To think housing in this country is fundamentally broken?

[BrokenHousingLogic]

Whether you rent privately, rent socially or own, it feels like the system isn’t really working for anyone.

• Rents are high and insecure
• Buying is out of reach for many
• Social housing is under strain
• Landlords and tenants feel pitted against each other
• Local authorities seem overwhelmed

It often feels like people are arguing with each other instead of addressing the fact that the whole structure is failing.

AIBU to think this goes beyond individual choices and points to a system-wide problem?

It doesn't matter how many they build. People cannot afford to buy them. So all these new houses will sit empty.

It was probably sold because it would have been too expensive for the council to bring up to modern environmental standards.

There are over 500,000 empty houses in the UK. I wonder why, if a house if left empty for over 3 years, and nobody knows who owns it, or maybe where they are, the local authority can't have the legal power to take possession and use them for social housing.

We have a new town of 30,000 being built nearby but the costs of these new homes are on ave £600k
. Most people can’t afford them .
You can build as many homes as you want but the facilities aren’t there for them . Where is the extra water coming from , we already had a summer long hose pipe ban , extra sewage needs when the water companies can’t cope as it is . Grid locked roads on already congested roads . Insufficient schools , hospitals, Dr’s , Dentists . It’s all going to reduce living standards , health and wellbeing .
We will be totally reliant on food from abroad as our fields are being built on , we’ll have virtually no wildlife as their habitat is being built on .
We do need more homes but they should be in already built on areas not always virgin land .

We need to adress the issue of overpopulation.
Building more homes isn't the magic answer if things like hospitals schools and recreational green spaces aren't kept up to date as well.

There us a site earmarked for several hundred houses in our village. Brownfield (ex quarry land). The objections about schools, doctors shops etc were just swept aside (and no one could answer where the potential children would go to school.. the Primary school is full with no building potential!)

But it was stopped... by the highways agency due to overloading on the motorway network. They've admitted it will need to be a whole new motorway junction before any house building in the area.

I agree. I had been looking for a flat for months and have now decided that buy a house in a couple of years, have noticed there are thousands of flats up for sale and have been for months - some years - many quite cheap and in good areas. But nobody is buying them, perhaps because of the notorious problems that come with leasehold properties. Makes me wonder how many people like me are stuck in the insecure private rental sector.

Or worse stuck in the nightmare that is leasehold and which no government has the drive to eradicate or if they do it’ll be for new leaseholds and nothing to help those trapped in existing leaseholds . Look
at other than bluster and blunder lessons will be learnt after Grenfell and yet we still have thousands of blocks covered in unsafe cladding .

Same here, we have 6 older houses for sale in our village, and 34 new houses just released for sale. So far 1 new house has sold. The rest just sitting empty with reduced price tags.

£775k for a 4 bed house with a single garage and 1 parking space, in a village with no nursery, no school, no employment, no pub, no gp surgery or dentist. An hourly bus from the main road a 20 min walk away. And the only road in is single track and is cloaed most winters due to flooding. Ridiculous.

@WallaceinAnderland They won’t be empty! Houses are built where house builders know they will sell. They won’t be forced to build homes for sale where not a single person wants them! Housing associations might build for rent but they are cash strapped. There’s not going to be build build build any time soon. There’s no increase in building homes at the moment.

Yes they’ve stopped right to buy in Scotland but the HA aren’t maintaining their older proprieties at all they are so focussed on building new ones (which is great) but those of us in older properties are dealing with poor windows, kitchens and bathrooms that are falling to bits (doors come off in my hands), crumbling plaster work, fencing that has blown down but the won’t take responsibility for it, large areas of missing rough cast etc it’s such a fight to get them to repair anything and if they can fob it on to the tenant they will and I get there is an element of self care which can be done by us and we do what we can within our skills but much of my above list really isn’t our responsibility as tenants And all we are told is there is no money

they should be forced to maintain their older properties or sell them

This is the crux of the matter for me

every single empty/abandoned/second home and shops and offices should be utilised first and stop foreign investors from buying property to leave empty before building anymore boxes on ever shrinking land, stop turning villages into towns, many of us choose village living and pay higher because of this in fuel etc to commute and live day to day, if I wanted to live in a built up concrete jungle I would have

Property = profit, and even housing associations are developers now. Population is the issue, note I did not say immigration, and developers don't want to build where work is, they want clean, green fields and all because it is cheaper to 'throw up' bland, poorly built, low spec, expensive boxes, in areas where you have to have a car, but will struggle to park it, have to commute significant distances, have children bused to schools, issues with flooding and so you are trapped or in a cycle of driving everywhere. Water, sewage, power, now that's a real issue and water is expensive now, give it another decade and it will be unaffordable! We can't act as a sponge and our government thinks building is the answer, but skills training is practically non-existent and friends in the building trade will not touch new build sites, as they are anything but quality, with much of the labour unskilled. We already live in a 2 bed bungalow, have for 2 decades, but having worked in housing would I touch an Over 55s, a retirement flat, downsize to a cardboard new build, never, I know the last thing they are are good for is your mental health or wellbeing, they are only good for a developer's overseas bank account!! We are being played with, like pawns on a chess board!

Nail on the head. There are huge numbers of empty retail/small commercial units on High Streets and built up residential areas. These will never be used for retail again now due to out of town retail parks and internet shopping. We need a nationwide initiative to get them converted into residential flats which would not only help the housing shortage, it would breath life back into town centres and stop them being crime ridden no go areas.

Just build more social housing. If every family had access to decent quality social housing it would transform the UK. In the early 80s a third of people lived in social housing, we need those types of numbers again

Yes it is & it’s one reason why our productivity is so low.

making ever increasing property prices our economy & the only part of the economy that has grown was a huge mistake. It’s fucked our economy & really disadvantaged young people.

There are 28 unsold new houses just within a 5 mile radius of my house. And I live in a village. If I put it up to 10 miles, there are 78 unsold new houses. Within 15 miles (half an hours drive) there are 155 new homes for sale.

Some have been on the market since January 2023, nearly 3 years.

If there was a demand for property, there would be very few houses for sale.

We don't need to build more houses because people cannot afford to buy them.

Homes for sale are not the problem.

The issue is that there is a critical shortage of social housing for those who will never be in a position to buy.
THose people are being 'house' in private rentals and hotels and hostels
at insane cost to Councils
and pushing up the margin on private rentals.

Allowing councils to rapidly acquire and build homes for social rent
WITH NO RISK OF BEING FORCED TO SELL THEM
would immediately lower the floor on housing costs
and free up funds within councils to do better things

I agree @Talkinpeace but there is no money to build social housing. All housing is currently built by developers. Even so called affordable housing which is of course, not actually affordable.

So they build and they build and they tell people that they are solving the housing shortage. They're not. They are building houses that will sit there empty because very few people can afford to buy them.

They are building no social housing and have no plans to build social housing because they have no money to do so.

@WallaceinAnderland
There is LOADS of money to build social housing
IF
a) Right to buy is abolished so houses built for social rent stay that way

b) Councils are allowed to borrow to build such houses (rather than being forced to 'invest' in shopping centres.

If you look at the scale of Locall Government borrowing
there is the capacity to buy land and put social housing on it within months
but councils are not allowed to

I actually think when a middle aged, single, working, person (not on minimum wage) can't afford to rent or buy their own house and end up in a HMO we have a problem.

I'm lucky I managed to get a shared ownership (and a decent deposit) after selling my marital home. But my cousin at 50 is in a HMO because he can't afford the rent on a 1 bed flat on his own on an average salary.

Home ownership should not just be for the wealthy or the coupled up.

I agree. If a 1 bed is out of reach for a mid life single, I suggest a studio apartment rather than HMO. That way they have privacy and safety.

@xSideshowAuntSallyXx Working at what and spending what? Single people will always find it more difficult for obvious reasons. Before Thatched loads rented. It was normal and single people mined to cheap areas. That was common. Everyone cannot have everything. They never could.

Councils don't build any houses. That's what I'm saying. Only developers build them and they have to include a certain amount of 'affordable' homes in those they build.

Many people think the Government build houses. They don't.