Why are we building so many homes?

[Skunkaniseed]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g518le0r5o

This article makes a number of good points. Why are we focused on building when there is a glut of empty homes that would meet the need?

Some people do like bleak concrete boxes, flat roofs, orange bricks, and windows like narrowed, angry eyes, of course, but not the majority. The majority of all Brits would choose a period home. This is a well known fact -- I'm sure we could chase up a load of surveys but let's not bother because we all know it's true!

What's more interesting is why they want old houses. I don't think it's because they are old; I think it's because they have charm. Charm, beauty, character -- these things are valued by most people and we see that in the market.

Brutalist estates were usually very well designed and insulated.

The new housing estates are generally shite.

A lot of empty homes are investment house to rich millionaires from aboard

I must disagree with this thing about insulation. Maybe very posh places had that but it wasn't usual. I grew up by the Otterburn estate and it was FREEZING in those flats. And the green rain marks. Dank and miserable place.

https://www.towerblock.eca.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/N12-12.jpg

I wish they'd clamp down on this

In my county we have more than enough homes to go round. Trouble is some people want more than 1 (or even 2) properties.
This organisation has good data

www.actiononemptyhomes.org/facts-and-figures

In a climate crisis we really ought not be pouring more concrete into the ground. I wish Labour (who I supported) would ensure proper audits were done before throwing around wild numbers of what ought to be built.

It literally wouldn’t.

There are approximately 25 million residential properties in the uk, covering approximately 2.5% of the land. At the current rate of house building it will take around 200 years to double the amount of residential properties - and that’s not even taking into account the number of properties that would become inhabitable during that period.

This proposal is clearly driven by Angela Rayner's chippy attitude towards those she sees as Nimbys. If she was proposing to make it law that the new houses were built with good insulation and infrastructure and a good percentage of decent social housing, people wouldn't mind so much. But she's already backed down and watered all her grand ideas down and is leaving it up to the developers, who as we know are sitting on - in West Sussex - 8000 pre approved planning applications and just hanging onto the land, trying to get more. Fuck that.

Angela can focus on "Nimbyism" all she wants...its not the problem

Trying to get more what? Developer buys land gets planning permission builds houses sells them makes profit buys more land and does it again.

developers DO land bank (usually in brighter economic times) but I don’t really get what you’ve seen them hang on for post planning in such high numbers?

Within 500yds of us there are 4 family homes just left empty. This is supposedly comfortable SE. It breaks my heart that there is so much excessive building of 4/5 bed so called 'executive' homes on good arable land (not to mention all the building on flood plain....the clue is in the name). We are also heavily affected by the outrageous white elephant called 'HS2'. We are also conservative constituency, so labour have imposed excessive house building quotas on remaining 'blue's constituencies as they have nothing to lose.

Why is it always the South East???

If organisations and firms were "incentivised" to relocate or open new branches in the rest of the country, we wouldn't have this concentration of jobs and resulting demand for homes in the South East. It's the obsession of concentration of jobs in the SE for the past few decades that is causing so many problems, i.e. unemployment and deprivation in the regions and the high demand for homes in the SE. There are vast swathes of land in the rest of the country, there are whole estates/streets of empty homes, there are huge areas of "brown field" old industrial sites ripe for redevelopment.

Much more brownfield development is needed. Apartments with outside space and storage where high-streets become abandoned.

For the same reason in my country nobody wants to buy old villages homes but new are built. The old ones are empty but not for sale

The Community I referred to means actually taking the needs of the people living in the houses. Not assuming that people will be happy just because they have a home.

Why build next to motorways. (Obviously if a motorway is built after the houses that's a different issue and can be objected to at planning etc).
Why build on flood plains.
Why build estates with narrow roads and insufficient parking.
Why build houses so badly you can hear your neighbours using the loo.
Why build houses so every inch of your garden is overlooked
Why build flats with no outside space and with 3 bedrooms so families with young kids have to live there. ( I had to review a development on top of a Tesco Express with flats built for families - noise until 12 at night, large delivery lorries, badly parked cars etc. Would be convenient for one bedroom, young people demographic. Hell if you had under 5's)
Why build houses with insufficient rooms so a family of four in a 2 bed are forced to share the one open plan living/dining/ kitchen but with dead space in the hall because it's future proofing for wheelchair access.
Why build homes with no services nearby and roads that are already solid with traffic.

Build well considered housing and people are happy, get on with their neighbours, can get to work and school and have a better quality of life.

Well I want to ask why they’re building mass produced ugly sights, the houses all look the same and are ugly

This has to be done within the context of the land that is available for sale. You can’t just build on any bit that looks well located, obviously. If the farmer next to the M1 is selling, that’s where the houses are going.

although lol as I do remember when Tesco decided to enter the housing market by shoving flats on top of their stores 😭 yes that is dumb, but that’s Tesco.

@MissAmbrosia brownfield site may not be Available for sale, but where it is, it’s often contaminated. This is where you might find a developer owning land on sitting on it- it might be a decade or two before it’s approved for building.

Yes, they make lots of money building low quality, cheap new builds for people who aren't very financially sensible! It's awful seeing all these miserable new build estates popping up everywhere and seeing countryside disappear (as well as them screaming "massive flood risk" as a previous poster mentioned!)

But also, the population has increased hugely due to breeding and immigration and people need to live somewhere.

They should absolutely be minimising the number of new homes and utilising as many empty and unused buildings as possible.

We have housing regulations so slums aren't built . @AquaPeer I take your point about available land but there's no real reason the government can't say, no building with half a mile or whatever, of a motorway.

They can buy land up for HS2 because it's infrastructure which us exactly what houses are. Poor housing is responsible for so much, from flooding to policing. They really need a proper approach rather than just treating it as " buildings".

I do agree and this is where our party political system fails- there is little long term (30-50 year) planning because governments change and we start again. Not to mention that there is no bipartisan agreement on what the housing strategy should be and what we want our future living spaces to look like. I would love it to be different, but it isn’t and this is how we’ve ended up with the housing shortage

The question that I have is why we're not building up, but only out?

Do people want to live in high rise flats? I wouldn't.

We are building up! 😃

I think building up is fine but only if there's a point ie a lovely view.

In the 90's. I looked after some of the Portsmouth housing stock. Most of it put up after the war with an expectation it would be replaced by now.
Some of the old tower blocks are amazing. Fabulous views of the Solent, large rooms etc. Some are an over designed nightmare - alternating kitchens over bathrooms. So every time someone had a leak it was impossible to say where it was from without checking on about 10 flats.
New high rises and some estates got built around the old dockyard and they have great views, traffic is all to the back and there's space and light.
Half if the city centre is now new student housing so en-suites sharing a kitchen. Better than 6 students trashing the Victorian housing stock.

Further out and high rises would be soulless dumps looking over 2 story dumps.

Agree lots of houses are empty over 6 months due to old people moving into care homes and/or dying.

For example my elderly mother left her house August 2023 (so empty from that point on). First in hospital, then a temporary nursing home for assessment, then permanent nursing home. All this time we couldn't do anything as we were waiting to see what happened with her and have a financial assessment carried out by council too. All this took best part of 5 months. Then just when house was on market and under offer (at end of this 5 month period) my mum died and house had to come off market till probate done. House finally sold in Sept 2024 by executors. So empty for 13 months and we couldn't do anything with it.