Monday, Jul 12, 2010
Regional strategies revoked
FT.com: Planning policy shift undercuts homes drive
A slew of large residential developments has been cancelled in recent weeks following a shift in planning policy, prompting fears that Britain’s housing shortage is set to worsen.
Posted by cynicalsoothsayer @ 12:29 PM (1338 views) Add Comment
10 Comments
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1. mark wadsworth said...
Rejoice! Hallowed Greenbelt Preserved For Benefit Of Future Generations. Who are all presently homeless.
2. nickb said...
Still don't understand what you have got against the greenbelt Mark ;-)
"Maybe it's because you're a Londoner?"
It seems to me the government is positively engineering a credit contraction through the housign market though, and this is the latest measure. Some form of correction was inevitable but I wonder if they know the fire they are playing with?
Nick
3. peter said...
I've never believed in this 'housing shortage'.
When you subtract people who live on welfare and others who just don't earn enough to have a house (they should all be living with relatives), I doubt there is any great lack of housing.
If, on the other hand, you dole out houses and flats to anyone who fancies one, then I guess there would be a 'shortage'.
4. mark wadsworth said...
I've nothing against open fields whatsoever. But I am strongly against deliberately restricting supply of housing to push up prices to abnormal levels.
5. nickb said...
But where is the evidence that shortage of supply compared to population is the problem? I doubt it because the house price is strongly cyclical, whereas the fundamentals aren't. Also the house price has risen by an order of magnitude since 1960 whereas population has only risen by a factor of about 1.2, hasn't it?
If we want lower house prices we have to address the recurrent asset price bubbles caused by the financial system's need to pump ever greater volumes of credit into the economy, in order that the interest is paid on existing loans. Direction of credit to productive uses rather than speculation.
Nick
6. happy mondays said...
There is no housing shortage, just a shortage of affordable homes, we have no tent cities or people in cardboard boxes (just because there is not a home for them)
To many houses are bought & left empty purely as an investment, this needs to be dealt with!
7. 51ck-6-51x said...
nickb said "Also the house price has risen by an order of magnitude since 1960 whereas population has only risen by a factor of about 1.2, hasn't it? "
Price is not a linear function of population. Furthermore market price equilibria are not necessarily stable.
8. letthemfall said...
51ck
No, but houses need to accommodate the population is. The notion of a housing shortage is often used as a justification for high prices, whereas it is credit supply, as we know, that blows up prices beyond that implied by population increases.
9. drewster said...
nickb / mark wadsworth,
The greenbelt issue is a red herring. The main NIMBYs are the ones in inner London who fight tooth and nail to prevent any high-rise developments. I know far too many young single people who house-share in what would otherwise be nice family homes. I also know of many beautiful old Victorian houses which have been converted - badly - into flats. Build some nice modern high-rise flats for the younger folk, and you'll free up houses for families. (Needless to say, LVT would encourage this anyway).
10. mark wadsworth said...
Drewster, agreed, if we had LVT the whole 'housing shortage' thing would sort itself out. We'd still have the smallest and crappiest houses in Europe but at least they'd be the cheapest. But the chances of planning laws being freed up are about zero per cent and the chances of having LVT are a bit less than that.