Is the Labour Government about to wreck the environment ?

in our area there are a lot of old mills, some are small and could easily be turned into first time homes for young folks

Mill developments are great. Tend to require sale prices higher than for new build though, they are not often a route towards affordable housing (but should be developed anyway, for those that can afford it).

However I do think high house prices are predominantly a south east problem so any easing of environmental protections in order to facilitate more house building should be limited to that region.

Having a laff, aren’t you? Check house prices in and around Chippenham, relatively new, not particularly spectacular 4-bed houses are £440,000, my 3-bed semi, formerly a council house built around 80 years ago, is getting on for £250,000, I’ve no idea what the 3-400 new houses are going for, but Chippenham’s position on the main rail line between London and Bristol, and a line down to the south coast, plus it’s close to the M4, and it’s on the A4/A420/A350/A429 road nexus, so it attracts people who aren’t too concerned about commuting.

There are some areas of affordable housing but not many.  Mainly a few towns in northern England.  Its way beyond a south east issue.

Chippenham is waaaaay down south tho 🙂

However I do think high house prices are predominantly a south east problem so any easing of environmental protections in order to facilitate more house building should be limited to that region.

Absolute nonsense. We’re having a few days away in a 2 bed cottage outside Scarborough. Rightmove suggests it’s about £200k. We are both in relatively senior public sector jobs on about average wage, that’s over 3 times our salaries. How the **** are local people meant to afford it? And it’s the same where we live in in the East Midlands, our friends around the country report the same issues as our kids start leaving the nest.

i dont see how labour is goin to wreck the environment,after all the damage the previous govt has done.

Ive seen a few badger setts that have been annihilated by new builds, and farmers

flood plains are being built on down here, but still there’s -is it 97%?- of land owned by  the very rich, so how are we supposed to deal with a growing population utilizin only the remaining 13%? its as if we dont own the country!

£200 000 for a two bed cottage – bargainacious!

This is the cheapest house for sale in ~Edinburgh right now.  2 bed ex council £180 000 in a pretty rough ( but not as bad as it was) part of the city

https://espc.com/property/50-peacocktail-close-newcraighall-edinburgh-eh15-3qs/36275797?sid=681334

However what I do see are –  a lot of elderly people still living in their family homes (often with 4 bedrooms) on their own. Many because they feel safe and have decent neighbours and a good support network around them. So I don’t know what the answer if for this.

In a word or two, stamp duty, inheritance tax* & bungalows being relatively expensive. In addition to all the issues you raise.

* no one seemed to raise the issue of owners of some more expensive houses getting preferential inheritance tax treatment when the farms issue arose, wonder why that was?

Theres a 2 bed terraced in Edinburgh for 130k

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/155999012

Ah – I only looked on espc

wonder why that is so cheap – never seen anything so cheap in Edinburgh

needs full refurbishment and looks like serious water damage as well

I am very much of the opinion that no agricultural land should be built on ever. Even here in the FoD we have farmers fields being turned into housing estates and industrial wastelands being left empty. Of course the sad state of our agriculture doesn’t help.

When we whinge about all the high priced housing I wonder how many of us actually make the problem worse with our silly demands, FFS how the hell does a family of 4 need more than 3 bedrooms (many of us grew up sharing a room) or two bogs and bathrooms. Plain greedy. Of course we are a selfish nation.

Alric. “we” don’t own the country. The owners do. That is how it has worked for thousands of years.

I assume that you will be one of those to donate all your property to the nation so as to set an example.

Hmm

The “owners” stole the land or their ancestors did or the ancestors of the folk that sold it

However I do think high house prices are predominantly a south east problem

You know that house prices and mortgage rates effect those of us who privately rent too. Not just home owners.

You may want to check up on average rents in and around Manchester. A mate of mine just had his rent doubled by the landlord, so had to move yet further out of town, This is now pretty standard around this neck of the woods. Not London or the south east.. Why? Because they can.

How the **** are you meant to save for a deposit if you’re paying over half your salary in rent every month? Home ownership within Greater Manchester is simply completely out of reach of a huge swathe of the population who will end up paying vastly inflated rents for the rest of their lives

Another problem that needs addressing is second home ownership, especially if it’s a holiday home. I’m not jealous or envious. It seems odd that someone should have 2 homes when there are others who can’t even find one.

Also do up empty properties with the aid of grants.

our own house was a doer upper. It’s the only way we could have afforded it.

the whole housing market rental and buying is engineered to transfer money from the poor to the rich.  I have benefited hugely from this and I understand how lucky I am and try not to abuse it.

Property inflation compared to salary is absurd.  MY flat cost 2.5 times my salary when bought.  Now its 10 times the salary for that job.  I rented it for two years before I bought it off the landlord.  the market rent for it now is 3 times what it was then but the salary for that job has only gone up 50% ( I have improved it a lot tho)

How anyone starting out now can afford to buy or even rent I just do not know.  As a nurse there is no chance to buy in Edinburgh now and I would have to rent a room in a flat not a whole flat

The situation is even worse if you are on benefits.  The gap between what you get in benefits and what a flat costs to rent is huge

Solutions?  Massive house building programme including council houses that cannot be sold.  Rent controls, taxation on profits from rentals.  crash the effing housing market.

What is really sick IMO is I could rent out the two flats I own at market rents, and use that income to pay a loan to buy another house – and I would not only have another property paid for by my tenants but would still make a significant income on top of the loan repayments.  Thats just wrong.  Utterly sickening to live in a society where basic housing is used to reinforce inequality

is engineered to transfer money from the poor to the rich.

It’s not engineered, that suggests some sort of deliberate intent, but It is exactly what happens. Inheritance also plays a large part in concentrating wealth within families.

We do need a lot more houses being built, it’s lack of supply that has pushed prices for rent and buy well out of kilter with wages, and limits on what people can borrow.

I’m happy enough with right to buy as long as each house soldmis replaced quickly with the proceeds.

I stand by “its engineered”  Government policy has been to encourage house price inflation as it keeps the middle classes happy and feeling rich.

Right to buy is always at a huge discount – you cannot rebuild with the proceeds and many of those properties end up in the hands of private landlords letting to folk on benefits at a far higher rent than a council property would be

is it 97%?- of land owned by the very rich, so how are we supposed to deal with a growing population utilizin only the remaining 13%?

110% this.

Having a laff, aren’t you? Check house prices in and around Chippenham

Absolute nonsense… Scarborough

Granted the definition of the south east for this purpose needs to be anywhere within a commuting distance of London, and the south in general is quite expensive. But see the colour coded average price map about half way down the below link, almost all of the red is in a specific cluster in and around London.

There is almost no red whatsoever north of the Watford gap, but who would bet against that being where most of the green belt is built over?

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-house-price-index-for-june-2023/uk-house-price-index-england-june-2023

Absolute nonsense. We’re having a few days away in a 2 bed cottage outside Scarborough. Rightmove suggests it’s about £200k. We are both in relatively senior public sector jobs on about average wage, that’s over 3 times our salaries. How the **** are local people meant to afford it?

I’ve had a quick look on Rightmove and seems to be a good selection of 2-bed terraces in Scarborough for less than £130k. The one below is £125k and looks fine as a starter home to me.

Minimum wage is around £24k now so even a single person on minimum wage, applying a 4.5x multiplier could get a mortgage for £107k. A couple both working should be able to afford that quite easily.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/154844411

a 4.5 multiplier – completely unaffordable payments on minimum wage

Home ownership within Greater Manchester is simply completely out of reach of a huge swathe of the population who will end up paying vastly inflated rents for the rest of their lives

Not to bore everybody by repeating myself but again, quick look on Rightmove and there are no end of houses in Bolton for less than £140k, many less than £120k.

The problem is that with arbitrary national targets, most of the new houses and the environmental destruction will be in places like Bolton, where it’s easier to get big developments through planning. If people aren’t willing to move to Bolton from Manchester now, they won’t be when the new houses are built either, so it won’t solve the problem for those people who for whatever reason can’t or won’t leave the premium parts of the city.

Your idea of “affordable” is not realistic at all.

If you work in manchester the extra cost of a commute from Bolton would add extra costs that make it – guess what – unnaffordable even if you could scrape together a mortgage

a 4.5 multiplier – completely unaffordable payments on minimum wage

Disagree, minimum wage takes home is about £1.6k – £1.7k

Repayments on a £107k mortgage at 4.5% for 30 years are £542.

That seems quite comfortable to me.

The hardest part would be saving the deposit, so they might have to go for a 95% mortgage.

Most people buy as a couple which would make it much easier.

I am very much of the opinion that no agricultural land should be built on ever.

That’s approximately 65% of all land use in the UK, meaning that all new additional housing is more and more squeezed into a smaller area. It’s unsustainable.

Your idea of “affordable” is not realistic at all.

If you work in manchester the extra cost of a commute from Bolton would add extra costs that make it – guess what – unnaffordable even if you could scrape together a mortgage

It’s what, 10 miles from Bolton to central Manchester? How much is a bus pass? If there isn’t a cheap and safe way of travelling those ten miles then that sounds like a problem that should be solved before building more and more houses that aren’t really needed?

I do fear that a presumption to allow building is going to lead to a free for all where each case on its own appears to not be impactful but the sum of all schemes will cause harm.  The best thing for our housing shortfall would be to try and get away from the “our home is our castle” mentality which means we feel obliged to build vast estates of small detached houses with postage stamp gardens.  Low rise but spacious apartment developments would be a far more efficient use of land.

If you work in manchester the extra cost of a commute from Bolton would add extra costs that make it – guess what – unnaffordable even if you could scrape together a mortgage

It’s less than £30 a week for an annual season ticket. This is easily offset by lower housing costs no?

That seems quite comfortable to me.

You forgot insurance, council tax and the extra cost of the commute you want the person to do.  Add in those and you have less than a couple of hundred a week to live on.  Now add in energy bills as well.

How is someone living paycheck to paycheck supposed to save a deposit?  Pay for the costs of buying?

You forgot insurance, council tax and the extra cost of the commute you want the person to do.  Add in those and you have less than a couple of hundred a week to live on.  Now add in energy bills as well.

How is someone living paycheck to paycheck supposed to save a deposit?  Pay for the costs of buying?

They’re taking home £1.7k and spending £542 on the mortgage so have £1.1k left for everything else.

You’re suggesting that after insurance, council tax and a bus or train ticket they’ll only have a couple of hundred left, implying you think insurance, council tax and a bus or train ticket is going to cost £900 per month?

I think that’s inaccurate. I’d say it’s probably closer to £300 for those things. Energy bills another £120. Water about £30. Repairs and maintenance at say 1% of the house value per year so £100 per month.

What else? They’ve still got £600 left.

less than a couple of hundred a week

so the cheapest house in a cheap area is just about affordable if you scrimp and accept a long commute.

And you think that shows that the affordability issue is not real.

End buy to let interest only mortgages, introduce rent controls, give renters security of tenure.
Watch the panic as buy to let “investors” realise that they can’t build a property empire on the misery of tenants.

@tj I think i’d describe it as fairly comfortably affordable to a single person buying alone while earning the minimum wage, which is a well below average position to be in.

I think what it shows is that building thousands more houses on greenbelt around Bolton, which might have the effect of making those 120k houses slightly cheaper again, does not really solve the problem people want to be solved, namely making houses in more desirable areas less expensive.

I guess if you’re keen on your prime real estate remaining prime, you’d only want new houses being built in cheap areas though? There seems to be a lot of that around me, where proposals to build more houses in the more expensive areas are met with vociferous opposition, while proposals to build more in areas where houses are already less expensive get through without problems.

End buy to let interest only mortgages, introduce rent controls, give renters security of tenure.
Watch the panic as buy to let “investors” realise that they can’t build a property empire on the misery of tenants.

Is the right answer – along with ramping up taxation on the income from rentals, a massive building programme of state owned housing at fair rents

We need to crash the housing market.

Thanks to Andy Burnham it costs £2 each way to bus into Manchester from Bolton (and all other areas in Greater Manchester). Just sayin’.

I think i’d describe it as fairly comfortably affordable to a single person buying alone while earning the minimum wage, which is a well below average position to be in.

Really?  I don’t think anyone in that position would.  They would be living a very marginal and precarious existence

this is also an extreme example of a very cheap house in a very cheap area.  Now look at two public servants living in an average or expensive area.

Anyone that thinks buying a house on minimum wage is affordable either hasn’t ever tried living on the minimum wage or is just plain delusional. I spent most of my working life on minimum wage (or less) and I’m now fortunate enough to earn a good living. I’m on just under £50k with two young kids and Mrs F working part time.

We need to move to a three bed house in the next couple of years and it simply isn’t achievable. I’m saving what I can towards a pension for both of us, building a general safety net and trying to put money aside towards a deposit for a three bed.

If we moved somewhere cheaper, our combined commuting costs would kill any savings made. I cycle to work most days now which makes my working day around 12 hours with the commute. We’ll likely end up with me and Mrs F sleeping in the living room. This isn’t me complaining. We’re better off than a lot of people. House prices are just **** nuts to be blunt. We could only afford this house by moving in with Mrs F’s parents for a few years and saving every penny.

I’ve no idea what world some of you on here live in but you really need to understand just how privileged you are.

Minimum wage after tax is £1632

Pension

Electricity

Heating

Transport

Insurance

Food

Phone/Internet

Council Tax (£1348 I think)

Household items/furniture/goods repair/replacement

Household repairs/replacements (windows/doors/roof etc etc)

Kids

Clothes

Probably some other stuff

Then what you have is your accommodation pot.