Brexit just keeps on giving

[Leftinlimbo]

This is not progress - now the government is going to relax the laws allowing housing to be built near our waterways without any concern for the environment:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66642878

People that own their homes own it fair and square (if I was over 60 and had a home, it’s my choice to downsize or not). The private rental market has gone awol and out of control. The people that have family homes, section it into 6 (awful poorly refurbished) rooms or separate homes are the problem and the government completely selling off all of their properties has caused chaos.

There are new homes going up everywhere, all the time. The question is who owns them and who is in charge of rent prices?

When I get to 60 I certainly won't be selling up and moving into a pokey retirement home with no garden, no space for my guests, no space for my hobbies etc. We have spent years turning our 4 bed house with large garden into the home we want it to be. When I get to 60 we'll finally have finished the mortgage, although I won't be able to retire until I'm 67 and have time to enjoy the space- I can hopefully spend more time on my garden, use one of the bedrooms for a painting and craft room, and maybe one day we will have grandchildren and family who wish to come and stay.

When I am very old and doddery and can no longer manage the stairs is when I might sell...but 60? Nah!

There are loads of empty properties in and around our town which could easily be converted into living accommodation; feel sure it's the same everywhere.

There needs to be strategic thinking both at National and local level on dealing with this.

Misogyny and ageism - the two bigotries many people have no problem with.

In your dreams.
I'm not paying thousands to downsize into a too small house. I have a spare room so my kids can come and visit when they can.
My house is future proofed so we aren't going anywhere. one downstairs full bathroom and a room that can be changed into a bedroom.
Maybe the engineers need to prep the land properly and raise houses up a bit to be sure of good drainage.

So we only have another 6 years to enjoy our home we've spent almost 20 years paying off and restoring at great expense and bringing our children up in before we're expected to pack up and shuffle off to a tiny bungalow somewhere and die. Ageism at it's most blatant.

Or maybe people should stop having so many children to make room for all these extra people and leave older folk to enjoy the homes they have a right to live in.

I only opened this thread because as soon as I saw the word Brexit, the ageism and eugenics would have started.

There are so many places to build new houses and this government decides this is the answer

Ahhh the ageist poster is vocal on the winter fuel thread as well.

Funny dat.

This is nothing to do with brexit
it is to do with over population
freedom of movement has resulted in three million people from Eastern Europe living here
where do you want them to live

Yea on farms when the world will face a food shortage
let’s kill all the uk wildlife

Here we go again

We are retired and have already downsized from a four bed/three recep to a three BR, one/two receps and it's been fucking hard!
We got rid of loads of stuff but the garage is still full to bursting.
And we are still in what could be considered a small family home. The third bedroom is just a box room really but it's used as a study.
So we have one bedroom for us, one for family and guests who stay over regularly.
I don't see that we could do much more.

@FoodFann there isn't a shortage of family sized homes on the market in most areas- what there is is a shortage of families able to afford them .

Wow it only took 3 posts for that old chestnut to come up. Well done for getting in so quickly now bugger off.

there are plenty of half-empty office buildings that could be converted. They would be quite good retirement flats for many people - nice and central with good transport, put a GP in there, a pharmacy and so on, and it would be great. Then you can shove all the oldies in there and buy their houses off them. They can live the high life with whatever profit they make.

(tbh, I'd go for that if i wanted to move to a city)

The point still stands: conversion of empty buildings and brownfield sites are the best move. It livens up the towns again and will clean up used land.

Building on flood plains is kicking problems down to the future generations who have to handle that.

and bring prices down, it’s ridiculous

This is not a surprise unfortunately.

As for the where can we could get 300,000 extra homes- have housing on the ground floor not commercial property in small scale developments, convert little used empty commercial property, end second homes especially in places such in Cornwall, and ban short term lets such as those Air BnB promote.

FoodFann · Today 08:19

In the 6 million spare bedrooms owned by the over 60s. Perhaps they could… I don’t know… downsize and let families live in family homes?! Mad. I know!”

Oh do bugger off. We’re downsizing anyway, because that suits us. If we wanted to remain in the house we’ve spent years paying for and vastly improving, that’s no-one’s business but ours.
If you’re angry, look to the government for their housing policy. Or lack of.

There are nearly 700 000 homes standing empty right now. I don't mean second homes or holiday homes, they're properly empty. Often it's because the owner is unknown for whatever reason (like when an occupier has died with no obvious next of kin) or the owner can't afford to bring it up to standard for sale or rental. Some councils have actively tried to address this but there's only so much they can do legally or financially. In recent years the number of empty homes has actually gone up, not down. The government could do more to help councils bring more of these back into use.

Then there's "landbanking". Developers are already sitting on enough land to build 441,000 new homes. They may have legitimate reasons for doing it but it's obvious that restricting supply will push prices up too.

There are also tax and VAT rules that mean that developers prefer greenfield sites to brownfield ones. But the government's in charge of the tax system. It's in their power to make smaller brownfield developments (which put less stress on existing infrastructure) more attractive than large greenfield ones.

Then there's the issue of people who don't live in the UK buying property as an investment but not live in it or rent it out. London developers have been known to actively advertise in HK and China for rich Chinese investors to buy city flats off plan. These places then stay empty for tax reasons. But several other countries (thinking Denmark for example as it's in the EU) restrict property purchases to people who actually live in the country. It means places become homes rather than somewhere for overseas investors to park some cash. Our government could have done this too if it wanted to. But instead it just created a list of non-resident purchasers to check that the money wasn't coming from Russia.

Why doesn't Gove at least try to deal with existing issues like these before he rips up safeguards that are designed to protect our environment? An investigation done by the Financial Times when Johnson was PM showed that the Conservative Party receives far more donations from large property developers and builders than from any other business sector. But that's probably just a coincidence.

With how many adult children leave home only to return to save up for a house or because they're struggling to afford rent etc, it makes total sense for over-60s to want to keep hold of their family-sized houses.

Well that didn't take long did it?

@LlynTegid personally I would ban Airbnb from having 'whole' properties. This would still mean you could get rooms for a few nights but would stop properties being used for it that really should be on the rental market and either increase rentals or supply for sale as residential homes. Let's face it if families couldn't rent whole places for holidays most would not go for the odd room