The stich up keepiing homes unaffordable

Graham_Devon

We blame planning on here a lot. The media blames planning a lot. The housebuilders and the government, too, blame planning.

But, as an article in the independant points out, 80% of planning applications are approved, and of those not approved, 80% get approved by the appeals directorate, making 95% of planning applications successful.(these numbers, mind, do seem extremly high!)

There is 3 years worth of planning already approved, yet builders still continue to blame planning restrictions for the lack of homes.

Which seems odd.

BUT, construction firms donated £510,000 to the conservative party in the last 6 months of 2011 alone. Tidy sum. On the back of that, they got 28 official meetings with ther government in the first 15 months of taking office. That's just shy of 2 meetings per month to discuss housebuilding. Yet nothing has really happened, bar more taxpayer cash being thrown at the system.

The bottom line is that the only winners in this game are the housebuilders, who keep their profit margins, and the Government, which keeps up the pretence that it is doing something about the housing crisis.


The losers, as usual, are the rest of us.

Labour could tap into this. But they seem extremely quiet on help to buy, which seems the obvious battlegrounmd considering the poor press it's getting.



http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-stitchup-that-keeps-homes-unaffordable-8778390.html

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

But, as an article in the independant points out, 80% of planning applications by housebuilders are approved, and of those not approved, 80% get approved by the appeals directorate, making 95% of planning applications successful.

How much does it cost?

How long does it take?

Tesco have got planning for a store near me. It's taken years, cost thousands in costs I'm sure, and they've got to redevelop an existing outdoor market too. Wonder why essentials are going up in price?

Same with houses. Years of planning and 'backhanders' in the form of social housing and political donations. Wonder why houses are expensive?

CLAPTON

what mechanism do they use to keep house prices high?

there are over 1000 builders in the uK

even the big boys have a relatively small share of the market

are all these 1000s of firms all in massive conspiracy?

how do they do this?

Loughton_Monkey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

......BUT, construction firms donated £510,000 to the conservative party in the last 6 months of 2011 alone. Tidy sum. On the back of that, they got 28 official meetings with ther government in the first 15 months of taking office.....

Sounds like money extremely well spent to me. I wonder if the construction chairmen can still buy knighthoods and peerages...

.... or whether they come on the back of the £510K?

But that's not important right now...

This so-called Mira Bar-Hillel [an anagram of 'illiberal harm' by the way] might have had a tinch more credibility had she bothered to find out how many of these 'available planning permissions' are actually being sat upon by mainstream builders, as opposed to the army of individuals who go through the motions of getting permission to build in their large back garden, or are naff 'postage stamp' holes in residential areas that no-one has bothered to buy despite planning permission...

Like Clapton, I cannot see how or why professional builders would mothball their building land. The degree to which they are 'sitting' on them is probably due to perfectly normal and rational reasons. They buy the land. Put forward a design. Ultimately get planning permission. But I expect the local planners spend 2 years or more trying to screw the builders down for 'free goodies' like access roads, playgrounds, 'wildlife ponds'......

I hesitate to suggest this, but maybe one of the reasons (if they are sitting on them) is the obvious one that houses are far too cheap. Land is not cheap. Concrete blocks from Germany are in short supply and probably costly. Even with ZH contract brickies they maybe sniff at the small or non-existant profit in them. They've done well recently by cherry-picking from their 'best deal' sites but they probably need another 10% or 15% upward 'correction' in price to make the others turn a good screw.....

.... won't be long, now.

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

We blame planning on here a lot. The media blames planning a lot. The housebuilders and the government, too, blame planning.

But, as an article in the independant points out, 80% of planning applications are approved, and of those not approved, 80% get approved by the appeals directorate, making 95% of planning applications successful.(these numbers, mind, do seem extremly high!)

There is 3 years worth of planning already approved, yet builders still continue to blame planning restrictions for the lack of homes.

Which seems odd.

BUT, construction firms donated £510,000 to the conservative party in the last 6 months of 2011 alone. Tidy sum. On the back of that, they got 28 official meetings with ther government in the first 15 months of taking office. That's just shy of 2 meetings per month to discuss housebuilding. Yet nothing has really happened, bar more taxpayer cash being thrown at the system.

Labour could tap into this. But they seem extremely quiet on help to buy, which seems the obvious battlegrounmd considering the poor press it's getting.



http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-stitchup-that-keeps-homes-unaffordable-8778390.html

Presumably the big builders only put in planning applications that they believe are highly likely to succeed. Drawing up an application for 100 houses or whatever size a modern housing estate is must cost a fortune. You're not even going to start the process unless there's a fair chance of success.

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Presumably the big builders only put in planning applications that they believe are highly likely to succeed. Drawing up an application for 100 houses or whatever size a modern housing estate is must cost a fortune. You're not even going to start the process unless there's a fair chance of success.

I found the planning application process very easy and was approved first time within 6 weeks.

That said, I did my homework, considered what concerns may be raised and included plans to answer those concerns (as a result did not have any objections).

Of course, I was in regular communications with the planners on our proposed application ahead of submitting in order to increase the likelihood of acceptance.

There is a large potential building plot near where I am building which already has planning permission for hundreds of roads, however the building company is trying to hole the local council to ransom requesting and additional river crossing (which the council is refusing), therefore the builder is citing they are not going to build on the land and try to pressurise the council to change their mind.

It's cat and mouse, but of course, planning applications and building warrants have a set time to be used before planning application and warrants need to be resubmited

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Drawing up an application for 100 houses or whatever size a modern housing estate is must cost a fortune. You're not even going to start the process unless there's a fair chance of success.

The cost of the planning application is in relation to the size of the plot being applied for (with a maximum cap).

Of course for hundreds of houses, this will likely be thousands of pounds outlay.

It is in the interest of the applicant to structure the application for likely approval to negate having to resubmit.

I do know of quite a few plots with granted approval where the work has not yet started.

MacMickster

Almost 400,000 homes in England have been given planning permission but have yet to be built, research suggests.........

Councils said there were still thousands of "shovel-ready" sites where work had not begun because of a cap on the amount local authorities could invest in new housing.........

"Government has an unrivalled opportunity to create jobs, provide tens of thousands of homes and help the economy without having to find a single extra penny.

"New homes are badly-needed and councils want to get on with building them. The common sense answer is for the Treasury to remove its house building block and let us get on with it."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23790071

If this is the case, and there is a wealth of publically owned land shovel-ready with planning permission, that restrictions from central government are preventing from being developed, then maybe those donations to the Conservatives are having the desired effect.

Generali

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

The cost of the planning application is in relation to the size of the plot being applied for (with a maximum cap).

Of course for hundreds of houses, this will likely be thousands of pounds outlay.

It is in the interest of the applicant to structure the application for likely approval to negate having to resubmit.

I do know of quite a few plots with granted approval where the work has not yet started.

The cost is most likely in drawing up the plans.

If you're building a housing estate then you can't just stick in plans for houses, you'll need to liaise with utilities providers to see what facilities they need. If you want to have buses service the estate then you'll need to talk to the bus company, and quite possibly the transport department of the local council if it's a subsidised service.

Then you might decide a local supermarket will help sell your little boxes on the hillside so you'll need to approach the big chains, strike an Agreement in Principle, ensure suitable access for heavy trucks.

You might decide that extra school places or a new primary school will get you over the line. That means talking to the education department, probably getting an agreement with a PFI firm.

All of those side agreements will need legals in place before the application goes ahead. Plus you'll need a small army of accountants to work out whether all this is worth it.

You wouldn't want to do this halfheartedly.

PasturesNew

It's not the lack of spelling ability then, as indicated by the title.

vivatifosi

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Like Clapton, I cannot see how or why professional builders would mothball their building land. The degree to which they are 'sitting' on them is probably due to perfectly normal and rational reasons. They buy the land. Put forward a design. Ultimately get planning permission. But I expect the local planners spend 2 years or more trying to screw the builders down for 'free goodies' like access roads, playgrounds, 'wildlife ponds'......
.

A builder is never going to do all their construction starts at the same time, they wouldn't be able to manage them all for one thing.

We need to consider small local builders and large nationals as having different behaviours. A local builder has to be opportunistic and buy land when they can. This will generally be smaller plots and there will be lots of competition. They cannot afford to sit on this.

Large firms, on the other hand, build substantial land banks. Where possible, they work on the principle of buying land low and selling houses high. Bear in mind they are aware of local housing variables, so if Guildford prices for example rose faster than Sittingbourne, they would take advantage of that growth to take a profit.

For me, the far bigger issue is availability of land and what will get permission to build. However if this was massively relaxed, the speculative boom in terms of buying up farmland would be like something out of the wild west and could lead to food insecurity. I'm not sure how to get around this.