Why is housing in the U.K. so shit?

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

I don’t even mean your ‘built for another time’ Victorian houses, I mean ones built in the last 20 years (and continue to be built).

Counterintuitive layouts, more toilets than bedrooms, strange angles, no storage whatsoever. We’re house hunting and it’s driving me mental!

@TootGoesTheOwl - but it can’t be cost and time as issue when that would also be an issue world over. Why is that not an issue in France/ Poland/ Romania? There houses are far cheaper also generally.

My house was built post war, in a country in shambles and poverty. Cellars were still built as essentials. Its where many for years have kept food for storage also especially in villages where many grown a lot themselves

It's not UK is an island or the land is small. Most of the land is green in the UK. It's the weird house layout, that's the problem. I did notice and dislike weird UK house layout. Also I hate people renovating their house from two or three bedroom to house with more rooms. Consequently it makes rooms smaller. I hate it.

Regulation is part of it - certainly a problem for new build homes and to a lesser extent on resale of homes - you can sell in any condition

And lack of council homes

I think renting is much more commonn and laws around renting are much stricter ( certainly in Germany ) so that means people have cheap secure and welll maintained option which takes the heat out of the housing market

And perhaps an attitude of a house is a home not a financial investment

I never understand the obsession of putting floor to ceiling windows in flats. All that happens is that people put blinds in those windows that are permanently shut as they don't want to be in a goldfish bowl with everyone watching them. What's wrong with normal large windows which start at waist height?

Agree. It’s not the size it’s the layout. Rather than 3 well proportioned bedroom, they do 2 small doubles and 2 boxes. Then call it a 4 bedroom house because technically you can fit a bed in it. Or 1 double and 2 box because as well as a family bathroom they’ve added a pointless en suite which takes up space. Or they’ve just made the house an utterly bizarre shape which means there’s L shaped bedrooms, and sloping ceilings where you can hardly stand if you’re over 5 foot.

I’m tempted to just build my own house tbh, how much does it cost?

I have had this argument discussion with my DH for years. I am also from another country and really don't understand why even the old houses haven't been built to suit the climate. The houses here suffer badly and if you drive down a road, the outside of the houses is crumbling, bit cracks, windows rotting etc.

The first house we bought was a Victorian terrace. It had a cellar with 2 rooms (one of which was originally a kitchen, it still had the old range in it!). Then two large rooms on the ground floor (living room and kitchen/dinner), bathroom and 2 doubles on first floor, and a double bedroom in the attic (which wasn't officially a bedroom due to updates in fire regulations but everyone used them as bedrooms!)

A very efficient use of space. Absolutely solid. Unfortunately not up to modern standards of insulation.

Better than modern townhouses where half the ground floor is a garage.

Agree it’s layout often.
The 2 bed terraces have much better layout and room sizes than a 3 bed they have squeezed into same floor space. It’s easily two children sharing a well proportioned bedroom than giving them a bedroom each where one can’t fit more than a toddler size bed in.

In Hungary we stayed in a central area flat. It was a 2 bed in a very old building, looked almost derelict from outside. But inside main front doors it opened out onto a large communal courtyard garden where years ago horse and carriage could be brought in and laundry done outside. It was a lovely community hub now for eating in shade in hot summers. The rooms were double height, no air con in summer wasn’t a problem as thick walls, wooden shutters, and roof overhang outside walkways for shade. The flat hallway also had wide floor to ceiling built in storage for cleaning stuff, coats, shoes, etc.

Sadly true though

I lived in a couple of three storey townhouses..they seem a good compromise in terms of smaller footprint but more space. V spacious 4 bed and good living space, but awful garden with drainage issues we had to get the developers back twice to sort. Completely agree on the design of many new builds though that simply don't seem to reflect real living.

I agree. We are also house hunting and the houses are just horrible. Either they are old, inefficient, boxy and just not fit for purpose or they are new with no thought put in to them whatsoever. Also, how is it ok to have a 5 bedroom house under 2000 square feet? They have tiny kitchens with fridges that barely hold enough food for 2 people, zero storage and rooms not big enough to build storage into and garages that can't even fit a normal sized car and some bikes.

You are certainly not alone in your thinking and it isn't just down to lack of land so smaller houses, I've seen plenty of big houses that are also just so shit.

The houses here are just so blegh.

Not enough available land and far too many people.
There's no fix for that I'm afraid.

Simple, GREED.

Money / profit.

The more houses they can cram onto a plot of land, the more profit they make.

Cram another “bedroom” in - more profit.

Use crap materials and cut corners - more profit.

I grew up in a 1970s new build and it pissed all over modern houses. It was ugly but big rooms, big garden front and rear on a well planned estate. I’d buy something like that over a modern new build every day of the week.

Wish I had more toilets than bedrooms. 😂😂😂 we have the one family bathroom and there’s me and 2 teenage girls. It’s a 1900s terrace though that was designed as 2 bedrooms but varies on the street between 2 or 3 now as a box sized room has been made but sticking a wall in the larger front bedroom. We have no space to expand. It would have been 2 up 2 down with an outside toilet original but when kitchens were added on, bathrooms were also added on above and front bedroom stretched to make it all look nice from the outside.

Where grew up we had a 3 bed detached new build in the late 80s. 2 double bedrooms and a pretty decent single. One double had ensuit. Family bathroom and then downstairs loo. Massive front and back gardens. And garage. Some people extended their garage back online with the back of the house to create a utility room. As the builders expanded the estates over the next decades the plots of land for each house became smaller so don’t back and front gardens. The shell for the 3 bed became a 4 bed. The 4 bedrooms are obviously much smaller but not as tiny as my old 1900s bedrooms. Lol.

Had a similar issue in the 2000s when I’d booth a 2 bed new build terrace. Bedrooms were both doubles. Came to sell and didn’t get much interest and was told the reason was that the same house was now a 3 bed. So same downstairs but re configured upstairs to 3 smaller bedrooms.

All the houses round here that were built in the 1970s are more decently sized. And most have extended over their garages. Many semis. We have flats as well but only 2 storey and in a kind of terrace. So fairly tiny. But the leasehold has become a massive issue in the resale of them now. We had one block of flats built in the whole of the expanding town. Several storks but not tower block. It mustn’t have been well received as no more were built. But we are running out of free space and some area have had a nightmare with flossing where new estates have popped up. The only preserved green space is where there’s been coal mines below and where they can’t be built on.

I really think it's swings and roundabouts with houses for instance my mum has a victorian town house. Huge rooms with high ceilings costs a fortune to heat and with a lot of old buildings regularly needs repairs.A large high maintenance garden and we struggle to park on the street. We have a 1930s semi detached plenty of off road parking but a small kitchen and 1 of the bedrooms is small. Daughter has a modern 3 storey 3 equal size bedrooms 3 bathrooms parking and an easily maintained garden. So it really depends what you want.

This

Unfortunately true, most newer houses have been built on a small plot of land with little space inbetween. With that comes small, boring square gardens and what should be larger rooms partitioned to make extra toilets. There is no comparison between older houses and new ones. Xx

I agree with everyone. It's as much design as it is space.

The problem with this is that whilst you are a couple new builds are doable and possibly with small kids. And then they grow and new build 2 or even 3 beds are just not workable. And a whole glut of people needing older properties that they can make forever homes.
New builds end up being rented out by investors because no one actually wants to buy them to live in themselves. Renters have no choice - it's what ever is available whilst they save enough to buy.

Government policy should reflect what a pp said And perhaps an attitude of a house is a home not a financial investment.

Poor noise insulation. People like to have a garden of their own. And leasehold, leasehold, leasehold. Pretty much all flats in England are leasehold, I think. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68904124

Because we don’t want lots of neighbours and everybody wants outdoor space, it’s the English man’s castle idea!

1. Greed
2. Greed
3. Government making greed the priority not building enough of every type and not putting in place regulations that would help the country as a whole later because.....greed.

Later?
Meant better eg solar grants & must haves in new builds etc

There are millions of acres in the UK on which to build. Huge swathes of it. Have a look at Google maps satellite . . .

It’s called the green belt.