To think housing in this country is fundamentally broken?

Nobody has mentioned the huge growth in UK property prices - 74% over twenty years - and the gap between wages, meaning that unless you have a huge deposit or have two healthy incomes coming in, generally speaking you’re screwed when it comes to buying, especially a house. A single person on an average wage could afford to buy a two bedroom house two decades ago here in my northern city, but it’s very unlikely now those houses sell for £240k.

@Grilledcheddar
That list is of "affordable" homes which are NOT the same as Social Housing.

Anything that a council provides and rents out could be subject to "Right to Buy"
which has demolished the social housing stock since 1980

The vast, vast majority of "affordable" homes are nothing of the sort and end up in the hands of speculators.

We need to undo the damage caused by "right to buy"

I blame globalisation which is rendering a country's government more powerless by the day while a world wide game of Monopoly is being played with homes and businesses.

Britain is pretty much the only country in Europe that has an unregulated housing market. We need laws that:
Bring empty properties into social housing (including second homes if empty for more than 6 months a year).
Introduce rent controls (so if your little nest egg is no longer bringing in the bacon, sell)
Regulate AirBnBs
Convert or replace unused office space in to housing
Build new homes where there is demand.

It’s a multi faceted problem
my council bucks currently have a 7 week delay on validating any submitted planning application even for a simple extension

kids are discouraged from being a builder and sold the dream of uni etc

very few council houses being built

an ever expanding population

it’s a mess !

Are they built by the council though, or are they through the allocation of affordable homes built by developers? I don't think the council own them or manage them.

This is untrue. Some councils are building social housing. I am in Southwark and they built 3895 social housing units (at social rent) in the past ten years. Birmingham Council built 1825 units and Haringey Council built 1353 units in the same period. There were additional units built at affordable rent, which is also lower than private rent. Certain councils aren't building any social housing but that is not the case across the country.

www.gov.uk/csv-preview/6911dfcdcf24e9250d893e9a/AHS_199192_to_202425_open_data.csv

Councils don't build any houses. That's what I'm saying. Only developers build them and they have to include a certain amount of 'affordable' homes in those they build.

Many people think the Government build houses. They don't.

@xSideshowAuntSallyXx Working at what and spending what? Single people will always find it more difficult for obvious reasons. Before Thatched loads rented. It was normal and single people mined to cheap areas. That was common. Everyone cannot have everything. They never could.

I agree. If a 1 bed is out of reach for a mid life single, I suggest a studio apartment rather than HMO. That way they have privacy and safety.

I actually think when a middle aged, single, working, person (not on minimum wage) can't afford to rent or buy their own house and end up in a HMO we have a problem.

I'm lucky I managed to get a shared ownership (and a decent deposit) after selling my marital home. But my cousin at 50 is in a HMO because he can't afford the rent on a 1 bed flat on his own on an average salary.

Home ownership should not just be for the wealthy or the coupled up.

@WallaceinAnderland
There is LOADS of money to build social housing
IF
a) Right to buy is abolished so houses built for social rent stay that way

b) Councils are allowed to borrow to build such houses (rather than being forced to 'invest' in shopping centres.

If you look at the scale of Locall Government borrowing
there is the capacity to buy land and put social housing on it within months
but councils are not allowed to

I agree @Talkinpeace but there is no money to build social housing. All housing is currently built by developers. Even so called affordable housing which is of course, not actually affordable.

So they build and they build and they tell people that they are solving the housing shortage. They're not. They are building houses that will sit there empty because very few people can afford to buy them.

They are building no social housing and have no plans to build social housing because they have no money to do so.

Homes for sale are not the problem.

The issue is that there is a critical shortage of social housing for those who will never be in a position to buy.
THose people are being 'house' in private rentals and hotels and hostels
at insane cost to Councils
and pushing up the margin on private rentals.

Allowing councils to rapidly acquire and build homes for social rent
WITH NO RISK OF BEING FORCED TO SELL THEM
would immediately lower the floor on housing costs
and free up funds within councils to do better things

There are 28 unsold new houses just within a 5 mile radius of my house. And I live in a village. If I put it up to 10 miles, there are 78 unsold new houses. Within 15 miles (half an hours drive) there are 155 new homes for sale.

Some have been on the market since January 2023, nearly 3 years.

If there was a demand for property, there would be very few houses for sale.

We don't need to build more houses because people cannot afford to buy them.

making ever increasing property prices our economy & the only part of the economy that has grown was a huge mistake. It’s fucked our economy & really disadvantaged young people.

Yes it is & it’s one reason why our productivity is so low.

Just build more social housing. If every family had access to decent quality social housing it would transform the UK. In the early 80s a third of people lived in social housing, we need those types of numbers again

Nail on the head. There are huge numbers of empty retail/small commercial units on High Streets and built up residential areas. These will never be used for retail again now due to out of town retail parks and internet shopping. We need a nationwide initiative to get them converted into residential flats which would not only help the housing shortage, it would breath life back into town centres and stop them being crime ridden no go areas.

Property = profit, and even housing associations are developers now. Population is the issue, note I did not say immigration, and developers don't want to build where work is, they want clean, green fields and all because it is cheaper to 'throw up' bland, poorly built, low spec, expensive boxes, in areas where you have to have a car, but will struggle to park it, have to commute significant distances, have children bused to schools, issues with flooding and so you are trapped or in a cycle of driving everywhere. Water, sewage, power, now that's a real issue and water is expensive now, give it another decade and it will be unaffordable! We can't act as a sponge and our government thinks building is the answer, but skills training is practically non-existent and friends in the building trade will not touch new build sites, as they are anything but quality, with much of the labour unskilled. We already live in a 2 bed bungalow, have for 2 decades, but having worked in housing would I touch an Over 55s, a retirement flat, downsize to a cardboard new build, never, I know the last thing they are are good for is your mental health or wellbeing, they are only good for a developer's overseas bank account!! We are being played with, like pawns on a chess board!

This is the crux of the matter for me

every single empty/abandoned/second home and shops and offices should be utilised first and stop foreign investors from buying property to leave empty before building anymore boxes on ever shrinking land, stop turning villages into towns, many of us choose village living and pay higher because of this in fuel etc to commute and live day to day, if I wanted to live in a built up concrete jungle I would have

Yes they’ve stopped right to buy in Scotland but the HA aren’t maintaining their older proprieties at all they are so focussed on building new ones (which is great) but those of us in older properties are dealing with poor windows, kitchens and bathrooms that are falling to bits (doors come off in my hands), crumbling plaster work, fencing that has blown down but the won’t take responsibility for it, large areas of missing rough cast etc it’s such a fight to get them to repair anything and if they can fob it on to the tenant they will and I get there is an element of self care which can be done by us and we do what we can within our skills but much of my above list really isn’t our responsibility as tenants And all we are told is there is no money

they should be forced to maintain their older properties or sell them

@WallaceinAnderland They won’t be empty! Houses are built where house builders know they will sell. They won’t be forced to build homes for sale where not a single person wants them! Housing associations might build for rent but they are cash strapped. There’s not going to be build build build any time soon. There’s no increase in building homes at the moment.

Same here, we have 6 older houses for sale in our village, and 34 new houses just released for sale. So far 1 new house has sold. The rest just sitting empty with reduced price tags.

£775k for a 4 bed house with a single garage and 1 parking space, in a village with no nursery, no school, no employment, no pub, no gp surgery or dentist. An hourly bus from the main road a 20 min walk away. And the only road in is single track and is cloaed most winters due to flooding. Ridiculous.

Or worse stuck in the nightmare that is leasehold and which no government has the drive to eradicate or if they do it’ll be for new leaseholds and nothing to help those trapped in existing leaseholds . Look
at other than bluster and blunder lessons will be learnt after Grenfell and yet we still have thousands of blocks covered in unsafe cladding .