Movements/Protests against house prices

BlaEm

Surrey_EA wrote: »

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that, but I'd still rather live in Guildford than Godalming. Although I agree Godalming is a beautiful town, and the villages around Guildford & Godalming are all rather lovely.

When I bought my first place I went for a flat a few minutes walk from Farncombe station - if I timed it right I could be in the pub in Guildford town centre within 15 minutes (less time than my friends who lived in Guildford proper).
Not as pretty as Godalming - or even Guildford! - but that's why it was cheaper.

Digsby

@Quizical Squirrel

Pull the other one, 2001-2011 was rhe first decade since 1918 that home ownership has declined.

If you're going to quote historical norm as justification for lack of progress, lets revoke women's right to vote shall we, after all it's been less than 150 years they've had it.

ReadingTim

Digsby wrote: »

If you're going to quote historical norm as justification for lack of progress.....

You'll never make significant progress because housing in the UK is simply an extreme representation of the basic economic problem - we have limited resources, but human beings have unlimited wants.

Digsby

My sincerest apologies, I took your post to mean "as it ever has been, ever should it be". My mistake.

Landofwood

spunko2010 wrote: »

I initially brushed this off as a troll post but then I saw your other posts on the forum. Good grief - you're actually being serious. OP, you just aren't working hard enough. Or maybe you weren't born at the right time, but that's your problem as I'm alright jack.

To answer your question, a good forum (with a few bad apples) is https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk.

My post contained helpful information designed to guide the poster into considering changes that could boost his chances of fulfilling his dream to become a home owner.

Your post advised him to join the nutters on the HPC web site.

And I'm the "troll".

gazter

johnbusby wrote: »

failure to encourage house building to the generous housing benefit rates paid to landlords which stoke the rental market and increase competition from would-be BTL landlords...

This is just plainly untrue. Councils are now massively financially induced to release more land for housebuilding through the new homes bonuses, and a slackening of the planning rules make it increasingly more difficult for a local authority to turn down an application for housing.

This all takes time though. There has been a spike in new starts. But these literally cannot be built quick enough to cope with the sheer scale of net migration.

Running_Horse

gazter wrote: »

net migration.

Finally, the elephant in the room.

OP asked if there was a movement or protest group that wanted to lower house prices. There is a nasty party committed to removing millions of people from this country, but despite flirting with them during the Blair years, the electorate were unable to stomach voting for them.

If you want lower house prices you need fewer people fuelling demand, or you need to say goodbye to London's green belt. Although looking at the dense urban sprawl that is Tokyo, I'm not so sure a building boom would do that much. And during the fall in prices in the 1990s, the big house builders simply stopped building until prices rose again.

What to do?

AdrianC

Running_Horse wrote: »

Finally, the elephant in the room.

Small problem. Migration is responsible for less than half of the population growth.

And, if you go with the "uncontrolled EU migration" line, then that's less than half of all migration.

PixelPound

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

I'm not sure that's true. At its peak home owners were only 69% of households and that figure only started to climb in the building years after WWII. A hundred years ago, only 23% owned.

I know it's truly awful now, but this rose tinted image of everyone being able to afford a home never existed and even the highest figures were not the historical norm. I fear it was a blip and the current population explosion probably means we will not reverse the downward ownership trend.

Digsby wrote: »

@Quizical Squirrel
Pull the other one, 2001-2011 was rhe first decade since 1918 that home ownership has declined.

The figures that show both of your arguments. There are / have always been people who will buy a house to live in, and those who will always rent. It seems from the peaks to be 2 and 3 out of every ten respectively. In 1918 the 23% were probably those wealthy enough to buy or inherit houses, like land owners and landlords. The interesting fact is that the 77% who were renting comprises 76% private, 1% social. I did once read a report (sorry can't find the website now) saying that the percentage of peoples wages spent on rent was roughly a third, or similar to now. The conclusion was that landlords would only charge what tenants could afford. Plainly wrong, the fact is people lived in places they could afford and moved depending on how flush they were. I've traced families back and seen them move from a one-up one-down back-to-back to a larger end terrace house with a yard and then several months later move back only to at some later point move again. When wages were good they'd move to better houses.

Its interesting that home ownership has risen steadily and faster after 1953. Before reading this I thought it was the RTB that had caused the boom in home ownership. Whilst this was a factor, that there was already an accelerating demand to buy your house before then.

johnbusby

gazter wrote: »

This is just plainly untrue. Councils are now massively financially induced to release more land for housebuilding through the new homes bonuses, and a slackening of the planning rules make it increasingly more difficult for a local authority to turn down an application for housing.

This all takes time though. There has been a spike in new starts. But these literally cannot be built quick enough to cope with the sheer scale of net migration.

That may be the case now but can it be said for the last 10+ years? The current housing crisis is the chickens coming home to roost for mismanaging the supply of housing stock over a prolonged period of time, you can't just look at relatively recent interventions and say that all is rosy in the garden...