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HOLA441

RK linked this blog from a Savills housing analyst a couple of weeks ago.

Look at Neal's final map - I drove through the second-level red zone south of London last year - Surrey - felt like the Isle of Wight, people from the '60s hiding their wealth behind hawthorn trees.

http://nealhudson.com/post/49427325054

His question: Are London & the Home Counties responsible for the housing supply crisis?

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HOLA442

RK linked this blog from a Savills housing analyst a couple of weeks ago.

Look at Neal's final map - I drove through the second-level red zone south of London last year - Surrey - felt like the Isle of Wight, people from the '60s hiding their wealth behind hawthorn trees.

http://nealhudson.com/post/49427325054

His question: Are London & the Home Counties responsible for the housing supply crisis?

Yes they are. I look at the high speed rail scheme, and to me it just looks like something designed specifically to tackle the symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself. So hell bent are they on building nothing on the edges of London that they come up with these horribly expensive schemes to facilitate the pushing of the London commuter belt ever further out, forcing up house prices elsewhere.

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HOLA443

Yes they are. I look at the high speed rail scheme, and to me it just looks like something designed specifically to tackle the symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself. So hell bent are they on building nothing on the edges of London that they come up with these horribly expensive schemes to facilitate the pushing of the London commuter belt ever further out, forcing up house prices elsewhere.

Have to say I've only lately become aware of the green belt around London. Seems weird, designed for the privileged.

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HOLA444
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HOLA445

Have to say I've only lately become aware of the green belt around London. Seems weird, designed for the privileged.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14916238

"Encircling British cities and towns, it is more than just a set of controls and regulations - it reaffirms the British self-image as a country of rural, pastoral idylls that, in reality, the majority of Britons no longer live in."

80% of British people live in urban areas yet we are still fed the narrative that towns and cities=bad and dirty, and countryside= good and pure (cf the sickeningly sentimental beginning to Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony followed by the dark arrival of industrialisation). It is received wisdom that needs to be debunked in favour of the benefits of urban living, which people have been voting for with their feet for centuries now.

"Dr Oliver Hartwich, an economist with the Centre for Independent Studies, who has studied the British system, believes that without the postwar planning system, the UK would only "look slightly different, but not much".

Instead, he suggests the real impact of the green belt has been to fuel house price inflation and push development further into the "real" countryside beyond the green belt, leading to more commuting, fuel use and stress."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2012/may/16/london-greenbelt-development-policy

"In 1875, Octavia Hill, the patron saint of housing management and one of the founders of the National Trust, called for a green belt to be placed around London to stop the city sprawling over the surrounding countryside.

Had she succeeded, places such as Brixton, Kilburn and Stratford would still be villages surrounded by fields and woods and London would be a provincial backwater rather than a global capital."

Hill finally got her wish with the Green Belt (London and Home Counties) Act 1938 and Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Ironic how her desire to see open spaces preserved for the urban poor has been twisted to sustain the wealth of landowners around London. Both acts should be repealed.

On Brownfield: "London will have to build up to 1 million new homes to house its growing population and to cope with the backlog, yet it has only 4,000 hectares of brownfield land, barely enough to provide a fifth of what is needed."

The Brownfield Delusion: http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2013/05/planning-and-housing

"...when campaigners such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England suggest that there is an easy solution in brownfield land, they are deluding themselves. It's not just that there isn't enough of it. Without heavy subsidies developers simply won’t build on such unviable land, for the good reason that it's expensive and people don’t want to live on it. Either we allow more building on green fields, or we succumb to an endless succession of house-price booms, and never enough building."

Guess which "we" have chosen.

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HOLA446

RK linked this blog from a Savills housing analyst a couple of weeks ago.

Look at Neal's final map - I drove through the second-level red zone south of London last year - Surrey - felt like the Isle of Wight, people from the '60s hiding their wealth behind hawthorn trees.

http://nealhudson.com/post/49427325054

His question: Are London & the Home Counties responsible for the housing supply crisis?

I think the author is on the right track. I suspect the demand/supply problem is much more acute in the South than in the North, thanks to population increases and much worse NIMBYism.

I do have a question though. Instead of population numbers the blogger has used the "rate of household formation". But... how can a "household" be formed without a house?? Isn't he using an indicator already repressed by the supply restriction??

I suspect his results would be much clearer if he had used population numbers instead. Right?

.

Edited by Tired of Waiting
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HOLA447
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HOLA448

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14916238

"Encircling British cities and towns, it is more than just a set of controls and regulations - it reaffirms the British self-image as a country of rural, pastoral idylls that, in reality, the majority of Britons no longer live in."

(...)

Great post.

BTW, this cultural distortion affects this forum too. This thread is a typical example. I've found it on the forum's 2nd page, having had only 4 replies. Supply issues are resisted here too, or ignored.

.

Edited by Tired of Waiting
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HOLA449

....I know this is only anecdotal but having lived in London for many years I can concur that people tend to live in their homes for much much longer....in fact where I used to live the next door neighbours have been the same since the 1960s....this is not unusual, people sending their kids to the same school they themselves used to go to. ;)

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HOLA4410
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HOLA4411

I'm surprised by those maps as the areas that I know in London there are bucket loads of new builds going up. In Wandsworth within 3miles of each other (and off the top of my head) there are;

-Osiers Gate development

-Riverside Development

-Battersea Heights

-Nightingale Apartments

-Filaments

-Ipsus07

-Queen Mary's Place

-Langham Square

There must be a good 10,000+ flats being built there, and that's just from memory and not including a lot of the new ones planned on Upper Richmond Road Putney. I suspect some of the supply figures are being 'cooked' for some reason, not sure why though

Edit: to note none of these are truely 'affordable', but I'm not sure (at least in my area) that 'supply' of newbuilds isn't the problem.

Edited by mk1mini
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HOLA4412

I'm surprised by those maps as the areas that I know in London there are bucket loads of new builds going up. In Wandsworth within 3miles of each other (and off the top of my head) there are;

-Osiers Gate development

-Riverside Development

-Battersea Heights

-Nightingale Apartments

-Filaments

-Ipsus07

-Queen Mary's Place

-Langham Square

There must be a good 10,000+ flats being built there, and that's just from memory and not including a lot of the new ones planned on Upper Richmond Road Putney. I suspect some of the supply figures are being 'cooked' for some reason, not sure why though

Edit: to note none of these are truely 'affordable', but I'm not sure (at least in my area) that 'supply' of newbuilds isn't the problem.

10,000 flats is a negligible amount of supply in a city of 3 million households.

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HOLA4413

I'm surprised by those maps as the areas that I know in London there are bucket loads of new builds going up. In Wandsworth within 3miles of each other (and off the top of my head) there are;

-Osiers Gate development

-Riverside Development

-Battersea Heights

-Nightingale Apartments

-Filaments

-Ipsus07

-Queen Mary's Place

-Langham Square

There must be a good 10,000+ flats being built there, and that's just from memory and not including a lot of the new ones planned on Upper Richmond Road Putney. I suspect some of the supply figures are being 'cooked' for some reason, not sure why though

10,000 flats in 8 developments? Do you think that these developments have over a thousand flats each? Or did you mean 10,000 in London, or South London?

Edit: to note none of these are truely 'affordable', but I'm not sure (at least in my area) that 'supply' of newbuilds isn't the problem.

Freudian slip? ;)

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HOLA4414

10,000 flats in 8 developments? Do you think that these developments have over a thousand flats each? Or did you mean 10,000 in London, or South London?

Freudian slip? ;)

I mean 10,000 'new homes' over the 8 developments. If I get the time I will dig out the numbers...

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HOLA4415

I mean 10,000 'new homes' over the 8 developments. If I get the time I will dig out the numbers...

Just re-read this and I ddin't mean Battersea Heights, I meant Battersea Reach. ! But to start this off:

- Osiers Gate - 275

- Riverside Quarter - 395

- Battersea Reach - 1,700

- Nightengale Apartments - ????

- Filaments - 450

- Queen Mary's Place - 350

-Ipsus07 - ????

- Langham Square - 175

Another one I missed off is the Hardwicks Square development which is around 150 units excluding IPSUS01 (100ish units).

OK I might have been a bit over enthusiastic with the figures. but bearing in mind that's all within the past 5 years or so and within a 3 mile radius.

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HOLA4416

Just re-read this and I ddin't mean Battersea Heights, I meant Battersea Reach. ! But to start this off:

- Osiers Gate - 275

- Riverside Quarter - 395

- Battersea Reach - 1,700

- Nightengale Apartments - ????

- Filaments - 450

- Queen Mary's Place - 350

-Ipsus07 - ????

- Langham Square - 175

Another one I missed off is the Hardwicks Square development which is around 150 units excluding IPSUS01 (100ish units).

OK I might have been a bit over enthusiastic with the figures. but bearing in mind that's all within the past 5 years or so and within a 3 mile radius.

Ok, thanks.

So, adding them all: 275 + 395 + 1,700 + 450 + 350 + 175 + 150 = 3,495, in 5 years, or some 700/year, in a 3 miles radius.

IIRC London has some 8 million people, and some 3 million dwellings. It should be easy to increase this supply by just 1% / year = 30,000/year. Ideally 2% or even 3%. But our dysfunctional land and planning systems don't deliver this. A Land Value Tax and an intelligent planning system would revolutionise all that.

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HOLA4417

I'm surprised by those maps as the areas that I know in London there are bucket loads of new builds going up. In Wandsworth within 3miles of each other (and off the top of my head) there are;

-Osiers Gate development

-Riverside Development

-Battersea Heights

-Nightingale Apartments

-Filaments

-Ipsus07

-Queen Mary's Place

-Langham Square

There must be a good 10,000+ flats being built there, and that's just from memory and not including a lot of the new ones planned on Upper Richmond Road Putney. I suspect some of the supply figures are being 'cooked' for some reason, not sure why though

Edit: to note none of these are truely 'affordable', but I'm not sure (at least in my area) that 'supply' of newbuilds isn't the problem.

Between 2001and 2011 the number of homes in London increased more than the number of households (305,800 vs. 250,200, see http://data.london.gov.uk/datastorefiles/documents/2011-census-snapshot-housing.pdf) . So in theory the increase in supply outweighed the increase in demand. (Mitigating this could be the number of flats bought for investment and left empty - anecdotally there are large swathes of central London blocks which are dark at night - and census under-reporting of new households).

So what is the problem? The problem is with the supply mix. During this period, of the new homes built in London, 90.6% were flats (same source). As is well documented, the increase in immigrants in London has led to a baby boom i.e. large numbers of new young families. Young families don't want to live in flats, they want to live in houses. But TPTB (including Boris) prefer to prioritise wealthy foreign investors over local families (I almost said "hard-working")

I realise there are some who prefer that families are cooped up in high-density high-rise blocks (and tell us how wonderful and more sustainable this is) so that the price of their property remains high, or so that they can see a field from the window of their house or train carriage or car, or even just know that said field exists even if they never see it. My preference is different.

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HOLA4418

Between 2001and 2011 the number of homes in London increased more than the number of households (305,800 vs. 250,200, see http://data.london.gov.uk/datastorefiles/documents/2011-census-snapshot-housing.pdf) . (...)

On the demand side, if sharers are considered just one "household", this will understate the real demand. And on the supply side, if splinting a house into flats counts as more "homes", then this data can be also be seriously misleading. I think we should instead compare the population (as opposed to "households") increases, and with actual new-build units.

.

Edited by Tired of Waiting
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HOLA4419

Between 2001and 2011 the number of homes in London increased more than the number of households (305,800 vs. 250,200, see http://data.london.gov.uk/datastorefiles/documents/2011-census-snapshot-housing.pdf) . So in theory the increase in supply outweighed the increase in demand. (Mitigating this could be the number of flats bought for investment and left empty - anecdotally there are large swathes of central London blocks which are dark at night - and census under-reporting of new households).

So what is the problem? The problem is with the supply mix. During this period, of the new homes built in London, 90.6% were flats (same source). As is well documented, the increase in immigrants in London has led to a baby boom i.e. large numbers of new young families. Young families don't want to live in flats, they want to live in houses. But TPTB (including Boris) prefer to prioritise wealthy foreign investors over local families (I almost said "hard-working")

I realise there are some who prefer that families are cooped up in high-density high-rise blocks (and tell us how wonderful and more sustainable this is) so that the price of their property remains high, or so that they can see a field from the window of their house or train carriage or car, or even just know that said field exists even if they never see it. My preference is different.

I'm sorry and families can't live in flats? Generally there isn't the space in London for new housing estates. London requires high density living, it has enough low density living.

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HOLA4420

I'm sorry and families can't live in flats? Generally there isn't the space in London for new housing estates. London requires high density living, it has enough low density living.

I think we can have both. Many London houses have been split into flats, right? So, if we allow a good number of new flats built, then many of those houses would probably gradually revert to being family homes.

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HOLA4421

I'm sorry and families can't live in flats?

Families can and do live in flats but mostly would prefer to live in houses for a better quality of life for their children.

Generally there isn't the space in London for new housing estates.

So expand London. Expanding London by one mile would provide one million new houses. I think that would be worth it to see one million families well-housed.

London requires high density living, it has enough low density living.

An artificlal boundary was set at an arbitrary time. Circumstances have changed. Let's look after the needs of the many, not the few.

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HOLA4422

Families can and do live in flats but mostly would prefer to live in houses for a better quality of life for their children.

So expand London. Expanding London by one mile would provide one million new houses. I think that would be worth it to see one million families well-housed.

An artificlal boundary was set at an arbitrary time. Circumstances have changed. Let's look after the needs of the many, not the few.

Good points, all of them. I fully agree that London should allow some expansion, like your 1 mile radius example, with spacious modern family homes. But we should also allow more flats in and around central London, for young people who would prefer to live there than in converted Victorian terraces far from central London. We should allow both.

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HOLA4423

But we should also allow more flats in and around central London, for young people who would prefer to live there than in converted Victorian terraces far from central London. We should allow both.

I am not against more flats in central London. I am for more family houses in an expanded London. My point about the supply mix was that not enough houses are being built, rather than too many flats.

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HOLA4424

Families can and do live in flats but mostly would prefer to live in houses for a better quality of life for their children.

So expand London. Expanding London by one mile would provide one million new houses. I think that would be worth it to see one million families well-housed.

No, trying to build houses on limited land is what results in the dystopian new build estate we've seen too many of recently. For London the only viable approach is to build family friendly flats of the kind found in continental cities.

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HOLA4425

Expand the new satellite towns and provide fast efficient cheaper trains to transport people to work.....if people didn't have to be transported slowly like sardines squashed up together stressed out when they get there and could have a seat and even do some work on the journey knowing that the season ticket wouldn't take up a large chunk of their monthly income they would move for a better life. ;)

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