Thursday, Feb 21, 2008
The roof is caving in on this dreamy world of loft-style living
Times: Apartment walls will come tumbling down
There just aren’t enough affluent young urbanites to buy or rent all this new space without big price falls. Ipswich, bluntly, is not Manhattan. Moreover, the boom of the past few years has been fuelled not only by reckless bank lending but also by a “conspiracy of acquiescence” between developers and valuers at best and, in many cases, downright fraud. That is likely to make the ensuing bust all the more painful.
Posted by jack c @ 09:37 AM (573 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
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1. alan said...
Ditto for Colchester and Basildon.
Where are "young couples" to find £200,000 straight out of Uni? The 5x salary, 125% loans are all gone. Worse still, there is no widespread acceptance that flat prices will always rise, any more.
Prices must come down before being affordable.
2. An Bearin Bui said...
These developments were never priced accurately to reflect local market conditions. The 200k+ price tag was beyond the price range of most "young professionals" and the low local rents weren't sufficient either to cover any BTL speculators' mortgages, even with significant developer discounts. There have been acres of such developments thrown up in the city where I live, and it truly puzzles me who owns them. I've never met anyone who either owns or rents in these developments - I would suspect many of them are at least 70% empty.
It goes to show how bad planning laws have warped the market. Builders have been throwing up block after block of expensive apartments on brownfield sites when what most buyers want is a house with a patch of garden. A classic example of market distortion.
3. Landedgentry said...
Same for croydon.
http://www.altitude25.com/
4. Simplysam said...
I am always worried when I say what I feel incase I am rocking the boat (of economy)..but thanks a leading newspaper has expressed my feeling.
5. Alan said...
Ipswich is not Manhattan! A great line.
6. Landedgentry said...
1 or more years living in one of those new builds will drive me to the point of insanity.
7. drewster said...
Loft-style living? If only it was! The "loft" phenonemon is widely credited to Andy Warhol and his Factory in NYC, a massive 3000 square-foot live/work space. Compare this to a modern
executive apartment, typically just 600 to 700 sq ft.
I take issue with one comment though: "I have become incredulous that there could possibly be enough single, childless people to fill all those apartments."
Given the choice between sharing a cramped four-bedroom suburban terrace (as many singles do), or living in their own city-centre apartment, many single childless people prefer the apartment. They don't want the hassle of maintaining a garden, and apartments tend to be more secure. So the landlords who own small terraced houses could suffer too, as all their tenants are drawn to the bright lights of modern apartments.