Housing - the silent crisis?

[CrisisTime]

The shocking state of housing in this country for anyone who didn't get on the gravy train in earlier decades, that is.

The homelessness. The sheer costs of housing. The tiny rooms and tiny houses. Storage rooms converted to miniscule 'bedrooms'. The dirt and dilapidation of so many rentals. Increasingly greedy landlords and letting agents. A cool house-share like The Young Ones would never exist now. The gentle landlord I once had (a vicar's wife) and her relaxed tenants - is no more. Just the sheer lack of decent affordable housing for so many.

300,000 more people coming to UK every year as well, which makes bad matters even worse, if they could be worse that is.

Is any politician from any party ever going to do anything on this issue? All I ever heard is daft initiatives that are a drop in the ocean.

The real problem is the dominance of London and the South East which mean that people need to move there to find work and the demand for housing outstrips supply.

I think that in many cases it is perception though rather than reality that there are no jobs outside the SE. I've heard it from DH's SE-based mates.

companies leafleting HA tenants offering to buy the houses for them and rent them back to them!

Raggy is that for real??? wtf

peace the level of bribery is high and it's highly illegal to accept bribes. That's why they buy property abroad. It's not an investment as it's not rented out.

I've lived in The North all my life, in different town and cities, and I don't recognise this utopia of affordable housing people can see from the south. I appreciate that compared to London it's cheaper for many, but compared to average salaries and what people are able to save, it is unaffordable for so many and only getting worse.

I don't know if people are unaware but after exercising RTb you can't sell the property for a number of years. Convenants vary but generally between 3-10

I sat at a table in Vancouver and the family told me the money used to buy their home was from selling into Iraq. That is not clean money.

There's a housing crisis because:

1. Over 1.5 million council houses have been given away cheaply and not replaced.
2. No government since the 1970s has put any real effort into mass house building, leaving it to the magic of 'market forces'.
3. Given 2, no private house builder is going to build any more than it needs to in order to keep house prices rising and to ensure their land banks also rise in value.
4. Given 1,2 & 3, there was a rising demand for private rentals as many could not get a mortgage, this in turn created the BTL phenomenon where cash rich people realised they could get a better return on buying up and renting houses than traditional savings, along with housing inflation outstripping the RPI ensuring capital growth for the owners.
5. 'New Labour' (AKA Thatcherites) and the Tories were and are quite happy for this situation to remain as it continues the flow of wealth from the many to the few. Any one who suggests any real attempt to address this is howled by the right-wing press and media as some kind of evil Marxist interfering with the God of Market Forces.

And finally, good old fashioned envy, the old "we had to scrimp & safe to buy our first hovel, why should it be easier for anyone else?"

peace the level of bribery is high and it's highly illegal to accept bribes
Ah comprende....appreciate the elucidation 🖒

peace I find it offensive when the twaddle of 'it's an investment opportunity' is peddled out. It's not an investment opportunity. It's a way to clean money. It's so obvious what is going on for anyone who has done business in the region. It's highly irritating when we have rules which are enforced on our own population and then turn a blind eye to what is illegal calling it an 'investment opportunity'. If it was an investment opportunity they would rent the places out. They don't. Speaks volumes.

The point is not that the north is a eutopia 53rd but that the barriers to home ownership are low employment, insecure employment and poor pay rather than house prices. And that building more homes isn't some universal panacea.

@53rd way

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E352&sortType=1

This really is paradise if you are looking at paying £800,000+ for a similar Victorian workers home in London.

Increasing house prices are one of the biggest barriers to in most of the country, North or not. We're not as priced out as those south of Watford, but we're still increasingly priced out. This is a national problem.

If it was an investment opportunity they would rent the places out
Not condoning foreign property investment but not renting them out means that the asset can be liquidated more quickly if it becomes expedient to do so

This really is paradise if you are looking at paying £800,000+ for a similar Victorian workers home in London.

It would cost a bit in train tickets to commute though

Yes userbunchofnumbers, but Colne is not representative of most of the country, any more than say Salford or Aberdeen or Prestbury are. There are pockets of cheaper housing in parts of the country but they aren't big enough to make up for the increasingly unaffordable house prices in most towns and cities.

@mybeautifulsquid

Yep it's real www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2002/oct/02/housing.guardiansocietysupplement

@Increasingly: but if governments invested in creating the infrastructure to attract decent jobs to the North West you would not need to commute.

But that requires large scale investment by successive governments as entrepreneurs/ employers are not going to set up in areas where there is inadequate infrastructure and which are unattractive to skilled workers. Vicious circle.

It is not a one dimensional problem.

Can't get a 3 bed in Bristol in a shit area.that needs renovating throughout for cheaper than £200k. My house has made 65k in a year and a half. Not a great area. 3 bed.

Concrete built may I add. Ex council house sort of house. Still needs renovating.

And when the average wage is so low in Bristol we can't keep up with being apparentlysecond to London for housing prices.

I have never ever seen the scale of house building in my life as I am seeing right now. Every where every town every scrap of land round me is being developed! I am down south.

But how many houses do you need to build when you have no control over immigration.

I do fully agree however with the op that LL need more controls over renting out dreadful properties. The tennant is always in very vulnerable position, fearing complaing in case they loose roof over head.

The scale of house-building near where you live isn't representative of the country, GrindingForms. It's been falling for decades.

There's a lot of building around our way too. Small developments of four bedroom houses for upwards of £350k, way outside the range of most local people and the houses are often bought as 'weekend retreats' for Londoners who come 'up for the shooting'.

How does one define 'affordable'? Obviously £350k is 'affordable', since the houses sell really quickly...

user1491148352

You do know there are loads of good jobs in the North West/ West Midlands etc? It's just that they tend to be lower paid, so the house prices are less as there is a relationship between the 2. The jobs that are poorly paid are everywhere, including London. I don't live in the south east.