Right to buy to be extended

Sapphire

The more I think about this proposal, the less I like it. There are places such as the attractive Peabody Estate (in Covent Garden, from memory). As far as I know they were originally bequeathed as social housing in the 19th century. In these cases they should stay in the hands of the housing associations – breaking them up would actually mean breaking up unique historical communities that have existed for a very long time. The properties would then be taken over by the bland, largely foreign oligarchs, celebrities and the like who seem to have invaded certain areas of London, thus furthering the destruction of the historically mixed character of our capital city.

This is from someone who usually votes Conservative, but who is liking their 'pledges' less and less as they are announced. I'm reluctant to vote Labour, because the immigration issue will go even less the way I want it to than it will with the Tories, but may nonetheless have to vote for them at this rate.

Moby

I was in St Albans yesterday. Wandering around looking for a restaurant for dinner, I looked into a few estate agents. Easily £300-400k for a small, uninspiring, two bedroom house. Upwards of £200k for a one bed flat.

Seriously, how the hell is anyone normal supposed to earn enough to buy a house here? What if you're a security guard, or you change tyres for a living? How can you possibly ever live in or near somewhere where a modest family home costs so much to buy? You could rent, but if you have two kids and you think they deserve a bedroom each you're looking at £1,300 a month on rent. What are you going to eat?

The south east will collapse under it's own weight because there will be nobody to do any of the dull, day to day jobs that occupy most people.

I think the Tories know this and are desperate for it not to happen on their watch, so they'll try anything to keep house prices ludicrously high for as long as possible.
This has to end somehow. It has to.

vivatifosi

St Albans is an area I know well Moby. In answer to your question, they either buy somewhere cheaper, such as up the train line in Luton, or stay in St Albans, over occupying the space (e.g. parents sleeping in living room so kids get bedroom), or living in places that desperately need renovating, but worrying that the landlord will do this and put the rent up.

I live in a cheaper Herts town than St Albans. Even here I know of two families where one child sleeps in the conservatory and a one bedroom house with five people living in it.

There's also an increase in HMOs, particularly large ex council properties. A lot of migrants live in these and do low paid work, but when people get together and want to start families it's hard.

We need more houses and possibly some more innovative solutions (e.g. micro homes). Every party since the 1980s has failed to deliver.

CLAPTON

Moby wrote: »

I was in St Albans yesterday. Wandering around looking for a restaurant for dinner, I looked into a few estate agents. Easily £300-400k for a small, uninspiring, two bedroom house. Upwards of £200k for a one bed flat.

Seriously, how the hell is anyone normal supposed to earn enough to buy a house here? What if you're a security guard, or you change tyres for a living? How can you possibly ever live in or near somewhere where a modest family home costs so much to buy? You could rent, but if you have two kids and you think they deserve a bedroom each you're looking at £1,300 a month on rent. What are you going to eat?

The south east will collapse under it's own weight because there will be nobody to do any of the dull, day to day jobs that occupy most people.

I think the Tories know this and are desperate for it not to happen on their watch, so they'll try anything to keep house prices ludicrously high for as long as possible.
This has to end somehow. It has to.

the prices in the SE are so high because people will pay them: those that can't live somewhere cheaper
whose that want to live there accept lower standards of housing than elsewhere

the rise of the population is largely responsible for the wish of more and more people to live in London and the SE

The SE won't collapse under its own weight as anyone not blinded by socialist dogma and understands a little about human behaviour (often called market forces) will tell you.

pollypenny

In order to function, all societies need a range of worker and families.

The high-powered CEO needs his bins emptied, his sewerage pipes maintained, his water purified. Shops need staff.

A community of only the wealthy cannot survive.

CLAPTON

pollypenny wrote: »

In order to function, all societies need a range of worker and families.

The high-powered CEO needs his bins emptied, his sewerage pipes maintained, his water purified. Shops need staff.

A community of only the wealthy cannot survive.

of course a society needs a range of skills and so that will happen

what is your point?

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Not sure you got the point. The cost is ours, either way.

On tory figures, this will cost the taxpayer £17.5bn over the next parliament.

A million new shared ownership homes would also cost the taxpayer £17.5bn.

Either way, the taxpayer shells out £17.5bn. One policy helps a maximum of 135,000 families.

The other policy helps 1,000,000 families.

Honestly. There is no argument here that proves that the RTB policy is the best use of the money here. But do feel free to try.

the proposed RTB is indeed a stupid scheme created only for short term electoral purposes.

however, this doesn't make the houses any more expensive than if they were built in any other way : it might distribute the cost differently but that's no reason to say the cost is absurd.

the most effective way of building more properties is to free up the planning system and to allow people to borrow sufficient to buy the properties
this particular scheme won't do that but by the time it's apparent everyone will have forgotten about it.

Jason74

Graham_Devon wrote: »

And something else from the National Housing Federation.

They state based on the tories figures, they could build a million shared ownership homes for the same money as this policy is projected to cost.

A million!!!!

Instead, this will benefit a maximum of 27,000 families a year.

And there of course, you have in a nutshell a great summary of what is wrong with UK housing policy. We could use theamount of money set aside for this policy to build a million homes. We could have a million households housed in a sustainable way that gives them security of tenure not present in private rental, an element of asset ownership, and a lower cost than outright home ownership that will make the whole thing affordable for many people priced out of full ownership.

But we don't do that, as it doesn't fit with a given world view as to what the Government's involvement in housing "should" be. Instead, we spend the same amount of money on a policy that at best, benefits around 20% of that number, and makes barely 10% of the impact in terms of new supply (and both of those numbers are based on the highly unlikely assumption that sold houses are replaced on a 1 to 1 basis).

When this is the way that housing policy is conducted (and like I said earlier, the tories have not been alone in that, even if this policy does plumb new depths), is it any surprise that we're in the mess that we're in around housing.

Sapphire

I'm hoping that foreign buyers cease buying the 'luxury' flats that are blotting the London landscape to a great degree. My sister and I went past the Battersea power station area by train the other day. The 'luxury apartments' they are flinging up in that area (and other areas) are truly horrendous and are destroying London's character (as is the gutting of historic buildings in central London, etc. by people who couldn't give a stuff about Britain's history, or indigenous Britons for that matter). When these flats remain unsold, they will probably be offered up as social housing – they are the sink estates of the future, in my view. I thought we had learnt our lesson in the 1960s as regards such buildings?

Something will give. This situation cannot continue, no matter how much the property speculators (our dear politicians included) want it to.

Graham_Devon

Sapphire wrote: »

I'm hoping that foreign buyers cease buying the 'luxury' flats that are blotting the London landscape to a great degree. My sister and I went past the Battersea power station area by train the other day. The 'luxury apartments' they are flinging up in that area (and other areas) are truly horrendous and are destroying London's character (as is the gutting of historic buildings in central London, etc. by people who couldn't give a stuff about Britain's history, or indigenous Britons for that matter). When these flats remain unsold, they will probably be offered up as social housing – they are the sink estates of the future, in my view. I thought we had learnt our lesson in the 1960s as regards such buildings?

Something will give. This situation cannot continue, no matter how much the property speculators (our dear politicians included) want it to.

Theres a perverse situation going on in London at the moment. There was a piece about the rich in London on the TV the other day. One of the key features was a firm which specialises in two areas.

Their main area is digging out basements for wealthy clients.

Their second business area, which came as an offshoot of their main basement business was splitting up larger properties (were talking 3/4 bedroom family homes) into flats, mainsonettes and HMO's.

Their clients are often the same people!

They will make the houses bigger with new basements for the wealthy clients, and then go 10 miles down the road and make the other homes they own much much smaller in order to maximise the income.

The firm is going from strength to strength. Was all part of the non-dom stuff as a lot of their clients are non-doms.

Fascinating to see what's going on anyway. Was an outright example of the rich getting richer and makign the properties they live in bigger and bigger while the poor get poorer and poorer and the rich serve them by reducing their living space in order to extract even more money from them.

Like the programme suggested though - walk down these London streets and apart from the apparent noise of basements being built sometimes, you'd not have any idea of what's going on.