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shortage of homes in the UK?
Comments
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Wrong. A major factor has been changes in the family. Divorce splits a family in two and so may give rise to the need for an extra house. People are living longer and elderly people are staying in their homes rather than moving in with their children or moving to a care home. In the old days children often lived with their parents until they married and then moved as a couple into a new home. Now they dont. All these factors have caused a significant reduction in the average number of people per household.
Contrary to popular belief divorced people do not continue to live on there own. Generally speaking people can afford to have less children and that has affected the average household size.0 -
Well the built space is a little under 9%.
the real problem is that the economic activity and homes are concentrated in a few areas. We need a new new town movementStop! Think. Read the small print. Trust nothing and assume that it is your responsibility. That way it rarely goes wrong.
Actively hunting down the person who invented the imaginary tenure, "share freehold"; if you can show me one I will produce my daughter's unicorn0 -
We live on a small island, and import enough food already, so it's very important not to build over too much more green belt land.
That's a bit of a red herring though, isn't it?
It turns out that horses being kept for little Tarquin and Henrietta to go riding on the weekends currently use enough space for 18,000,000 new homes....
http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/horse-and-house/6527588.blogNinety per cent of England is countryside – around 12 million hectares - but only 8.9 million hectares, or 74 percent, is actually used for agriculture, and around half of this is grazing land, mainly occupied by sheep and cattle.
However, some of it is also occupied by horses.
In fact, when you start to look at the statistics for the horse population some interesting figures emerge.
The estimate for the number of horses in England ranges from 600,000 to 1.1 million but no more than 20,000 of them are professional animals – i.e. involved in the horse-racing industry, eventing or dressage.
According to the British Equestrian Trade Association an estimated 3.5 million people ride each year and the vast majority are leisure riders - and 75 percent of them are women and children.
But there is also a problem with surplus and unwanted horses, with many reports of horses being dumped on land around the country.
According to the British Horse Industry Confederation, the average land grazed by each horse is one hectare.
So even using a very conservative estimate, at least 600,000 hectares of England’s countryside is occupied by horses, and probably a lot more.
To put this into context, this is almost HALF of the of the 1.3 million hectares of England that is built upon.
What’s more, with the exception of a few rogue burgers, horses contribute precisely nothing to our food chain.
So just to be clear, horses occupy an area of land that is almost half the built up area of England. That is enough for 18 million homes! Most horses are grazed on land that may not be suitable for agriculture.
In my previous blogs I have suggested that we need to build 3 million homes on greenfield sites over the next twenty years.
In other words, just one seventh of the land currently used by horses could be built upon and it would have no impact upon food production whatsoever.
This nails the argument that loss of greenfield land means loss of food production.
So do you want to solve the million plus housing shortage that is now critical or not?
Because we can do so, without touching a single square foot of agricultural land.
It may mean a few less places are available to keep recreational horses, but that seems a small price to pay....“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
-- President John F. Kennedy”0 -
Contrary to popular belief divorced people do not continue to live on there own. .
A large percentage of them do.
The rise in single person households over the last 50 years has been significant.
Another contributing factor has been aging and the difference between male and female life expectancy.“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
-- President John F. Kennedy”0 -
How many properties are there in each? Does anyone know? Maybe (suggesting, no knowledge!) France has far fewer.
Maybe we did most of our building years ago... who's to say France aren't now playing 'catch-up'?
Without all these facts and figures, surely it's meaningless who's building what/how many this year, next year, or in future years?
Maybe the immigrants here are living together more so there's not so much demand?
Maybe people are choosing to extend their current houses/convert lofts than move?
Maybe France have only just taken the 'most houses built in a year' title. Has that always been the case? Is it just over the last few years?
As I say, all suggestions - but surely all relevant as to why we currently build less than France.
Why not compare against other countries - you may find we build three times as many as comparably sized countries.
Jx
Good questions
France is the best most comparable nation because
Almost the same population
Almost the same population growth
Almost the same gdp per head
France not only builds a lot more they also have more existing homes.
The occupancy rate in France is 2.15 vs 2.35 in the UK.
What that means is, right now the uk would need to have 2.1 million more homes to match Frances homes per capita
So not only are the French building some 350-400k homes but they already have more homes per head. Therefore every year that passes the uk has even fewer homes per jead relative to France0 -
Even with an ageing population all true the "native" population has not increased in nearly 20 years.
It is anyway not just houses required, clearly schools, hospitals, shops never mind them actually travelling. As I said there are loads of vested interests never mind the "they work harder" issues.
The food argument earlier is funny this country probably could produce enough food to sustain this population but it would be back to rationing. We have not actually been balanced on food production since before world war 1.
As for horses etc clearly land is not evenly distributed nor will the elite have any interest in changing that. Still you can use help to buy to get yourself a badly built flat with noisy neighbours lucky you!0 -
simple truth is
As property man says you actually need a new new town movement with a direct transport link into London.
Trying to build anywhere in the south on a large scale is impossible due to green belt restrictions and the nimbys
Unless you go the route of the previous government and force institutions to the north like the BBC move to Salford then business will stay where they are currently located0 -
propertyman wrote: »Well the built space is a little under 9%.
the real problem is that the economic activity and homes are concentrated in a few areas. We need a new new town movement
France is probably (socialist government) buying short term growth of GDP by building houses as done in the thirties. Sadly it does very little for GDP in the long term as it adds nothing to productivity of the country.
This country has a real problem with mobility the south east where job creation seems highest is one of the most expensive areas to move to, as such whilst there maybe jobs available its not easy to go and do them. Creating new towns does not solve this problem and will still leave most of the problems.
Ironically subsidising jobs with working benefits and housing benefits means firms do not have to pay significantly higher wages to be based in the south east and thus firms do not move to cheaper areas. Spreading round the growth.0 -
I'm sure the price of land has nothing to do with it.0
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Even with an ageing population all true the "native" population has not increased in nearly 20 years.
It is anyway not just houses required, clearly schools, hospitals, shops never mind them actually travelling. As I said there are loads of vested interests never mind the "they work harder" issues.
The food argument earlier is funny this country probably could produce enough food to sustain this population but it would be back to rationing. We have not actually been balanced on food production since before world war 1.
As for horses etc clearly land is not evenly distributed nor will the elite have any interest in changing that. Still you can use help to buy to get yourself a badly built flat with noisy neighbours lucky you!
you don't seem to understand, a country needs more homes even with a static population the the occupancy rate can fall.
For example. Germany is expeccted to lose about a million people over the next decade yet they still expect to build about 1.5 million homes.
The need for more homes only if the population is increasing is one of those terribly wrong misconceptions0
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