Am I the only one fed up with houses being so small? do others feel the same way?

JP1978

Cost of land in the UK, particularly around cities and commuter areas is the issue.

Also is the expectation of huge profits form shareholders of house building companies.

Some smaller, local building firms may still be building houses that are of a decent size - although our house builder is no longer around, it was a local firm and built houses quite bigger than the national house builders. The new ones nearby are rabbit hutches compared to ours and cost more money (ours is 11 years old)

AdrianC

stator wrote: »

No, I'd like to hear a politician with the balls to actually change things for the better, instead of just tinkering around the edges.
Corbyn is just going to drag us back to the old labour days.
I'd prefer someone who actually abandons the whole left/right theology as no-one actually subscribes to it anymore

Do go on...

That's the negativity - let's hear the positivity. Let's hear what you DO want. Give us some examples, some policies, some way forward...

Vampyr

Yes! Houses in this country are ridiculously small. New builds seem to be getting smaller and there are some really bad designs from developers that don't make good use of the space available.

Aylesbury_Duck

I live in an area completely dominated by NIMBYs, most of whom live in houses that were farmland less than 14 years ago. It is a striking feature of each objection that their household was among the last to be acceptable but any more is overdevelopment.

NIMBY is a good acronym, but BANANA is a better one: Build Absolutely Nohing Anywhere Near Anyone.

Davesnave

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

I live in an area completely dominated by NIMBYs, most of whom live in houses that were farmland less than 14 years ago. It is a striking feature of each objection that their household was among the last to be acceptable but any more is overdevelopment.

NIMBY is a good acronym, but BANANA is a better one: Build Absolutely Nohing Anywhere Near Anyone.

I think it depends on the stability of the area and the sort of people it attracts.

Where I am, we have a community-owned trust which is in the process of seeking out a green field site for low-cost, not-for-profit housing. On the whole, people are supportive of this, so a meeting earlier in the week was very well-attended.

We also have a green field agreed for more conventional building when the sewerage system has been upgraded. Again, there's no great opposition to this or any blight on the 3 new homes that were built alongside the field recently. They all sold quickly.

People here know that their kids will need homes and that facilities like the pub and the shop don't exist in a vacuum. They lost the school and the PO and they're keen not to lose any more.

zagubov

If people in the South-East (where most of the house price bubble is happening) are to find spacious enough accommodation, there's lots that can be done.

Abolition of leasehold tenure. Works north of the Tweed, but amazingly is totally impossible on its south bank.

Council housing, maybe carried out by the council itself, with legislation on minimum standards for space. And soundproofing. It's surely more space-saving and hassle-saving and to locate your stairwells outside your house.

Adoption of ideas from more densely populated countries like the Netherlands where there's less land but more people and yet more floorspace per house.

somethingcorporate

Pull up a census from the 1900s. In the old victorian terrace we used to live in had 11 people in 2 small bedrooms. Them were the days!!

Davesnave

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

Several times I suspect, in the wake of high mortality plagues and wars.

Which one do we fancy? Because that's the only solution.

Don't mind. I'm too old for war and I have only a few close neighbours, so either will do.

moneyistooshorttomention

Quizzical_Squirrel wrote: »

Several times I suspect, in the wake of high mortality plagues and wars.

Which one do we fancy? Because that's the only solution.

Strictly - there are possible other options I would think. Leave Mother Nature to it with the reduced fertility levels we seem to have (in the more Westernised countries any rate - probably courtesy of all the rubbish we throw into the environment) and the way many people are postponing any children until their 30's.

On the other hand (and somewhat the reverse of that equation) if people had to pay for their own children (ie rather than State subsidies) and still wanted a level of consumer spending - a lot would have fewer children anyway.

PasturesNew

kerri_gt wrote: »

.... current obsession with bathrooms and toilets in new builds. ... three bed terrace .... downstairs loo, two en suites and a 'family' bathroom.

I think this comes from two things:
- years ago people had a "weekly bath", so less time spent in there; these days a lot of people have TWO baths/showers a day. So it's gone from 4 people in a house having a bath once a week each (Sunday night) to 4 people bathing/showering 1-2x a day each.
- sharers like their own en-suite, so the developers might be building with that in mind too, to make the houses attractive to people wanting to rent out a room or two.