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.

Also there needs to be rules regarding rent increases like we have here in the Us. It's a fair system. It works because mortgages are fixed over the life of the loan. Not everything here in america is evil. Their rental rules are firm but very fair. Don't pay your rent and you are out. LLs who don't do repairs face having the property taken over by the town.

People I know who go are renting in America also seem to have a lot more influence over what they can do with the property - redecorate, built-in furniture, etc. I've rented places here where you weren't allowed to put up picture-hooks.

Another area which needs to be looked at are fixed rate mortgages. The central bank should be looking to support mortgages that are fixed over the entire term of the mortgage

Or, indeed, a different funding ecosystem from scratch.

I am not an expert, but Sharia mortgages split the risk/reward, since Islam, (like Christianity, does not allow usury).

It would be a shame if Muslims were to become demonised and vilified by the mainstream media, otherwise we would never realise there are other ways of living ...

inastasia there are still plenty of young people doing construction at college. Some of the people are working cash in hand and paying no tax driving wages down so maybe there are not the opportunities for our youth.

If you study construction at uni surely you still learn vital skills? I think my dh liked the look of the course when we went with ds.

I also like the American tenant protection rules, which give deserved protection to reasonable people but can have non payers, wreckers and dealers out within two weeks, together with their possessions. Get unlucky in england and wales and you can be providing free housing for nearly a year.

It also seems fair that landlords AND HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS who cannot or will not provide a decent home are not allowed to rent it. A tiny piece of this is coming next year but not enough.

Not allowing picture hooks would be an unreasonable contract term in england/wales and can be ignored.

woodhill I'm not sure if you're arguing that there isn't a skills shortage in the building trade. It's not a matter of opinion, there just is.

TBH I agree about houses devaluing, it's easier to move whereas now we are sitting on a paid off house but to stay here and move is too expensive.

Easier for my dcs to buy eventually as well.

I

Do you work in the industry inastasia. Have you a link?

Widening the theme a bit, but staying with housing ... the oft-stated (but never backed up) desire of successive governments to have a "flexible" workforce runs counter to the idea of mass home ownership. People who buy houses aren't particularly flexible ... certainly geographically.

I have 3 rental properties, they're all immaculately maintained and I charge the standard market rate. I don't accept DSS or pets. Why? Because they're my houses.

When I let to a tenant I go out of my way to make sure they're happy with the property, but if I charged 'cheap' rent I'd get the people who can't afford the going rate and are more likely to default.

If I accept DSS there's a hugely increased risk of rent arrears and my insurance triples. Housing crisis is because people expect councils etc to just magic up their dream house. The bedroom tax was also designed to shift people out of houses where a larger family could live.

I don't agree with the idea that everyone should just have a nice house, without working, earning and paying for it.

Lurking, we're heading towards Workhouses. I said it a few years ago and now I see that this is going to happen.

They won't be called workhouses of course. More like "Flexible Interim Housing" or the like.

Have to agree duck.

I don't agree with the idea that everyone should just have a nice house, without working, earning and paying for it.

Whose idea is that?

53rd, Oh they probably think that anyone who is disabled or young, or ill should just up their work ethic or something.

Probably, they assume anyone without decent housing is lacking in moral fibre.

Fair enough if they are disabled, that's different. Perhaps some tenants don't look after the place well or have defaulted on the rent hence Ducks post.

lurking You don't need to go that far. The banking system here in the US 'pays for' the fixed rate mortgages. I don't understand why the central bank can't do the same thing in the U.K. Personally I think it makes much more sense and I have always taken the option to fix my rate over the term of the mortgage. A fixed rate for 5, 7 or 10 years isn't attractive to me.

Also FHA conforming loans require as little as a 3% deposit. Yes you pay a huge insurance premium if you have a deposit below 20% but it enables people to buy their first home.

why not? What about people earning a big salaries and who can afford private school, or a better state school because they live in a better area?
What's the alternative? Not having any money at all when you retire? What about selling your services for a profit? Selling a product for a profit?

It's because housing is a basic human right. It is also rather ridiculous to talk about 'no money when you retire' I don't have a rental property but have something called a pension. But why do you care what I think anyway? My point was purely that there is no difference between 1 rental and 4,5, 100 it is the same principle.

This doesn't mean that key personnel (army, nurses, teachers etc...) shouldn't have access to low-cost housing to compensate for their low salaries, especially in very expensive areas.

You seem to have a very strange idea about what constitutes a low salary. What about care workers, nursery nurses and cleaners?

I don't agree with the idea that everyone should just have a nice house, without working, earning and paying for it.

But the point is that people are working and still can't afford it. Hence we have an issue.

Lurking You don't need to go that far. The banking system here in the US

The US banking infrastructure is vastly different to the UKs in too many ways to count, for a start. Which does not invalidate your point. But to achieve it would require a completely different mindset in the UK. Something which recent events are demonstrating isn't really in the UKs national character.

By the same token, why is insurance (for example) fixated with an annual cycle ? Why can't you have 2, 3, 5 year or longer policies ? Mysteriously you can have 25-year life assurance polices ......

5-year plans have a terribly old-school ring to them, but we've never tried them ....

I live in a building built for key workers and it's fairly cheap but they seem to have trouble filling it because they let non key workers live there (I assume they don't let high salary people in).

It's close to a hospital, police station and fire station as well as schools and nurseries in zone 2 South London. It's mostly bedsits/studios but there are some family flats there too.

I wonder why there aren't more key workers wanting to live there.

Expecting2017 here you go 40x 3-bed properties in Bristol under £200k.

Also contributing to the housing crisis is the huge rise in student numbers. We live in a student town and as fast as "family homes" come onto the market they are snapped up by student landlords. There is nothing available to rent for the same reason. It's the same where my DM lives and the same in the place where I grew up.

Plus when so many couples split then need 2 homes for effectively one family.

I live in a building built for key workers and it's fairly cheap

I had an interview at Sellafield in the 1980s. BNFL ran at least one hostel because of a shortage of housing. It was the first time I experienced an en suite bathroom !

If I recall, rent was c. £25/week, all in. The downside was you were about 10 miles from anywhere (as I found out when I stayed the night. There's only so much pool you can play).

fuck the glaring irony in your statement must be apparent to you. Or is it not?

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.

Nope. Vested interests. People paying rent aren't voting these clowns out. Owner's "want" this party to continue.

House prices need to collapse. Possibly the best and easiest thing to do is raise interest rates. Currently, it's better to buy and then put your money in a bank on account of the interest rates (which has been going on for 10 years now) and we are here because no one has any place to put their money.

Vancouver (Canada's high priced city) just put a foreign buyers tax on homes, and it apparently had some affect. I don't think buy to let is a problem (not everyone wants to buy), but that might help solve the empty dwelling problem.

I imagine that and some more home building will make prices fall fast.

YANBU