Affordable Housing - Can it be done?

Gorgeous_George

As I wait for Gordie's pre-Queen's speech announcement that is expected to focus on affordable housing I thought I'd pose a few quick questions.

What makes housing affordable?

How can housing be built that is affordable? We already have houses that are:
built by cowboys
on flood-plains
have very small rooms and
no gardens

Yet these are considered NOT affordable. What can they possibly do to make the new ones more affordable. Surely, if the standards are maintained, the new houses will only be affordable at the first sale. Future sales of usded houses will adopt used house price values.

Obviously, higher IRs will lead to price reductions. But, higher IRs make houses less affordable (it is this that leads to the price falls). A smaller debt with a larger cost of borrowing hardly makes things more affordable.

IMHO, more houses is the answer.Let's hope the new ones have gardens and rooms that cats can be swung in.



GG

Guy_Montag

We could limit lending practices - no more I/O without a repayment vehicle; no more affordabilty rubbish.

We could build on a little more of the countryside (not playing fields, allotments, gardens).

We could encourage people to rent, by giving them security of tenure.

As a long term goal - we could stop paying people to breed.

Nenen

Guy_Montag wrote: »

As a long term goal - we could stop paying people to breed.

Could you expand upon what you mean by this please?

Guy_Montag

Nenen wrote: »

Could you expand upon what you mean by this please?

Child tax credits & child benefit. There are too many people in this country (I'm not a racist, but...);) I'm far less bothered about immigration than I am at the way we throw money at people who have never had a job & never will have a job just for getting !!!!ed on bacardi breezers & dropping her knickers for some chav. & before we get onto the "children are our future" - if these ADHD-riddled, proto-junkies are our future, we might as well give up now.

I feel a little better now I got that out.

epz_2

ever look out the window when flying into heathrow etc, there is plenty of space to build, its just places the government will let you build and roads etc to them.

now if the government decide that nimby's objections are less important than say pricing an entire generation out of home ownershp and buyin to this country while making our pay much less compitative to other countries because we need earn so much more to live in small cramped houses with a small % of the population having nice views of countryside (which is farmed for subsidies payed for by our tax) it could happen.

interesting thing will be what happens when all the btl'ers realise the homes they have bought up are getting replaced by a glut of similar new once and if in a price crash the keep on with it.

lynzpower

affordable housing has to be just that.

It must therefore be in line with what the rent assessment service would use as cost.

I dont think houses for sale is the answer ( shared ownership) I sold mine effectively for 100k more than i bogut it for. So i completely agree you openmarket homebuy, shared ownerships etc are neccesarily "affordable" certainly you needed a fair old salary to buy mine ( and a lot of other resale SO flats)

i thinik the answer is stable, long term renting as provided by the government. the old council house, solidly built, proper walls ( not stud) built to last. Renting from the government as a option for many who are not right at the bottom of the food chain.

thelawnet

Guy_Montag wrote: »

Child tax credits & child benefit. There are too many people in this country (I'm not a racist, but...);) I'm far less bothered about immigration than I am at the way we throw money at people who have never had a job & never will have a job just for getting !!!!ed on bacardi breezers & dropping her knickers for some chav. & before we get onto the "children are our future" - if these ADHD-riddled, proto-junkies are our future, we might as well give up now.

I feel a little better now I got that out.

I hate to have to tell you this, but those people aren't going to be paying for their house either. Affordable housing is relevant for working people, i.e. taxpayers.

Guy_Montag

thelawnet wrote: »

I hate to have to tell you this, but those people aren't going to be paying for their house either. Affordable housing is relevant for working people, i.e. taxpayers.

The point was it's a long term solution to reduce the country's population to something more reasonable (30m according to the OPT) - not that it's going to improve affordability in the short term.

christabell

Child Tax Credits: this is Gordon's way of paying Benefits without admitting they are benefits.......Why do our policitians not have the guts to re calculate the tax system? This is 2007, make the calculations a % of wage/salary so that everybody pays equal?
Affordable Housing? Absolutely, surely it is a Human Right not to live in a slum with a landlord getting megabucks from rent?

As for the comment above about the people not working....there are economic black-spots, what do you propose for these people Guy?

RHemmings

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

As I wait for Gordie's pre-Queen's speech announcement that is expected to focus on affordable housing I thought I'd pose a few quick questions.

What makes housing affordable?

How can housing be built that is affordable? We already have houses that are:
built by cowboys
on flood-plains
have very small rooms and
no gardens

You've mostly concentrated on the price of the buildings themselves. The big problem is the price of land with planning consent for houses.

To reduce the land price problem, the government could state that the sale prices of houses to be built must form part of applications to have land re-zoned for residential use. Local councils would be given targets for new houses of certain prices.

Builders could buy cheaper land and then build cheaper houses, while still making a profit. Given that the sale prices of the houses would be limited, that would limit the value of the land to the builders, and prevent the value of land for new building inflating too much, as if it became too expensive, builders wouldn't want to buy it.

This would put a cap on the price of new houses while not making the building of new houses unprofitable for builders. Effectively the huge profits to be made when land is rezoned would be what disappears.

Generali

Houses aren't expensive. Land with planning permission is however.

I understand that a 3 bed semi can be built for £40k. Agricultural land goes for a few thousand an acre. You could build 8 semis on an acre of agricultural land, sell them for £75k a piece and make a decent profit. Apart from the PP of course.

Gordon's going to build 3,000,000 new houses by 2020. He's also setting up a UK version of Freddie Mac. I bet he cox it up.