To not understand why we need so many new homes

[Pebbledash7]

Just as in the title really. I keep hearing about us building all these new houses but where are all the people currently living? There are tonnes of houses for sale in the property pages of our local paper.

I really dont understand why we can't make better use of what we have?

It is interesting though why house prices have gone to being 9 or 16 times the salary instead if 3.

Back in the 90s, for a couple a mortgage was a standard 3x the higher salary plus 1x of the second salary, or 2.75 x both salaries added together. This has totally gone out if the window in 20 years - why???

Growing up, I lived in an average area with lots of 3 bed semis and a few older Victorian properties although the 30s semis made up 90% of the housing. Schoolgtirnds gsd parents with jobs like lorry drivers, cleaners and factory workers. They all owned their own home and the 3 bed semis were considered modest, the Victorian properties more posh.

Nowadays the same 3bed semis are around 275k - 350k (depending on whether they have been extended to 4 beds or not). The average factory worker wages couple could not afford one of these but it was bog standard that they did in the 70s, 89s and 90s.

What the hells happened since that these 3 bed semis, which were built for ordinary average workers, mostly lower wage, are now only afforded by higher earners?

I do think the population explosion has to have played a significant part. But people are so busy getting through day to day this has happened right under our noses.

*schoolfriends had

I think a pony is reasonable as most on this thread goat a goat before they stopped providing them

Op you sound awful and entitled. Please do try to get over yourself, HTH.

My dad had an income of 150k when my parents had 5 children. Then when my father became abusive and my mum left she suddenly had 5 children to house (4 are still currently children) on a minimum wage job. Where do you suggest she lives? And why can't she live out in the country as you do?

Since our children were born, now 14 and 12. We have been saving for them. Once they get their first jobs, they can still stay with us until 25yrs old, but will have to pay rent.
This rent will go into their savings. Then, they will hopefully have a deposit to use for their first flat/house.

Good on your mom Joff for getting away

To answer the question - we need lots of new homes because the pace of building has lagged household creation for decades. At a national level we're short of something in the region of a couple of million homes: we need to build something like a quarter of a million a year just to stay still but for twenty years have been building only 100-150k. Prices have shot up simply because of an imbalance between supply and demand.

Demand - "household creation" to give it its industry name - comes partly from population growth but also partly from the way we as a nation consume property. Second home owners drive a lot of it in some regions. Nationally, when couples with children divorce that's another family home needed. Rapid expansion of university attendance since the Blair government has created demand for HMOs in university towns and cities. And another change compared with a generation ago is single-person household creation - usually younger people who move to start their careers who in previous decades might have stayed with parents or married younger.

As PPs have said, the people are all out there. They're not living on the streets, by and large, but we're talking about all those 30-somethings I know still in their childhood bedrooms, or in house/flatshares when they'd rather have a place of their own but just can't.

To OP, what were you smoking last night and where can I get some? I'm not sure whether you're just an odious NIMBY or whether you're genuinely detached from reality. Either way, one of the reasons we're screwed on housebuilding is because people like you have the vote.

Other people's - don't you think it odd that we need a million homes every 10 years just to stay still, and that's without tackling the current deficit? Hiw many millions more homes can be built and where before we run out of space? Unless we build entirely new cities (where??) then these homes won't be anywhere near work centres, they would just create local amenity jobs to service the local area but that doesn't create the main body of business and therefore income to support all the new houses and workers on a wider scale.

They're kicking out the horses for a "prestigious" housing development in the field behind my 2 up 2 down.

Bastards.

You do realise house building rates are at the lowest since the 1920s??

We live in a rural area and are looking at affordable housing. I'm highly educated but was a mess for a long time due to mental health issues. Am on low income due to industry I work in (that hugely benefits society) and working part time (due to dc). Partner is very creative but also low income. Am so sorry our 'type' will lower the tone of your neighbourhood and ruin 'your' village school.

My goodness. Really, you have to laugh or else you'll cry.

Your hard work means nothing OP. Luck, or rather, a lack of misfortune has got you where you are. God forbid the rug is ever pulled from under you, although I bet if it did, things would be different for you, right?

Do you honestly think you'd have been as fortunate if your parents hadn't been able to look after you properly? If you hadn't been able to afford university? If one or more of your children were born with a disability? If you or your husband had suffered an injury or mental illness?

I can't imagine your grandchildren will want to frolic in your vegetable patch if you continue to hold such repugnant views.

StarHeartDiamond I don't find it odd at all. It is the utterly predictable function of current demographic and social trends.

The UK's census population of 65 million is squeezed onto about 7% of the land. This masks huge regional variations but even in England, the total urbanised area is less than 11%. There's plenty of room, although some people might find their views spoiled.

Are you kidding? Homeless hostels are jam packed, people are being put in temp accommodation in sodding B&Bs!

The problem is that in current Housing Association Houses, even once tenant's children have grown up and moved out, they are entitled to keep that house for life! It doesn't take an oxbridge trained expert to work out that we are going to run out of houses if they keep allowing people to live in the ones we already have for 10/20/30/40/50 years+

Hundreds being built in Perth

Could you let me know what planet you live on, OP, because it sounds very nice?

In the real world, there are people like me who have degrees, earn of good salary and still cannot afford to buy a flat! There are people who lives with their parents until their late twenties because they cannot offer rent. And there are people who pay £1,000 a month for the luxury of living in 20 square meters.

I am currently living in a 6ft x 10ft £700pcm shoe box with a 2yr old toddler and I myself are disabled. My local council have said there is "No point" in me joining the Housing List as it is likely to be AT LEAST 10-15yrs before we are allocated anywhere as we "Already have a roof over (our) heads!"

And OP - Whilst you're sat there raising your eyebrows at me being a single parent in inadequate housing, can I just say (whilst you put away your copy of the Daily Mail) I had my daughter when I was in a relationship with her father and we had a lovely 3 bed house. Unfortunately he had a breakdown and ran off with some unscrupulous ugly thing and left me in this situation with NO choice (as I CANNOT work. At all. And before you say "Oh I'm sure you could" there are a LOT of aspects to it, not just my MS, that make it an absolute impossibility) but to take the only accommodation that would accept me. Otherwise we would currently be living in a Homeless Hostel in a tower block in a less than pleasant area of Leeds. At least in this shoebox we are round the corner from family.
And fwiw, I am a qualified Aircraft Dispatcher with an Aviation Operations Degree.

Just goes to show that you can go from having a home, a partner, a child and a career where you work "flipping hard" as you put it, to being homeless, a single parent & unable to walk............

So PLEASE get off your sodding judgemental high horse love!!!!!!!!!!

Oh dear OP, I do hope you never become disabled, divorced & need to live on benefits as I did. As previously mentioned, life has no guarantees, anything could happen at any time to anyone, so don't take life for granted.
And get off your cross, we need the wood ( for new houses lol)

House prices went up as soon as the wife's earnings were considered in getting a mortgage. Years ago it was assumed that women would be staying at home to look after the children so mortgages were solely on the man's wage. This limited how high house prices could be. Feminism hasn't helped us in this regard.

Mass immigration needs to stop as if there's not enough houses now for the people that are currently here, how on earth will we house even more. Although I think we do have more properties than we realise when you take into account the millions of empty properties bought as investments and second homes or houses just left derelict.

The other thing worth bearing in mind is that while many would settle for any house they can call their own, for more fortunate ones large swathes of the current housing stock just isn't suitable for the way people want to live in the 21st century. If you want, say, four bedrooms and at least a couple of bathrooms, plus an office with high speed internet, with parking for three cars, then in many places new builds are the only realistic option.

I've also heard from an estate agent of at least two cases (in Greater Manchester) where banks have valued Victorian terraced houses at 'nil' and refused to lend. Some current housing stock is clearly reaching the end of the road.

House prices went up as soon as the wife's earnings were considered in getting a mortgage. Years ago it was assumed that women would be staying at home to look after the children so mortgages were solely on the man's wage. This limited how high house prices could be. Feminism hasn't helped us in this regard.

Well, it helped the families where women out-earned their husbands. Imagine having a decent family income but finding yourself unable to buy a house because most of it is earned by the woman, not the man.

As recently as the 1980s some lenders wouldn't allow a woman to buy a house unless she had a man as a guarantor. It's really not fair to lay some of the blame for unaffordable housing at the feet of women.

You could equally argue that more houses are needed because there are more divorces, so maybe women being able to leave miserable (and sometimes abusive) marriages are to blame for unaffordable housing too?

Treaclesoda I am not blaming women but the increased availability of credit through taking two wages into account for mortgage lending. It could have stayed at one wage only (man or woman).

Other peoples - a lot of that land is uninhabitable such as the moors or highlands, too steep, too rocky and too expensive to lay mains services to in greater numbers. This reduces the available land for housing considerably but that is never factored in to arguments such as yours.

And other peoples / of its "utterly predictable" then what is being done to curb it, or do you think it's acceptable to just go on and on and on? In 30 years what will the population here be? Do you think that rate of expansion is a good thing? That's a direct question to you, no politicians answer please (if you answer it) .