AIBU to say UK houses are poor value for money?

[Ursulla]

They're either old, damp and cramped or new, built to poor specifications and cramped. But they cost more than 7x the average wage. You really don't get a lot of bang for your buck/GBP in this country.

My son's Oxfordshire newbuild has had no snagging at all and is a very good - 3 bed detached (Bellway). My house was built in 1990 and is pretty well done. However older homes which can be lovely are likely to need more work. we have 18m more people in the UK than when I was born here and most people want to live near where there are jobs so there are lots of difficulties and we have never had as many people wanting to move here so it is a perfect storm and the UK is massive popular internationally at present.

Meanwhile I read an article today https://on.ft.com/3UjDfZo about vast amounts of internal Spain etc one place with average age 70 years old, school shut down in 1969 even that are just emptied and emptied as everyone moves to cities. The one euro house scheme in Italy has often felt tempting. I would not be tempted so much by places like Bulgaria as I like to avoid corruption and some better infrastructure is often a good idea.

I'm not holding myself up as an example of how to do this.
I'm saying I was desperate in a shit housing market and this was my only option. I'm agreeing with the OP.

That was my intention.

Agreed.

It wasn't the norm in my parents and grandparents time. Housing including social housing was more available and the social housing built then was properly family sized and built on decent sized plots.

I think it depends on the houses- some are well made, others not so. The quality of houses in lots of places is poor- Australia the houses are often terrible quality, family in UAE say the same there. A lot of mainland europe and scandi countries have decent quality housing but not all.