To be sick of hearing about 'the housing crisis'?

[GoldfinchFeather]

This is related to the thread about Angela Rayner wanting to build 1.5 million new homes. Is anyone else sick to the back teeth of hearing about the supposed housing crisis in this country?

I live in a semi-rural area, and the amount of house building around here over the last few years has been crazy. Hundreds of houses appearing on pretty much any vacant piece of land, turning what was once a small village into something that feels closer to a town in size. Roads getting busier and busier, and and all the while nothing has been done to provide any new facilities like doctors or schools.

I understand people's frustration of not being able to buy a home. But surely just concreting over more and more of the countryside is completely unsustainable?

If the housing crisis is really so bad, why isn't the Government taking more of an innovative approach? How many town centres/high streets have empty shops that could be converted to residential use? Or properties that have stood empty for years and haven't been brought back to market? Surely just through that, there would be an enormous surplus of homes available, and less need to concrete over more and more of the countryside?

We are importing a population the size of Leeds every year. Is it any wonder that there is a housing crisis?

same, I wish I were in a position to be sick of hearing about it, but unfortunately that's a luxury that the many of us who are struggling with the cost of living don't have.

For younger and single people, and also pensioners, flats are the obvious solution. As someone said upthread - they're much more common abroad. Families live in flats and nobody thinks anything of it. We just seem to have this obsession in the UK about having to own an actual house to be a fully formed adult and especially if we have children - our entire economy is literally built on this pretext! And that's not a good thing. A flat with a balcony is a really practical way of living. I'll downsize to a flat in the future - the problem being that there aren't loads of nice flats around, because they really only seem to be built for retirement purposes.

I have to agree that it is not about hoses to buy, but houses for rent & social housing.

We have 3 new "suburbs" built in our town. (Size wise the equivalent of 5 former crop farms, someare built on flood plains.)
With that we get 2 new large primary schools- but 3 smaller village schools have closed. No secondary schools are being built, no Dr surgery, hospital, ....
The affordable hoses are around 270k for a 2 bed mid terrace.... But you have to keep in mind that the infrastructure and available jobs is warehouseing.

Someone is making money while others are stuck in inadequate housing.

My only hope is, that with all these homes being built, the prices should come down eventually.

A perfect explanation. The rich are snapping up multiple houses. No wealth trickles down. It sickens me that families have nowhere to live because people don’t want new estates built anywhere near them. It’s selfish to the core and we can thank Thatcher who declared “there is no such thing as society”. What a gem she was.

Is it because our soundproofing standards are so bad that flats get a bad reputation? Also leaseholders seem to be seen as an excuse to make money.

Two main problems with town centres, both of which could be "cured" if the Government were serious.

Firstly, local councils are reluctant to grant residential planning permissions for ex-retail premises, including the "flats above shops" on older town centre properties (where they used to be flats, but which were repurposed to storage/staff rooms when the chain stores took over). Local councils often have "local plans" which prohibit conversion of retail into homes, and that extends to the "flats above" by virtue of them being associated with the shop for decades and not lived in since the 70s or 80s. Added to that is the problem of building regulations which also come into play upon "conversion" from retail to residential, whereas if they'd been residential continuously, the same building regs wouldn't apply as there'd be no "conversion".

Secondly, a huge amount of town centre retail premises are owned by pension funds as an investment. Pension funds are heavily restricted as to what the properties can be used for, so, say, a pension fund owning a huge multi-floor ex department store building on the High Street, may not actually be allowed under Pension laws to convert it to residential flats - they'd have to sell it and invest the proceeds somewhere else, and given the glut of empty retail, it's not easy to buy another retail property that will actually generate revenue.

As I say, government could change the laws/rules to cure these problems if they wanted to. But sadly Raynor is obsessed with building more, and not showing any interest at all in bringing existing sites back into residential use.

And then when it comes to downsizing in later life, there is a lack of suitable properties for people to move to, which is one reason why you get older people remaining in unsuitable houses they can't cope with. Plus they have been lived in the "we don't like flats and must have a garden" culture so are mentally unwilling to move into one.

On holiday abroad, the hotel we were staying in had rented out apartments to the local population / weekenders and a local Estate Agent was advertising this in their window. Could this be the answer for areas particularly where hotels have closed down? The apartments abroad have all the amenities needed, bathroom, bedroom, living room, cooking area and balcony for 'outdoor living'.
I must admit that I found it a little odd to be holidaying in a hotel which did this - we had all the facilities of breakfast, pool bar, swimming, playground etc but probably because of the hotel demographics there was no entertainment or evening bar.

Well yeah but we haven't got a large enough working population to sustain our burgeoning pension-age population, so immigration is set to continue. The housing challenge is partly because we're all living longer, so the housing assets aren't coming back onto the market at the rate that they used to.

Its amusing that in your OP you specifically talk about the many many houses being built, and it is heavily implied that they ARe in fact being filled (traffic increases, more people etc) which I think makes it obvious that in fact these new homes absolutely ARE needed.

Of course, infrastructure needs to be there to support the house building and I'd agree this is where we're not doing a good enough job. Where we are, there was a huge issues with schools for while - simply not enough placse for the number of children. But that appears to be under control now (for now anyway) with the opening of a new primary school 15 years ago, conversion of 3 schools to full primaries (vs infant or junior) and notably expanding the intake in the local secondary schools. But we're still struggling with doctors/hospitals, and support services like social service etc are bulging at the seams.

I also completely agree that we need to get a bit more creative about the types of homes and communities we build. Again, in our area, the two newest large developments have been done extremely well with a lovely mix of homes of different sizes and types - a few free standing houses, lots of semi-detached or modern terrace style and then also some apartments, all set in nice grounds. They aren't exactly affordable though in most instances. There's also a third one that was built a bit earlier and it's not quite as lovely in terms of the surroundings, but they did a good job on maximising the spaces. Older ones are definitely less nice and/or more crowded.

Because it’s the only way you get security.
it’s so hard having kids in private rental. I had 6 weeks to move once, we’d been there 7-8 years and had no clue, imagine the upheaval and upset. The year before the landlord had put up the rent 40% in one month.

your tied to an area because of school and children’s friends yet at the mercy of landlords. Imagine every couple of years having to find a rental within a few streets just to be able to stay in the catchment for your kids to go to the same school or the same secondary as their friends.
your paying more than some are on mortgages yet have little to no say.
it Eats into every decision you make, buying a sofa, the kids trampoline. Might fit this house, might not the next.

pets, well you can’t really have them as the next landlord might not want them. so your kids will be heartbroken or have to move out of catchment.
simple things like being able to plant a fruit tree in the garden but never being their long enough to see it fruit. Never seeing planted bulbs flower.
or decorating your kids bedrooms, putting up a picture or worrying every time they do a craft activity it might lose your deposit.

that’s the life of a family in private rental.

We need more bungalows! Genuinely. They all get snapped up when they go on sale round here. But the downside is that they're not an economic use of the space.

Typically older people secure in their own homes dont believe that there is a housing crisis. Also some peopel deny their is a climate crisis because its cold today

My son is on work experience this week with the local councils homeless team. He's lived in the same property (owned) with his dad & I for his entire 17 year's. He & most probably you will be in for a shock! There is very little affordable housing & it's an absolute nightmare for low income families. It's a long term issue that no government has tried to tackle.

There are over 30K children currently living in temporary accommodation right now. More land in the UK is currently used for golf courses than building new homes. That’s a housing crisis.

And finding somewhere suitable & affordable to rent is almost impossible in some places.

The thing is we now have an oversupply of commercial properties so it isn't really all the lucrative for many commercial landlords anymore. This is especially true for retail and office space. Why on earth aren't we condensing high streets and converting unwanted retail units into flats? The same goes for office space that isn't needed anymore. The government should be encouraging this as it regenerates urban areas and will make a big dent in the housing crisis.

Don't build on green spaces and let existing brown field sites rot.

The houses in my hometown are totally unaffordable for first time buyers. The cheapest ones go for at least £250,000, which we cannot afford. There aren’t any cheap and cheerful, less than £100,000 fixer uppers any more, cos they all go straight to auction, and the buy to let crowd snap them up in two seconds, cos they have the cash funds to be able to do so. I wish they would ban the buy to let brigade from buying more than one or two properties. Some of these landlords have 10-15 houses. How is that fair?! It’s a disgrace. If I can’t afford a house in my 30’s, my daughter certainly won’t be able to afford a house, when she’s old enough. It’s incredibly depressing.

New build flats are actually really good quality, especially the likes of retirement flats and Uni student flats. All compliant with modern rules and regulations.

My son spent his Uni years in three different modern purpose built student flats and we were really impressed at the quality, particularly safety and security standards, sound proofing, etc. Even though he had other students rooms immediately each side of him and above him, he said he never heard anything from them, even when they were playing loud music, partying, or doing other "noisy" activities - the sort of thing he could hear in the corridor, outside his room door, but not within the room itself. Not even hearing the shower or toilet in the bathrooms. The rooms in all three buildings had brick/block walls and concrete floors, which is no doubt why the sound proofing was so good.

Same with over 55 flats. We went to look at a couple of flats last week in a relatively new build complex, and really impressed with the build quality, safety aspects (fire and security systems etc). Didn't notice any noise from adjoining flats, but we only spent a few minutes in each. Same construction though - concrete floors and brick/block walls in the rooms so I imagine sound proofing would be good.

The political class are utterly clueless.

You can't just keep on building a million houses every year so you can keep on importing millions.

a couple of single room ex shops will not solve the massive housing problem.

What do you think happens to properties when landlords sell up? They don't evaporate into thin air. The more houses on the market, the lower the prices. The vast majority of families want stability which means home ownership, but are stuck in insecure renting situations because house prices are so high.

High Streets is a whole other thread but let's be realistic, it's no longer a viable business model when it's so very easy to find whatever you want and have free delivery tomorrow at a lower price without leaving the house. Rail against it, mourn the experience of shopping on the high street, but it's not coming back.

Not to mention the astonishing number of empty homes, most of them second or third homes. I know of a family with 5 empty houses, just getting more and more dilapidated. These people should be dealt with first.

If the housing crisis is really so bad, why isn't the Government taking more of an innovative approach? How many town centres/high streets have empty shops that could be converted to residential use? Or properties that have stood empty for years and haven't been brought back to market? Surely just through that, there would be an enormous surplus of homes available, and less need to concrete over more and more of the countryside?

This is sound common sense.