Should suburban densification be part of the solution to the housing shortage?

kabayiri

I think there will be a cultural shift towards multi generational living in the same property, as London ethnic mix continues to rebalance towards middle Eastern standards.

You see this with Iraqi; Turks; Iranian. A strong matriarch, and 3 generations+ living under one roof. Maybe they should build houses designed to expand upwards as the family develops...

andrewf75

kabayiri wrote: »

I think there will be a cultural shift towards multi generational living in the same property, as London ethnic mix continues to rebalance towards middle Eastern standards.

You see this with Iraqi; Turks; Iranian. A strong matriarch, and 3 generations+ living under one roof. Maybe they should build houses designed to expand upwards as the family develops...

Completely agree although not really to do with the ethnic mix. More because it makes sense and more so as the population ages. The way are society lives now is unusual even looking at our own history and not sustainable long term. The current older generation are very well off, but following generations will be much less well-off so they will need to be looked after by their family. In turn they can help look after kids and save on ever more unaffordable childcare. The current situation in the UK is only possible because of the huge gains in prosperity since the war. The next 100 years will surely see a reversal of that so we need to adapt the way we live.

michaels

Bungalows in back gardens are OK but the street scene should be preserved

andrewf75 wrote: »

I think flats have that reputation in this country but it doesn’t have to be that way. Look at flats on the continent and they all have balconies for a start which makes a huge difference. More flats makes sense on so many levels, we are just conditioned to the way our housing market works.

'Multi-storey car park crime - wrong on so many levels.' c Tim Vine

GreatApe

The problem is if your build cost including profit is £350,000 and the local market has old 3-4 bedroom houses for £250,0000 who is going to buy the new build that costs 30% more per sqm?

The value of land last time I checked for the large builders was about £30,000 a plot

For a £300,000 house its only 10% of the cost
If you manage to get land prices down to zero over a period of 5 years, well over the same 5 years wage and materials inflation will more than eat it up as they run at about 3% a year. So at best if somehow building land could be free over a decade, you could maybe just slow down cost inflation.

If we want truly cheap homes (which I would argue we don't and it would be a bad thing) the only way to go about doing it is to completely change types of homes we design and build. Material costs have to come way down and speeds have to go way up and labor content (man years) for the build need to go way down and possibly we need to get rid of the regulation inflation over the decades too. For instance my 100 year old home has foundations too shallow and too narrow for modern regs yet its been standing fine for over a hundred years. So why not roll back regs for foundations so they can be built with less material and labour etc

michaels

Bungalows in back gardens are OK but the street scene should be preserved

Round the corner from us a small dated 3 bed detached sold for 650k 2 years ago and this year 'it' has sold again as 2 4-bed semis each for 850k. I suspect build costs excluding builder profit were about 400k. Sure there was about 20% HPI during those 2 years but even still there is plenty of profit for both the homeowner and the builder.

The point being that these schemes are not expected to work everywhere, just in London and the SE where there is most pressure on housing and highest house prices.

kabayiri

michaels wrote: »

Round the corner from us a small dated 3 bed detached sold for 650k 2 years ago and this year 'it' has sold again as 2 4-bed semis each for 850k. I suspect build costs excluding builder profit were about 400k. Sure there was about 20% HPI during those 2 years but even still there is plenty of profit for both the homeowner and the builder.

The point being that these schemes are not expected to work everywhere, just in London and the SE where there is most pressure on housing and highest house prices.

Wow. Sobering figures.

I only know breakdown from memory of the lake house in Canada. The kit house itself was pretty good value; about £80K with an erection time in just weeks. The unplanned foundation work nobbled the budget though. Insulation standards are also very high. Floor space on any of the levels would embarass all but a small percentage of UK homes.

Could we reach a point where the house structure itself is a transient item, with the core value in the foundation + land plot?

I don't really see why we still build on site. It seems inefficient.

kabayiri

ilovehouses wrote: »

We already have in expensive areas haven't we. If a gas explosion wrecked a £500k terrace in London how much would it cost to rebuild?

Near me there's a millionaire's row. A street of lovely houses with sea views. I don't recall a single sale where the buyer simply moved in - the existing structure is always rebuilt at every sale - the utility value of the house is effectively zero.

I consider my neighbourhood a nice part of a moderate Cheshire village; certainly not London/SE prime estate.

Detached houses with decent plots, but not extravagant.

A neighbour sold his house within 36 hours of putting it up for sale. I thought I knew why. He had a £30K showcase kitchen to which he added fancy ceilings with natural light funnels etc. Very modern and spacious (about 5.5m by 5m). Who wouldn't want that?

A lady moves in from "down south" (she said). One week later .... kitchen gutted...nice bathroom gutted. If I were the seller I might have felt saddened, but as you say, it's just a plot right?

zagubov

Both rebuild and garden development would increase diversity and interest in our suburban streets

When I've visited the Low Countries, they often seem to get their housing sorted better than here despite their higher densities. They have these multi-generational "kangaroo houses" and a transport system that seems to epitomise joined-up thinking

We're more profligate and wasteful in our land use for high-end housing. The well-off build wide houses on wide plots when they would be better building narrow and deep and also upwards to get the same floorspace on a smaller footprint. A wide shallow building plot stretches the road and pavement space unnecessarily.

I read there used to be a tax on the width of your house in Amsterdam which forced everybody to build tall and deep, so a short stretch of road and pavement could serve a large number of large houses and the density would be more sustainable.


I don't reckon suburban living can be sustained in a densely populated country. It would be better if ti was low-rise but better planned.

In Taiwan if rich people buy a house on a plot of land big enough to grow food economically, they need to get farmers in to do that (or the government sends them in).

posh*spice

The boomers will be gone soon and then there will be tons of houses

Peace out

PasturesNew

The problem can also be tackled from the other direction: We have too many people.

You only need more houses when you have more people.