Ten steps to release pressure on housing market

GeorgeHowell

Masomnia wrote: »

How many people want to work longer and pay more tax to make up for it though?

It doesn't have to work that way -- properly managed you would have a greater proportion gainfully employed. Look how much better off some much smaller countries are.

CLAPTON

TickersPlaysPop wrote: »

Is there an official statistic for the % of property sales per mth that are buy to let?

In response to Clapton....
We don't want to buy houses and let them at below avg rent, we want people to be able to buy their own home, for their mthly payments to go to buying their own home, and for people to have an investment for their later years..... We don't want people to be pushed down, exploited and kept in an economic lower class.

Houses for homes not profiteers

I realise now that a lot of people who post on here are landlords! I have been wondering what motivates people to post here. Mine is an awareness of what is going on in our country right now, and a sense of duty to try and do something about it.

Why do people post here?
Who posts here? Are you all landlords?
I think it would be very very interesting to know the backgrounds, careers, age, wealth, property portfolios of those that post here.

Surely some of your comments will be biased?

that's good: then you simply need to build houses and sell them for what people can afford so every person without exception can afford a house.

Masomnia

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

It doesn't have to work that way -- properly managed you would have a greater proportion gainfully employed. Look how much better off some much smaller countries are.

I can't see how employment is going to increase if the population and demand for services is decreasing.

TickersPlaysPop

I have no problem with anybody who has been very successful and purchased many properties to rent out.

Well done to all that have done this. :-)

It was within the rules and laws of the time, and now those rules, laws, and culture need to change over a period of time. It won't make criminals of those with many properties, but will prevent further purchases. A phased approach to bring in the rules over time would also prevent a sudden panic, or shift in the market.

The current large rental market would be replaced with more resident owners, and more social housing, and more very small scale landlord'ism. Maybe, restrict landlord'ism to only 1 extra property. Also, there could be laws to only allow large scale landlord'ism to be non profit organisations set up to own, and mange rental properties.... the investment money could be from institutional investment that would be happy to invest due to the now stable housing market.

There must be examples of different ways of deling with housing from other countries... Maybe Germany?

GeorgeHowell

Masomnia wrote: »

I can't see how employment is going to increase if the population and demand for services is decreasing.

With various policies, including limiting immigration to resolving genuine skills shortages, the percentage of non-contributors is reduced. Alongside a population policy would have to be education policies that prepared people for work, and welfare policies that provided the incentive to work.

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Guardian article which explains the following ten steps in full...

1. Build more homes

It's like having a 10 step plan to stop gaining weight which starts with 1/ Eat less, exercise more and continues through pointless legislation like "put a tax on seats".

Even, UK "we're full so !!!! off" IP support having 5 million immigrants over the next 10 years. At current occupation rate those people mean building 2-3 million homes. Add on the fact we're already short on housing and one can only conclude that if the "anti-immigration party" won a landslide in we'd still need to build 400,000+ homes a year for the next decade!

The best thing the government could do for house building is make a commitment to keeping house building at that level. They could do this by committing to fund social housing if demand for private housing wasn't sufficient at points during that period.

The problem is that no party wants to be accused of ruining our countryside by building 30 more Lutons, and no paper wants to fight for that either.

N1AK

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

I also know that the long term solution for this country has to be less people.

Then feel free to help solve the problem by emigrating, not having children or euthanasing the children you've already had :T

The issue with saying the long term solution is less people is that even if it is true then the long term is a considerable number of decades. Making a transition to an economy that would function on a smaller, older population would require vast decreases in public spending, debt etc which cannot be made quickly.

That's exactly why part of UKIPs "going serious" process has been changing from opposing immigration to openly welcoming the idea of increasing the population of the UK by 5 million in the next decade.

Masomnia

N1AK wrote: »

That's exactly why part of UKIPs "going serious" process has been changing from opposing immigration to openly welcoming the idea of increasing the population of the UK by 5 million in the next decade.

Really? But that implies immigration levels similar to what we have now, surely?

0 Immigration would mean a declining UK population.

N1AK

Masomnia wrote: »

Really? But that implies immigration levels similar to what we have now, surely?

0 Immigration would mean a declining UK population.

I don't come up with UKIP policy, all I know is that until recently UKIP were anti-immigration and now they are talking about being more selective and letting in 50,000 immigrants a year.

That is lower than the current levels of immigration but it's hardly a complete change of policy.

Masomnia

N1AK wrote: »

I don't come up with UKIP policy, all I know is that until recently UKIP were anti-immigration and now they are talking about being more selective and letting in 50,000 immigrants a year.

That is lower than the current levels of immigration but it's hardly a complete change of policy.

I'm just a bit surprised. It's now that they're getting more mainstream exposure their policies are being properly questioned. But no, it's not a massive policy shift.