House Building everywhere, Can it Continue?

daveyjp

Factories are only efficient whilst making product. You can't store finished houses so unless you have a ready supply of sites and no cycle of housing demand its a brave builder who sees this as the way forward.

There's also the issue mortgage companies don't like them. If they aren't lending, you aren't buying.

ukcarper

Prefabricated houses will do nothing to help land prices which is the major part of house prices. In many areas.

zagubov

We're cursed by the notion that our house is somehow our pension, and an investment to see us into our old age.
And by the UK's lack of a robust programme for regional development.

Where I live, a massive number of new flats are being built but sold to foreigners as investments, when they should be housing local workers. We need to be building upwards, expanding the housing stock for social housing and expanding the rental sector. And heavy taxes on overseas absentee landlords.

Jonbvn

Nasqueron wrote: »

The house I live in was bought in 2002 iirc, £99500 or £98500, houses on the row (a shortish terrace of largely identical houses in terms of garden, house plan (I think 1 has an attic conversion) etc) have sold for ever increasing prices. Next door down sold for 220k last year and ours would no doubt fetch similar - yet our house is absolutely not worth over double what was paid for it just because it's 16 years older, aside from some paint and the odd tweak inside it's the same as it was when bought, how on earth can we operate an economy where that is the model - appreciation of asset based on nothing but age

Sorry but this is economic theory 101. With an inflation rate of only 4.5% (approx.) the cost of all products will double in 16 years.

Interestingly, where things have not gone up as much, there have been drastic changes in the supply side. E.g. improvement in farming methods driving prices down.

lisyloo

if you moved there from somewhere where you could get a job

Lots of my younger colleagues told me they couldn't get IT jobs in their local area.
At the moment I've heard the midlands is booming in IT but that's recent.


We moved to London as no suitable job (for 48 year old with defined skill set/career path/senior) in our local area. DH was flexible and spent a year looking full time. Of course there was probably a MacJob (if they don't prefer young-uns) but my personal experience (anecdotal of course) says that people can't always find suitable jobs locally.


I accept the premium though and I'm not complaning, just making the point that I don't think it's as simple as having a choice of a job locally.

Thrugelmir

lisyloo wrote: »

We moved to London as no suitable job (for 48 year old with defined skill set/career path/senior) in our local area.

I know a number of people who are working well beneath their levels in latter working life. The older one gets. The greater the challenge unfortunately.

lisyloo

Thrugelmir wrote: »

I know a number of people who are working well beneath their levels in latter working life. The older one gets. The greater the challenge unfortunately.

The obvious answer is to find a job beneath you but it isn't actually that easy (certainly not in IT anyway).
For example DH was at senior manager level so hadn't done project management for 10 years and coding for 20 years, so there's an issue with skills but also recruiting companies would assume it's a stop gap and your not going to be committed.
In my industy (IT) they generally want a good skills match but also someone who wants the job and will be enthusiast and stay around for a while.


The more senior you get the harder it gets as well because companies paying high salaries want a good match.


He did find a good match in London but there simply was nothing locally.


I know it's possible to get A job, but I know my husband would have felt a complete failure if he ended up pushing shopping trolleys round a car park instead of a senior management career.



Some people may be quite happy working beneath their previous level in latter life and there's nowt wrong with that, but for driven previously successful men it can be perceived by them as a massive failure and could lead to depression and even worse.


I don't think it's exclusively an age-issue.
Many of my younger colleagues (graduate IT) tell me they couldn't get work locally and they were from Manchester/Birmingham so not exactly the stix.

andrewf75

C_Mababejive wrote: »

Many new builds are vastly overpriced, tiny ,poorly built slums. We in the UK live in the smallest most expensive houses in the developed world and why? Because we are mugs. The quality and methodology of construction is a total joke.

Isnt it about time we moved away from people gluing baked clods of earth together on some wet windswept site?

Homes should be engineered and manufactured in factories and assembled on site. Precision enginered, high quality control,high energy performance standards etc,,costs go down/quality goes up..but then housebuilders dont want that.

Totally agree. Amazes me seeing newbuilds today and how they are built the same way houses have been built for decades with no thought for the future. Its all about short term profit for the developer.

Sapphire

Cakeguts wrote: »

London and the SouthEast has a problem which has got worse recently. I think that this is down to unintelligent people going to university and expecting to get a well paid job when they leave. When they can't get that locally they move to London to get the well paid job but because they are unintelligent and have nothing to offer they get a job that is better paid but not well enough paid to live in London. While this continues wages won't rise for the lower paid in London because there is always some idiot from a cheaper area thinking that because they earn more they will be better off to fill the vacances.

It was ever thus. In fact, overcrowding due to incoming people to London reached such proportions in the 18th and 19th centuries that people were living and dying on the streets; inhabiting massively overcrowded houses, e.g. above three often large families to a small house; afflicted by horrible diseases such as smallpox, typhoid and cholera; living in unsanitary conditions, with shack 'lavatories' suspended over the Thames, which was basically a stinking sewer, etc.

In those days it was mainly rural English and other people from these isles who arrived in London, not outsiders, though there were, of course, exceptions: people like the French Huguenot weavers, exiled from France, and later Jews who were allowed to settle after escaping from Russian pogroms. Immigration from outside Britain was eventually generally curtailed around the beginning of the 20th century because the authorities became afraid of the reaction of the British to the huge influx.

bertiewhite

Mistermeaner wrote: »

are you saying its possible to ride a unicorn but only if you are wearing your magical pants?

I dont think you are as thats not what you typed but always best to check

Well no, but then again I wasn't implying that either.