Is there a distinction in your mind and if so what is it?

chucky

shortchanged wrote: »

I don't really care about the party politics of it all chucky. It's just that whoever carried out the policy, it has turned out to be disastrous for the UK housing market.

Bla Bla bla

JencParker wrote: »

You sound like the Labour party !

CLAPTON

Better_Days wrote: »

Agreed.

So what RTB has done is change the balance between affordable housing and 'market rate' housing? If a social housing tenant exercises their RTB that is one less property in the pool of affordable housing. This change has been facilitated by housing benefit and exacerbated by the factors which you have pointed to such as the increase in single person households and population growth.

With regard to house building - is the problem actually planning or is it more that large builders are sitting on plots of land with planning approved but seeking to maintain profit levels (as is their duty to shareholders) by 'drip feeding' new developments? It seems to me that Local Authorities getting on and building social housing would circumvent this - but presumably that is contrary to political ideology of 'let the market decide'. In the meantime it costs the country a fortune in housing benefit, but presumably partly offset by the increase in SDLT revenue as house prices increase. Hmm.

RTB has reduced the number of social housing properties but it has also reduced the number of people requiring social housing : so no real change there.


As far as builders hoarding land:
have a look at the annual accounts of a major house builders PLC;
you will see they went into massive loss after 2008, stopped paying dividends and several nearly became bankrupt
(check it out for yourself: share holders were not happy!)

now maybe they were playing a clever game to hoard land for the good times
in my view they simply had few customers

and if their game is to hoard land why are they building now?

In any event there are thousands of small builders : why aren't they building : are they all part of a massive conspiracy?

Planning controls are not the only problem : when you buy a new build property you are also paying for 'local infrastructure' and you are paying for 'affordable' (i.e social rented ) housing too:
this makes new builds rather expensive compared to already loved properties

why buy a new small expensive place when you can buy a cheaper old but bigger property?
what would you choose?


we need to enable as much new building in places where we have shortage.. so we need to stop the inhibitors
-allow more building and stop the fees and charges

Better_Days

CLAPTON wrote: »

RTB has reduced the number of social housing properties but it has also reduced the number of people requiring social housing : so no real change there.

Well, I think there is a change in the long term. If someone exercises their RTB then that property is taken out of the social housing sector for ever. When the owner of their RTB property passes away the property is not re-allocated by the local authority to someone else needing social housing.

Thanks for the info re building and planning, not an area I know much about - although I hadn't gone as far as thinking there is a massive conspiracy , simply mulling over the possible effects of market forces.

I had heard of the 'local infrastructure' payments which I understand can run into thousands of pounds for just one property, and certainly a disincentive for new builds.

Thrugelmir

JencParker wrote: »

You sound like the Labour party !

So what caused the global financial crisis ?

One of Brown's clowns....... some UK banks were as guilty as anybody else.

CLAPTON

Better_Days wrote: »

Well, I think there is a change in the long term. If someone exercises their RTB then that property is taken out of the social housing sector for ever. When the owner of their RTB property passes away the property is not re-allocated by the local authority to someone else needing social housing.

Thanks for the info re building and planning, not an area I know much about - although I hadn't gone as far as thinking there is a massive conspiracy , simply mulling over the possible effects of market forces.

I had heard of the 'local infrastructure' payments which I understand can run into thousands of pounds for just one property, and certainly a disincentive for new builds.

I'm not really sure that a 'social ' tenant is more worthy of a property than an owner occupier or a private renter.

In many ways the existence of social housing is a failure of our society.

The main point is we have too few properties in relation to our population so we need to build more.

chucky

Thrugelmir wrote: »

One of Brown's clowns....... some UK banks were as guilty as anybody else.

Thrugertrol, sorry to break it to you but the global financial crisis wasn't caused by a labour clown