Bbc - "why Can't The Uk Build 240,000 Houses A Year?"

[Riedquat]

Bookmarked this thread to bump when real HPC takes hold, and totally changes viewpoints about lack of supply / too few houses. Too much demand for the specuvestors buying up houses competing with us, where supply will improve as prices crash and money becomes more valuable.

I wish I shared your confidence that that's all it is and whilst that massively distorts the supply / demand picture it does seem that that distortion is on top of a fundamental shortage, in many places at least (some much more than others).

[Quicken]

There is one other option that seems to be overlooked and that is to build really good high density housing.

In most cities there are areas that have nice big old soundproof flats. Inner city parks, shops, restaurants etc all tightly packed together and the areas are hugely in demand.

New build high density only doesnt work when the builder throw up crap flats with damp problems and no sound proofing. There is no need for this as we knew how to build flats/areas 100 years ago and we should still be able to do it now.

Totally agree that this should be going on. It's not just new build flats that tend to be sh*t, but also many new build houses from the big housebuilders. It really wouldn't cost much more to build with decent quality and with room to swing a cat.

There are also problems with carving up houses into flats, which is rife in many cities. I also suspect these go into the stats on new home builds when they are nothing of the sort. I'd like to see a graph of the total area of land covered by housing over time to give us a fuller picture. Anyone aware of one?

[Riedquat]

When it comes to density lots of modern developments seem to be dense yet still somehow look like they're really failing to make good use of the plot. The Victorian terrace seems to have a bit of a bad name but the better ones seem to do a much better job of it. I'm not saying we should rebuild them but there are lessons to be learned.