A lighthearted one about escape to the country

[Souredstones]

Aibu to be ragey at the middle aged couples with no children buying up family homes in rural locations?

For some unknown reason this makes me really cross with this programme!

To be honest, almost everything about that programme gives me the rage. DH was addicted to it at one stage but he gave up watching because he couldn't stand me fulminating away in the background.

YABU.

End of.

I speak as a person who can't afford to live in my home village due to houseprices and second homes which sit empty for about 80% of the year.

So long as people as inhabiting these houses I have no issue. I also have no issue with people owning second homes so long as they do their upmost to ensure that they are inhabited in some way for the majority of the time. Empty homes kill communities.

Well surely they are vacating a family home too?

Sorry, you're being lighthearted.... in which case, YANBU. Middle aged people should be banned.

I do think it's sad when the beautiful garden won't have children running around enjoying it.
PLUS I am also v angry that Alistair Appleton isn't presenting as much anymore. I luffs him.

Loads of them are making sure they've got room for family to come and stay though, aren't they? So they will have guests and grandchildren to fill the gardens and spare bedrooms.

Of course, it would be nice if we could all afford the houses with 5 bedrooms and large gardens when our dc were small, but for most of us we don't have that sort of money until the dc leave home

Yeah, I get where you're coming from - the one on earlier said "4 bedrooms minimum!" and I'm thinking there's only you two. Bring on the national house-building programme on green sites I say (albeit with some regret). Politicians allowed mass immigration but didn't bother to build any more homes. I think we have an awful housing division now. Maybe its always been that way, but worse again in recent years.

It always seems odd that they want such a big house and so much land at their time of life- it is such hard work. I wish they would go back 5-10 yrs later and see how it worked. Last week it was an overweight single women who ended up miles from anywhere with an old rectory and 1.25 acres - how did she cope after a lifetime in London?

Would it have been ok if she wasnt overweight exotic?

The locals moan about villages dying because 'outsiders' come in and buy up all the houses and leave them empty 50 weeks a year, but it's the 'locals' who get blinded by the $$$ on offer and sell to the outsiders to make a packet.

Oh yes and the same locals campaign against any attempt to build more houses in rural locations and wonder why all the young locals move away and they're left with a village of empty houses owned by city bankers.

No- but she was never going to cope with the garden- she might had she been fitter.

If they went back 5yrs later perhaps it might have made her fitter- you never get to find out.

Maybe she just paid a gardener.

The boomers and the early gen X'rs expecting to sell piles of bricks to each other for ever increasing amounts of fake money are what this great country is now built on. Not to mention providing the bread and butter output for that bastion of borrow to let landlords, the BBC. YAB utterly Unreasonable.

"family home"? What does that even mean? And since when do you need children to be a family?

what makes me mad is the amount of people who go for the mystery house!

like they have no clue whatthey actually wanted...

I know what I want but everytime someone picks tge damn mystery house I second guess myself and think 'do I really want this? is there not a cobverted church down tge road I wasnt expecting?' and it makes my search 3x as long lol

"family home"? What does that even mean?

Well, typically the accepted meaning is a home large enough to accommodate the nuclear 2 adults + 2.4 children model. Of course, most of those homes are now in the hands of single 60 year old men living on their own, or paying their pension through the indentured servitude of their own children. So you're right, we may have to have a rethink.

I now define a family home as a bedsit, as that's all that a sensible family can afford without being at the long term mercy of the bond market.

a garden is perfectly valid whether or not there are kids in it.

thinking that building crappy tiny homes over every inch of green space is the answer makes me really mad. Less green space, more traffic.

There are lots of empty houses in existence already, often with big rooms and a decent sized garden, and in good areas where you don't have to drive everywhere. The problem is that many need renovating, some are in areas where there isn't enough work and there are other issues. I think we should bend our efforts to resolving these problems rather than just building more.

Absoultely specialsubject. We have a misallocation of resources problem, not a lack of homes problem in this country.

I can never understand why they are all obsessed with keeping livestock when they plainly haven't a clue what it entails or how tied they will be. Pigs are not like gerbils people!
Also they are mostly all horribly smug and use the annoying phrase "ticks all our boxes". grr

thinking that building crappy tiny homes over every inch of green space is the answer makes me really mad.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that, given that less than 3% of the UK is actually built on, it wouldn't take building on the other 97% to provide enough houses to resolve the housing crisis.

I do agree about the building of crappy tiny homes though, new build houses, in England at least, are utter crap, ugly lego houses with no storage space and as many rammed onto a small plot as physically possible. Minimum building standards need bringing in.

I only have to walk outside my house to see 4 old men living on their own each in 4 bed detached houses. I don't begrudge them it - they've paid for it and are of course fully within their rights to live there, but I wish they'd get a clue as to how ridiculous it looks when there are 30/40 year old's shoehorning 3 kids into 1 room.

Minimum building standards need bringing in

There actually are minimum standards. The only trouble is that they so low.

If we had building standards similar to northern Europe, eg Germany/Sweden/Finland etc then we would be building much better new houses in this country.

This programme single-handedly made me hate the name James.

There was one episode where Catherine Gee was looking for a home for a couple with a son called James, and kept saying 'oh this room would be perfect for James' in such a whiny voice that I now cringe whenever I hear the name.

and kept saying 'oh this room would be perfect for James' in such a whiny voice that I now cringe whenever I hear the name.

Lol - completely understandable!