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.

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

I am not sure what part of the country you live in, but in London people are working and living and absolutely terrible conditions and paying a fortune for it. I too don't think people should be housed in expensive areas if they have no prospects of getting work there, and that is part of the problem. But there are huge numbers of people who work full time and can't get housing. The system is broken.

Lurking I had to google Sellafield and BNFL Yeah that's a bit middle of nowhere.

I think my rent is £150-ish per week and I have an "en suite".

You could've had a quick Google yourself woodhill

First thing that comes up

www.agencycentral.co.uk/articles/2015-11/skill-shortages-in-construction-industry.htm

Lots of people work to the bone. Save money to the bone. And still can not afford to get on the property ladder.

What about the royals and the landed gentry? They didn't work for the property they own, they were born into wealthy families.

Thanks

House prices need to collapse. Possibly the best and easiest thing to do is raise interest rates

Certainly better than what happened in 1348 ...

lurking The mortgage rates are tied to the treasury rates. The fluxes between each period are paid for by the government. If the government want to decrease house prices they should offer everyone who owns right now a fixed rate deal for the remainder of the mortgage term on their primary residence. Fix everyone and then hike the rates. The monthly payment for existing homeowners would not change.

Government would need to pay the difference in interest rate but I don't see that being a huge amount.

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

Why is it ridiculous? Do you know how much the "state pension" is?
Where is your private pension fund invested? Obviously not in properties, but many others are. It's up to me where I save money every month for my old age.

The crisis here is too many new builds going up and not enough infrastructure to cope with it.

SHELTer did a great campaign on this last month.
No one picked it up, no one gives a shit.
It's because us young folk can't give up the holidays and costas.

The answer for me isn't building shit loads of houses for landlords to buy and rent out. But for council houses to be built. Lots. Maisonettes suitable for small families or elderly. With a garden well as houses. Each small village or town builds 20-50.
Communities and families remain intact. Money stays within the local authority not the pockets of landlords. Planning not so hard to get as it isn't for 200/300 houses.
If fewer people were renting there would be fewer landlords snaffling all the houses to rent out. So people who should be able to buy would be able to.

Sounds terribly socialist to me ?

lurking The mortgage rates are tied to the treasury rates. The fluxes between each period are paid for by the government. If the government want to decrease house prices they should offer everyone who owns right now a fixed rate deal for the remainder of the mortgage term on their primary residence. Fix everyone and then hike the rates. The monthly payment for existing homeowners would not change

Sounds terribly socialist to me ?

The problem in the south appears to be the massive renting problem.

Cheap housing ( new builds in particular) is bought by cash buyers who rent it out at stupid prices and use to the money to but more for their portfolios.

Everyone should be allowed to rent out one property at whatever rent they want.
Two to five properties can be rented out at HA rents
More than five and you need to take people of the housing register.

There is an absolute ton of house building going on in green belt land around our town (we're talking a whole new town with 3 schools and at least 4 massive housing estates) - literally NO 3 beds only 4,5 and sometimes 6 beds and 4 beds going for £420k+ Just a smattering of social housing which look like barrack blocks and are grouped together in little ghettos all sharing a drive. Very little shared equity housing either. It's madness, we have been looking to maybe move and all the incentives have stopped too - no stamp duty paid, flooring or appliances included. My mind boggles at who will buy them all but all the ones so far have been reserved with people selling their houses to go into rented as requested by the developers while they wait for their houses to be finished! We live in the Midlands.

Who can realistically afford the sort of housing this government are offering?

Pffft

Landlords apparently.

I don't know if it was true but someone told me that affordable housing must be affordable for the AREA not by national standards - all these new houses are being built on expensive roads (on countryside near to big houses) hence the price tag.

I do agree there is a housing crisis in the UK at the moment, but I think a lot of the 'solutions' on here are very simplistic.
If BTLs were not allowed and people were not allowed to let out houses for profit, where would all the people currently housed in private lets live?
I often read on here about 'greedy landlords' but to be honest, there are probably as many - if not more - bad tenants than there are bad landlords. On MN, every tenant is 'good' and every landlord is 'bad'.
Build more new homes - with what and where? Every time new houses are suggested, the planning wrangles from NIMBYs are ridiculous. Unless the new homes directly affect people, they should be waved through by planning instead of spending years fighting over non-existent increases in traffic and crested newts. But where will the money come from for more social housing?
Finally, I agree that young people today have things a lot tougher than I did (50) and my parents (80) did. BUT I do think they expect a more extravagant lifestyle than I did as a newlywed, and certainly more than my parents had.
There was someone on The Money Programme the other day bemoaning the price of housing for his son and how his son could not afford to buy a house etc etc etc. I listened with interest, because this is something I have great sympathy with, as I have a 23-year-old son myself.
However, they blew my sympathy when the whole story was that they had decided to spend all of their deposit money on a holiday of a lifetime because they did nt have a honeymoon, and when they got back, moved into rented accommodation because 'newlyweds need their own space'. The result was they had no money for a deposit and no way of saving because all they money had gone on rent.
I spend many hours arguing with my dad that young people have things much tougher than he did, so I hope he wasn't listening to the same programme!

I agree it's a huge issue. We were lucky enough to buy a house nearly 3 years ago (with help from family for the deposit). We live up north so house prices aren't quite so crazy! However the house next door is a rental and is £125 more per month than our mortgage - and our house is bigger!

Also there are loads of new developments in our area, but as first time buyers none of the houses were affordable.

I don't know what the solution is though!

It's massive.

There is a lot of regional variation but equally, even in areas where there's plenty of housing to be had for under 100k, houses are still unaffordable multiples of local income. It's fine if you happen to be able to earn 30k+, but for the majority of people in these areas that's not the case.

jelly I think you will find it's not greenbelt land. It's shocking how when something is green it's assumed it's greenbelt. In my village a lot isn't greenbelt but it's used as agricultural. The bits that are greenbelt would be lots that are perfect for housing. It's idiotic.

What's happened also is greenbelt on a main road is converted to housing. However land away from the main road, like around the corner, is turned down repeatedly. Again it makes zero sense.

Shared ownership is not good IMO. Those contracts will turn sour in the next 20-30 years.

I think we shoukd go back to social houding being in blovks of flats or small terraces to free up land for houses gor purchase. I disagree with the "right to buy". It's a privilage you earn. Other countries rent much more than us as the norm. Around where we live there are wsy too many new builds going up on the beautiful countryside. We paid a premium to buy our cottage with countryside around us & it's rapidly being built on & our nice little village school is over run. When i open the local paper, there are tonnes of houses for sale so here we don't need more.

I do think some people eon't go without. My grandparents used to speak of buying a new piece of furniture or crockery each month as they were paid. Now it's necessary to have foreign holidays, phone contracts snd nice things so savings don't happen. We went without holidays, meals out etc & so bought our first house in our mid 20's & sold that to buy another in early 30's.

I know shared ownership is awful - but it's the only nod to semi private affordable housing. The land is mainly agricultural - sheep now diggers! There are too many houses in one area. What was suburban is going to become heavily built up. The 4 housing estates have no schools planned or infrastructure. I live in the area already and it proper pisses me off! Just waiting for the construction vehicle to turn up I. The sheep field behind my house .

Willowtree - I agree! I paid a premium to live where I do and it proper pisses me off how I will basically be in another town soon due to new builds!

The housing crisis is easily the shittiest peacetime thing to happen in this country in a very long time.

Given that it disproportionately [tho not exclusively of course] affects the young [late gen X through gen Y and below] I am disappointed in just how supine and accepting they've been about it.

The poll tax riots in 1989 make for an interesting comparison. The highest poll tax bill in the country was £400 p.a., call it £1k p.a. in today's money, so by definition that is the very most that any one person could possibly have been made worse off by the tax. In nearly all cases the impact was far less severe. I will give a very generous prize to anyone who can find a member of gen Y, certainly in & around London, who's been worse off by as little as £1k p.a. as a result of the HC. A solution to the HC is entirely within government's grasp [if it dares defy the babyboomer/nimby vote], resulting as it does from a combination of economic variables that begin & end with decades of zero social housebuilding. And yet people accept it. Why is that?? Because the babyboomer centric media successfully describe it as 'market forces'? Because it's been a relatively slow process, not like a tax that's not there one day & is the next? Because the poor deluded souls think that, like their parents before them, they'll 'get their turn'? Answers on a postcode.