(Thread IKs:
OwlFancier, crispix)
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Oh dear me posted:No it doesn't. As well as excluding foreign-owned property, that stat does not include occasionally rented out property, which I'd expect to include a lot of second homes. The stat that should show need for housebuilding is surely houses per capita, where we're mid-range for the OECD. Housebuilding might be nice but it is not going to solve our landlordism problem. That's an engineering problem
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:20 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 02:27 |
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Oh dear me posted:No it doesn't. As well as excluding foreign-owned property, that stat does not include occasionally rented out property, which I'd expect to include a lot of second homes. The stat that should show need for housebuilding is surely houses per capita, where we're mid-range for the OECD. Housebuilding might be nice but it is not going to solve our landlordism problem. Occasionally rented-out property is still rented-out property. Re: the second bit, some of it is that British houses are the second smallest in OECD (as mentioned in the article); so even if numerically we're average you can't really compare large houses with your average terraced council house conversion, nevermind most typical attic "studios" that have been popping up like rain around here.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:22 |
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Private Speech posted:I bet even people ITT would be in a pandemonious uproar if their house dropped 45% and they suddenly couldn't move due to being locked into mortgages etc. suddenly finding yourself in a loan arrangement where the amount of money you owe the bank is now significantly more than the asset it's leveraged against would be a bit of a shock
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:23 |
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Private Speech posted:Occasionally rented-out property is still rented-out property. "occasionally rented out" means it is not functioning as housing, a place for people to live. And the size of the house is irrelevant if it has the same number of people living in it.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:24 |
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kecske posted:suddenly finding yourself in a loan arrangement where the amount of money you owe the bank is now significantly more than the asset it's leveraged against would be a bit of a shock I mean yeah, that's kind of a feature of the system, not a problem. Basically the reason mortgages are so much better than renting is that you only ever expect house prices to go up. Disproportionally so compared to your income. OwlFancier posted:"occasionally rented out" means it is not functioning as housing, a place for people to live. And the size of the house is irrelevant if it has the same number of people living in it. But the stat where we are middle-of-the-pack for number of houses doesn't take into account how many people live in them, council house subdivided into 5 "studio flats" still counts as 5 for that purpose. Basically if the house size is very small most of that will have been achieved by subdivision, which typically creates much smaller properties, even if they are relatively numerous. e: Also regardless of how many there are "occasionally rented out" - keep in mind that short-term lets are massively popular even outside Britain, so unless you prove that Britain has the single highest rate of short-term lets in OECD (and not just in London but across the country) then the distinction is immaterial since it applies to other countries as well. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Mar 25, 2024 |
# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:25 |
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There's been a lot of discussion in other Commonwealth countries dealing with housing crises (Canada, where I'm from; Australia; New Zealand) about the cause of the problem and it's abundantly clear by now that the main factor isn't foreign investors or even AirBnB but simply the lack of new housing construction overall. The UK housing market has been cruising off of the mass of home construction up until the 1980s, but we're now feeling the slow down of construction since then. The problem now is that skilled labour and materials have gone up dramatically in price since Covid, so it's largely not economical for developers to build reasonably affordable housing these days. In Canada, where there's been a proper housing crisis pretty much for the last quarter century, provincial governments have basically had to come to terms with the fact that the only way they can actually have a working class anywhere near most cities is to make everything as cheap as possible for developers, including massive tax breaks and subsidies, and even then it's barely making a dent in the problem. Of course, all of these governments could simply implement ambitious, well-funded affordable housing construction programmes, but good luck getting that done.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:32 |
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My whole point is that governments could quite easily do that but it would crater house prices, since their value comes directly from how scarce the housing is. Which no electable government is ever going to want to do.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:34 |
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Around me tons of new housing is being built but the problem is they're still bloody expensive AND the commute is way longer. The Oxbridge Rail Project would massively help this but that's currently struggling with NIMBYs, some with good reason (the aforementioned long commute for any available housing).
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:35 |
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Private Speech posted:Regardless it still shows that the amount of under-occupied housing is very low. is it that low? in 2022 it was 4% of all dwellings that were completely unoccupied, a number that rose 10% between 2018 and 2022 Guavanaut posted:They could build some not-house accommodation and have it run by the local authority and not made out of thermite and paraffin wax. lol most tories would vastly prefer the one on the left MeinPanzer posted:There's been a lot of discussion in other Commonwealth countries dealing with housing crises (Canada, where I'm from; Australia; New Zealand) about the cause of the problem and it's abundantly clear by now that the main factor isn't foreign investors or even AirBnB but simply the lack of new housing construction overall. The UK housing market has been cruising off of the mass of home construction up until the 1980s, but we're now feeling the slow down of construction since then. the problem in many commonwealth countries is simply zoning and a refusal to build houses on the part of the government directly between 1946 and 1980 an average of 126000 council homes per year were built in the uk. in 2019 the number was just 6827.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:37 |
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Tesseraction posted:Around me tons of new housing is being built but the problem is they're still bloody expensive AND the commute is way longer. The reason it's bloody expensive is that there isn't enough of it. It's priced according to what people will pay, regardless if new or resold. Nevermind that anywhere near the Oxbridge rail project has a critical shortage of housing.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:40 |
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Tesseraction posted:Around me tons of new housing is being built but the problem is they're still bloody expensive AND the commute is way longer. Same around where my parents live on the south coast. There’s loads going up around Chichester/Arundel way, but there’s bugger all infrastructure to support it and not great public transport. Plus they’re all these small boxy houses with no gardens all piled on top of eachother. Nothing about them looks appealing.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:41 |
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Tesseraction posted:Around me tons of new housing is being built but the problem is they're still bloody expensive AND the commute is way longer.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:42 |
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mediaphage posted:lol most tories would vastly prefer the one on the left
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:42 |
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The_Doctor posted:Same around where my parents live on the south coast. There’s loads going up around Chichester/Arundel way, but there’s bugger all infrastructure to support it and not great public transport. Plus they’re all these small boxy houses with no gardens all piled on top of eachother. Nothing about them looks appealing. TACD posted:Nobody I know would ever consider buying a new build anyway because they’re all made of wet sand and Lego Yet despite that people buy it all the same, since there's not enough to go around. Again, that's the whole point, they can build them terribly and price high because there's nothing else out there and not enough for everyone.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:43 |
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Guavanaut posted:They could build some not-house accommodation and have it run by the local authority and not made out of thermite and paraffin wax. Apparently, Sofia has something like this, with big Soviet apartment blocks interspersed within large forested areas. Sounds cool but I've never been https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/between-the-blocks/ TACD posted:Nobody I know would ever consider buying a new build anyway because they’re all made of wet sand and Lego If you live in a concrete-built house it's gonna be about 30% wet sand by weight, yeah.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:45 |
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I’m in a new build, it isn’t terrible by any means and I did like the layout of it (which is what sold me on it) but it’s a nice little house in a nice little area. Have a place for my dog to poop, there were a couple of issues but nothing major. I do hear of a lot of “absolutely shocking” houses being built mainly because of site agents/managers being poo poo. They do have some advantages (good insulation, can put in stuff like network cabling ahead of time, get sockets moved) but disadvantages in cost. Plus I got a cheap rear end mortgage deal in April 2022.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:50 |
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Private Speech posted:At that point we're in fantasy socialism land, mass housebuilding wouldn't be nearly as difficult to do - but it would absolutely gently caress over house prices, since the only thing holding them so high is scarcity. as long as house owners have veto on housing policy, building lots of houses is equally unrealistic. not to mention the effect plunging prices would have on pension funds etc housing is bad everywhere but lol the UK's hosed itself ragged. you can barely even nudge your stupid freeholds system without some giant institution screaming that's their business model and they've got hostages
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:51 |
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Starbucks posted:
Shameful that you'd have to mortgage your rear end to get a place to live
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:53 |
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Private Speech posted:I bet even people ITT would be in a pandemonious uproar if their house dropped 45% and they suddenly couldn't move due to being locked into mortgages etc. Well sure, in the fantasy land where I owned a home. But I don't. And the only way I will own one will be my parents dying. So I fully support houses dropping 95% of their value.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 13:58 |
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:as long as house owners have veto on housing policy, building lots of houses is equally unrealistic. not to mention the effect plunging prices would have on pension funds etc Glasgow also has some places built like this. You've got to have strong ideas about how you use and preserve the green space, otherwise it becomes liminal. There's probably a perfect number of houses that you could build that would suppress demand sufficiently that prices would be static relative to income, but good luck achieving that when: The UK's aging still don't have a reasonable state safety net compared to their European counterparts despite years of triple-lock and many depend on property value for security in later life, or as intergenerational wealth building A decade of ZIRP and a stagnated stock market have boosted property ownership as a passive income choice while loving all the alternatives Large housebuilders have a stranglehold on supply and can set their margin by choosing a building rate, but are also wholly debt dependent to build so they are really vulnerable to boom and bust Like, interest rates going up a bit and economic gravity being switched back on are going to help most of that, but it'll take decades to feed through.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:01 |
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Endjinneer posted:Pension funds cannot own residential property. There's some quote about how the worst landlord isn't a faceless corporation with thousands of houses, it's the little old lady who used her widow's pension to buy a townhouse split into three flats, and ekes out a life off the rent. I think that might be George Orwell
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:11 |
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Starbucks posted:I’m in a new build, it isn’t terrible by any means and I did like the layout of it (which is what sold me on it) but it’s a nice little house in a nice little area. Have a place for my dog to poop, there were a couple of issues but nothing major. Not only are they absolutely shocking, they're rrrrrridickerlous https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nPU1ziCYOY
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:16 |
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2024, another lovely Orwellian dystopia.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:17 |
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Tesseraction posted:2024, another lovely Orwellian dystopia. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a self-driven Cybertruck flattening pedestrians—forever
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:19 |
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Private Speech posted:Basically the reason mortgages are so much better than renting is that you only ever expect house prices to go up. Disproportionally so compared to your income. I'd argue the reason mortgages are better than renting is that at the end of it all you are now the owner of your pile of bricks and mortar, instead of still having spent a pile of money but for somebody else to achieve that goal. I imagine if your goal is to sell for profit and move up in size or make a tidy sum for your pockets every time as a flipper then sure, the infinite growth paradigm is desirable kecske fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Mar 25, 2024 |
# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:23 |
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forkboy84 posted:Well sure, in the fantasy land where I owned a home. But I don't. And the only way I will own one will be my parents dying. So I fully support houses dropping 95% of their value. It's fine to sincerely want this as long as you accept that it's a strict accelerationist position, and in an economy purpose-built for landlordism this would probably result in a Children of Men scenario before you could maybe transition to any socialist state E: as a bonus though, Kirsty and Phil will be put to the wall
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:25 |
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Failed Imagineer posted:Apparently, Sofia has something like this, with big Soviet apartment blocks interspersed within large forested areas. Sounds cool but I've never been This is much like Singapore where they can cram 1.5x more people into the same amount of space as London while having vastly more green spaces and greenery.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:27 |
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kecske posted:I'd argue the reason mortgages are better than renting is that at the end of it all you are now the owner of your pile of bricks and mortar, instead of still having spent a pile of money but for somebody else to achieve that goal. Yeah but the reason the rates are so (relatively) low compared to other forms of consumer debt is that the underlying house security will stay or grow in value. If houses were instead a high-risk investment then mortgages would be unaffordable, you'd be looking at 10%-15% interest rate, which compounds very quickly. e: In other words imagine paying a typical deposit every year just to keep up with the interest. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Mar 25, 2024 |
# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:34 |
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mediaphage posted:the problem in many commonwealth countries is simply zoning and a refusal to build houses on the part of the government directly That does make me wonder: what was the reaction of homeowners to the massive post-war increase in council housing? The British middle class had been well established long before WWII, so you would think there would have been a similar backlash to the prospect of the value of their primary asset dropping. I'm guessing that there was pushback from property owners but that there was such a groundswell of interest in raising the overall quality of life for citizens after the war that the government just shrugged off any criticism?
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:34 |
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:If you want a pick-up of the future, imagine a self-driven Cybertruck and die of second-hand embarrassment
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:36 |
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MeinPanzer posted:That does make me wonder: what was the reaction of homeowners to the massive post-war increase in council housing? The British middle class had been well established long before WWII, so you would think there would have been a similar backlash to the prospect of the value of their primary asset dropping. It was the radical Labour government who brought in the NHS. They told the rich to eat poo poo and pay taxes. Subsequent Tory governments didn't undo it as it was electoral suicide, until Thatcher and Murdoch succeeded in capturing the media and made sure the plebs would never again be allowed to know what was happening and who was behind it.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:38 |
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Also a shitload of the housing stock had been annihilated by the Germans so it would have been much harder to sit back and do nothing, probably unpatriotic. Now of course they would simply blame those dispossessed by the Blitz for owning a mobile phone or not having enough grindset or looking slightly brown.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:41 |
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Private Speech posted:Yeah but the reason the rates are so (relatively) low compared to other forms of consumer debt is that the underlying house security will stay or grow in value. otoh if houses were shittier investment opportunities they'd be cheaper, and then more people could reasonably buy them to, you know, live in, instead of leveraging themselves to the balls in mortgages that they'll work their whole lives to pay off or renting forever and having nothing at the end of it. Maybe, idk.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:43 |
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Endjinneer posted:Glasgow also has some places built like this. You've got to have strong ideas about how you use and preserve the green space, otherwise it becomes liminal. MeinPanzer posted:That does make me wonder: what was the reaction of homeowners to the massive post-war increase in council housing? The British middle class had been well established long before WWII, so you would think there would have been a similar backlash to the prospect of the value of their primary asset dropping. The massive aerial bombardments in the 40s and the generally poor state of slum housing in the 50s limited the popularity of that line of argument at first though.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 14:45 |
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1 in 5 people lived in a council house in the 70s, and that only dropped to 1 in 10 when you looked at the top quintile of incomes. The butcher and the bank manager both got better houses in the same street. Right to buy and the dropoff in council housebuilding it caused (councils were limited in what they could sell for under RTB, meaning they couldn't build replacements) have meant that the remaining council houses have had to be rationed according to greatest need. Which in turn has meant the remaining council houses are generally occupied by people with the most complex needs. You can't put homes for the wealthy alongside homes for the poor these days though. That's social engineering. Which abandoning everything to a "free" market is not.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 15:08 |
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Guavanaut posted:Ah, that's where he comes from.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 15:16 |
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Yeah the people whining about it were the exact same people who came up with 'nanny state' to describe social engineering in a pejorative manner back in the 60s. Which is to say they were the sort of people who were looked after by a nanny rather than their nan and thought that everyone else would resent that as they did. The idea didn't start resonating with people until the Murdoch Sun and the deregulation craze.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 15:18 |
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I find it weird to assume that house prices are the way they are because of strict supply problems rather than because of a decentralised cartel effect where everyone who owns them is just charging as much as possible for them and nobody has an incentive to undercut anyone else because its a captive market. Electricity isn't expensive because there isn't enough of it, it's because the government raised the cap and the energy companies immediately maxed the prices because they could. Education isn't expensive because it costs a lot to educate people it's because the government let universities charge a fortune and guaranteed the loans so they started shoveling cash into their pockets. The idea that marketization will always bring down prices absent lack of supply is daft.
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 15:19 |
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Failed Imagineer posted:Honestly I'd embed pics but in the Awful app the Imgur functionality is broken and it requires a 16-tap multi-app faff so until that's fixed I cba Lol I'm glad people have been reading my guide
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 15:21 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 02:27 |
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Endjinneer posted:Pension funds cannot own residential property. There's some quote about how the worst landlord isn't a faceless corporation with thousands of houses, it's the little old lady who used her widow's pension to buy a townhouse split into three flats, and ekes out a life off the rent. Unironically can't wait for Comrade Death From Natural Causes to eliminate half the homeowners in the UK
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# ? Mar 25, 2024 15:22 |