Quantity of UK housing in the longer term

[Rollercoaster1920]

I'm looking at moving or renovating and have cone to the conclusion that UK housing quality is in decline. Am I wrong?

Why do I think this? The houses on the market often have poorly thought out extensions, poor workmanship of new stuff
, or require work because they are old (my house is the latter). New houses often have no garden and flimsy construction but at least are warm.

To do work costs a lot of money, and that seems to drive some really poor decisions to save money. Box kitchen extensions which don't flow from the original house being my bugbear! Over developed plots and wedged in infill housing like grand designs Red House is something else that annoys me.

Ultimately the root cause is that UK housing is soo expensive compared to earnings. But I find it sad that housing is getting worse.

Maybe I'm having a bad day, if so please cheer me up with tales of houses that have got better. Some property envy might be what I need.

You're not wrong.

Aside from the fact that housing is expensive, our housing stock is comparatively old, which means high maintenance costs and problems making homes energy efficient. Against that, many older properties are reasonably well constructed, as opposed to new builds, which mostly seem to have tiny rooms and insufficient soundproofing, as well as small gardens, as you say.

Anyone wanting to renovate faces huge (and rising) costs, problems finding reliable / trustworthy tradespeople who know what they are doing, and many months of upheaval. At the end of it all, as you have observed, it transpires that the design was not optimal for their needs and / or the property, due to the lack of a joined up approach.

I'm aware I'm probably not cheering you up much, beyond the satisfaction of knowing that you are not alone in your thinking. I don't know what the answers are. A house price crash might make housing more affordable, but perhaps fewer houses would get built, as the costs of labour and materials will probably keep rising, and would do nothing to resolve the other issues.

As the famous joke about a lost traveller in Ireland goes... If we wanted to get where we need to be, we wouldn't start from here!

I agree. We were viewing houses last month and the number of houses that look great on Rightmove but poor in person is shocking. I felt so sorry for some of the vendors because they had obviously spent a lot of money on renovations but the quality of work their tradesmen left them with was dire, with such a terrible finish and basically all details overlooked or rushed. Then there were the DIY bodge jobs.

We didn't look at houses where we knew a lot of work would need doing because it's so hard to get people in to do a decent job at a reasonable price. I was guilty of a bit of DIY bodging at my last house just out of despair at ever getting professionals to turn up and do things so I do have sympathy for those sellers too!

I agree, we just demolished a 50s extension to a 1800s house [ok apart from roof needs redoing slate wise and timber underfloor rotten] that was completely inadequate and built over drains. We are now fixing up house to stay in for the long term, it is costing as much as another house. People joke we will want to move on but we won't as it had taken years of planning and living in a building site to get to a well constructed house. Plus decades of property based experience on both sides of our family and in both our jobs. I also know of new houses with fundamental issues which cannot be fixed easily if at all. People do need to accept that failing to maintain a property has the potential to devalue it past standard mortgages. But if all the houses with problems started being fixed there is nowhere near enough labour, money or materials. All you need to do is review the size of the damp solution section of your local poundland to see the issue. Climate doesn't help either.

I will add to that that new houses often have common parts sold as 'private roads' etc which actually mean long term coordination with neighbours, higher costs and much less flexibility for instance if you want and are able to get fibre broadband you can't just order it in off the road because you are far from the highway. Private rather than public drains. Shared maintenance costs and no prospect of extending or improving your home....

Agreed the standard of a lot of houses are very poor, my bugbear is looking on right move and houses are described as in excellent condition that clearly have not been touched since 1980, they need a full on refurbishment yet are priced the same as houses that have been renovated. I also hate extensions for the sake of extensions with no thought or planning on how it will work with the rest of the house.

Yes I agree, it’s depressing really. I wouldn’t touch most new builds with a barge pole. But nearly all the houses on the market in our town need so much work doing on them, the problem is finding decent professionals to do the work and affording it!
And yes yes to the terrible extensions!

I made an offer on a property that hasn't been redecorated since it last was on the market 10 years ago, and the shabby state of the interior was evident in those photos even then. The older listing shows the same carpets, same drapes, mouldier shower and bath, wallpaper on the ceiling which is falling down. They have replaced the roof in recent years, but I can only surmise it was because they had no choice, because the house is shabbier and in worse condition in every other respect, including the hugely overgrown 150m garden. They have already dropped their eye-watering initial price, but houses on that street, and in that condition, are not selling for the amount they still want. Even a house across the road in better nick hasn't sold in 8 months.

We put in an offer knowing we'd have a job on our hands - new bathroom, updated kitchen, massive garden to be cleared. They won't budge on price. And the house is still sitting there.

If homes weren't seen as an easy way to make money I think people would look after them better. As it stands people like these vendors I've described seem to think you can "make" 150k doing very little. Not everyone, but enough.