenario to those of non British voting for Brexit or moaning about 'other immigrants' - not them of course

McCarthy stone. Here's a typical service charge breakdown

Friends granny is paying that now McCarthy stone. For what she asks. They've built three in the area now.

Do you mean service charges? Mine is over £4k a year now, it was £800 a year when I moved in only seven years ago. People are quite rightly put off.

Our charity head office in London was mothballed COVID . Trustees decided it wasn't needed. Is now converted to flats.

As with many of our social problems, it’s down to a minority of obscenely wealthy people who are terrified of losing any part of their obscene wealth and care more about protecting it than about the welfare of an entire country.

@FeetLikeFlippers so what should happen to their land? Should it be compulsorily purchased? And if so, how much land should be confiscated from them?
Should land only be compulsorily purchased from ‘obscenely wealthy people’, and if so, how rich do they have to be before their landed is removed from their ownership by government?