Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

Tomous wrote:Yeah over the past few decades the housing system in the UK has become completely broken.

The insane thing at least for me is even with the service charges going up I'm paying less overall than I did for just rent. :lol:

I thankfully own my own home outright, but I've noticed what has gradually happened to my street in the last decade or so is the majority of homes that have gone up for sale have been gobbled up by landlords or developers and turned into maisonettes, flats and one room 'apartments'. So what was once a family home for a couple and 1 or 2 kids has morphed into a house with 5 or 6 students/'professionals' living in it. Repeat that down maybe 80% or so of the street. So first they took these homes that were affordable and made then unaffordable. Then they split them in 2. And then they split them into shared accommodation. And all this has occurred in the last decade or so.

My uncle lives in a flat. When he moved there in the early 2000s everyone there was an owner. Now he's one of maybe 2 others that own. The rest have, you guessed it, been purchased by landlords and rented back out.

The landlord who owns the property next to me also drives a Tesla, I thought I'd just throw that out there.

KK wrote:...My uncle lives in a flat. When he moved there in the early 2000s everyone there was an owner. Now he's one of maybe 2 others that own. The rest have, you guessed it, been purchased by landlords and rented back out.

I can relate to this, KK. I've had my flat for over twenty years and, yeah, when I bought it nearly all of the flats were lived in by their owners. Now it has totally changed and more and more are rented out. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of landlords who rent out the flats do not give a sh1t about maintaining the flats or what goes on there; as long as they get their monthly £1,500 rental fee.

How do we fix this broken housing market, Britain is scary, the wealth gap is horrific, and our governments don't care.

Build more houses. We have the among the lowest vacancy rates and dwelling per person in the OECD.

There's various data points/studies out there which show we've underbuilt relative to our population about 4 million homes.

Every place (Wellington, Minneapolis, Austin) which has liberalised building construction has seen rents/housing costs fall.

Except they will just be bought up by investors.

Victor Mildew wrote:Except they will just be bought up by investors.

And? If you have housing abundance that leads to landlords fighting for tenants (as shown in the data of places I mentioned above). Speculation happens with shortages not with abundance.

Build council houses.

Build more houses, raise taxes to anyone (or any company) buying a home that isn't going to be their primary residence.

This house went viral recently for how expensive it is:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/145778303#/?channel=RES_BUY

:dread:

Curls wrote:How do we fix this broken housing market, Britain is scary, the wealth gap is horrific, and our governments don't care.

We've a shortage of over 4 million homes, we struggle to build 250k new homes per year and the population is expected to increase to 74 million by 2036:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68139947

Even if policies were implemented that doubled house building to 500k, we still wouldn't begin to bring housing costs down, it's just standing still.

I'm optimistic Starmer will be radical on planning reform since it's a policy that doesn't require lots of government spending.

However even if all the policy reforms are implemented (with sufficient radicalism), you'd be looking at over a decade before the results really show up.

The length of time is a large part of the issue behind politicians kicking the can down the road.

Two electoral cycles occur before the benefits begin to show up but all the initial building work is front-loaded and the voters that support "build more bloody houses" don't yet live there to vote in favour of politicians who want to build more homes.

Also, a lot of housing developers are used to big profits on flipping new houses - in terms of costs vs sale price - but building costs have risen and the thought of having millions of new houses going for (naturally) cheaper prices is seen as a problem.

So it would need increased regulation to stick a rocket up their backsides, it isn't enough to subsidise small and medium housebuilders, although it does help. Large developers are going to have to get used to a flat profit percentage year on year - or at least a flatter one than they're used to.

From what I understand that's a bit of a nightmare to implement though. Plus, at what level of subsidisation, regulation and supervision does the industry shift over the line towards being effectively nationalised? Which opens up a whole other debate.

Imrahil wrote:Also, a lot of housing developers are used to big profits on flipping new houses - in terms of costs vs sale price - but building costs have risen and the thought of having millions of new houses going for (naturally) cheaper prices is seen as a problem.

So it would need increased regulation to stick a rocket up their backsides, it isn't enough to subsidise small and medium housebuilders, although it does help. Large developers are going to have to get used to a flat profit percentage year on year - or at least a flatter one than they're used to.

From what I understand that's a bit of a nightmare to implement though. Plus, at what level of subsidisation, regulation and supervision does the industry shift over the line towards being effectively nationalised? Which opens up a whole other debate.

We need to fix the housing market!

Okay, we shall build many more affordable houses, to satiate the market and reduce house prices!

Would my house also reduce in value?

Yes.

...umm

CON +37

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:
Imrahil wrote:Also, a lot of housing developers are used to big profits on flipping new houses - in terms of costs vs sale price - but building costs have risen and the thought of having millions of new houses going for (naturally) cheaper prices is seen as a problem.

So it would need increased regulation to stick a rocket up their backsides, it isn't enough to subsidise small and medium housebuilders, although it does help. Large developers are going to have to get used to a flat profit percentage year on year - or at least a flatter one than they're used to.

From what I understand that's a bit of a nightmare to implement though. Plus, at what level of subsidisation, regulation and supervision does the industry shift over the line towards being effectively nationalised? Which opens up a whole other debate.

We need to fix the housing market!

Okay, we shall build many more affordable houses, to satiate the market and reduce house prices!

Would my house also reduce in value?

Yes.

...umm

CON +37

Would it stop my children killing me for the inheritance?

Yes.

Revolutionary Communist Party +89

Got an email from MoneySupermarket this evening, advising that EDF are currently offering the best fixed dual-fuel tariff on the market.

They're my current provider, so I've had a look, and sure enough, it is the first good 'deal' I've seen in a long time, that is both for a full year and a 15-20% discount on the variable rate. Simple enough to sign up in a few clicks.

For those who want to check it out, the tariff name is EDF Essentials 1yr Mar25v6.

Curls wrote:How do we fix this broken housing market, Britain is scary, the wealth gap is horrific, and our governments don't care.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... ing-crisis

Herdanos wrote:
Curls wrote:How do we fix this broken housing market, Britain is scary, the wealth gap is horrific, and our governments don't care.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing-crisis

This is written by some grifter with a book to flog. It's not true that we're middle of the pack with housing:

Forty years ago, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland had roughly 400 homes per 1,000 residents, level with developed continental European countries. Since then the two groups have diverged, the Anglosphere standing still while western Europe has pulled clear to 560 per 1,000.

twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1770103839464501510

twitter.com/PJTheEconomist/status/1770119823034355972

Any time you see an article arguing the UK has enough homes already, from someone of any political persuasion, you can be sure you’re going to see some misunderstood statistics, or some used outright wrongly.

Grumpy David wrote:This house went viral recently for how expensive it is:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/145778303#/?channel=RES_BUY

Jesus Christ, that's insane. Firstly, that a rather plain house can have such a price, secondly that anyone could afford it, and thirdly that anyone would choose that, when the same money could get you something extraordinary in any other location.

Grumpy David wrote:This is written by some grifter with a book to flog.

twitter.com/TorstenBell/status/1755872947925918181

Maybe we should, I dunno, build more homes and end landlordism.

Herdanos wrote:
Grumpy David wrote:This is written by some grifter with a book to flog.

No counter point.

That's not a gotcha, the article you linked is misinformation and easily proven as such. A tweet by someone in disagreement isn't flogging a book with a flawed premise.

Herdanos wrote:Maybe we should, I dunno, build more homes and end landlordism.

The article you linked only offers the 2nd suggestion and denies the existence of the 1st as a meaningful issue.

Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

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