British Housing is rubbish

ka7e

We have thought of down-sizing from our Edwardian 4-storey house, lovely airy, large rooms but draughty and expensive to maintain. All the new-build houses in our area have tiny 4th bedrooms and postage stamp-sized, North-facing bits of garden surrounded by 6ft high fences.
I'd love something modern with a bit of individuality. I don't want the mock-Tudor/Georgian/Victorian "traditional" facade on a "link-detached" house that is actually smaller than the usual terraced house.
Bunging an extra floor on and calling it a townhouse isn't family-friendly - especially when you can't get a sofa upstairs to the lounge. Building a flat and calling it a Coachhouse does not detract from the fact that you are living above a row of garages and are subject to the noise and disruption of all the comings and goings of their owners.
Our newest local development is of 6 timber-framed blocks flats on a river bank. No new flood defences, just fingers rossed that a Spring tide doesn't coincide with heavy rain!

jennifernil

Stamp Duty is a big dis-incentive to we empty-nesters who could down-size.
What with that and legal, estate agent and removal costs, moving would cost us £20k.

Guy_Montag

jennifernil wrote: »

Stamp Duty is a big dis-incentive to we empty-nesters who could down-size.
What with that and legal, estate agent and removal costs, moving would cost us £20k.

But assuming you bought 10+ years ago you're looking at a MASSIVE profit. Surely you can afford a bit of stamp duty?

noyk

Yes, but at what cost? & for who's benefit.

Very good points Guy; perhaps this will help answer this one - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1995/02/22/a-land-reform-manifesto/

Guy_Montag

noyk wrote: »

Very good points Guy; perhaps this will help answer this one - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1995/02/22/a-land-reform-manifesto/

i think you knew my answer already;)

noyk

Just for comparison, here is a average sizes table i lifted from http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Issues/Housing.aspx

benood

Developers will doubtless tell you that they get better prices/margins from 1000sq ft 4 bedroom detatched houses than 1200 sq ft apartments/terraced houses. Supply and Demand innit. Until the public start buying houses based on square footage rather than number of bedrooms we will continue to see newbuild shoeboxes I'm afraid.

Generali

noyk wrote: »

Very good points Guy; perhaps this will help answer this one - http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1995/02/22/a-land-reform-manifesto/

A fascinating combination of false analogy, conjecture, unsupported argument, dodgy history and spurious* logic - I know socialists love this rubbish but please spare the rest of us.

*PS - Recomend you look up the meaning of 'spurious', I bet you don't know what it really means. I didn't!

jennifernil

We BUILT the house 19 years ago, cost was about £160k. Plus we did a LOT of work ourselves. We have since spent another £30k on it, and we could probably sell for £475 or £500k. So a "profit" of say £290k, minus outstanding mortgage of £66k. So £20k is a fair chunk of that.
Up here in Scotland we have not seen the same price increases you have in most parts of England.
We would like a decent bungalow (old legs!) but that would cost us about £350k plus costs. So not much left over for our retirement.
Anyway, the house is designed to our spec, so buying something "ready made" is very difficult.

Just wish the Council Tax wasn't so high!

noyk

Generali wrote: »

A fascinating combination of false analogy, conjecture, unsupported argument, dodgy history and spurious* logic - I know socialists love this rubbish but please spare the rest of us.

*PS - Recomend you look up the meaning of 'spurious', I bet you don't know what it really means. I didn't!

Perhaps, but you don't really give much in the way of supportive arguments yourself

So spurious essentially means false, i didn't know that - i assumed it meant additional but useless extra information in the context of the main topic of discussion.