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Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2024 12:51 pm
by Qikz
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2024 1:02 pm
by KK
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2024 1:13 pm
by jawa_
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:47 pm
by Curls
How do we fix this broken housing market, Britain is scary, the wealth gap is horrific, and our governments don't care.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 6:58 am
by Ecno
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 7:10 am
by Victor Mildew
Except they will just be bought up by investors.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 7:15 am
by Ecno
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 7:17 am
by Moggy
Build council houses.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 7:56 am
by Tomous
Build more houses, raise taxes to anyone (or any company) buying a home that isn't going to be their primary residence.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 10:12 am
by Grumpy David
This house went viral recently for how expensive it is:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/145778303#/?channel=RES_BUY 
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-68139947Even 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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 11:08 am
by Imrahil
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 11:25 am
by Oblomov Boblomov
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.
...ummCON +37
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 11:52 am
by Moggy
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.
...ummCON +37
Would it stop my children killing me for the inheritance?Yes.
Revolutionary Communist Party +89
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2024 11:27 pm
by Clarkman
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.
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2024 7:06 am
by Herdanos
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
Re: Cost of Living - How are you handling it?
Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2024 10:35 am
by Grumpy David
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.