Known Unknowns

[dugsbody]

1 minute ago, sta100 said:

The price of building a new home could be brought down easily if the Government was forward thinking and pushed for adoption of new pre-fabricated carbon neutral housing technology.

The increased cost for building work should theoretically make houses decrease in value since the premium for extendability has been diminished.

I'm not sure why we're still on the bricks and mortar model, it's not fit for purpose anymore

Obviously location is most of the cost of a house, which is why a penthouse in Sloane Square is many hundreds of times more expensive than a four bedroom detached in Stoke.

But, I know how people think when they think about houses, because I am one of them. I had to consider very carefully whether to build an extension or move to a larger house. If building an extension is quite cheap, I'd choose to do that instead of paying more to move, so there will be less demand for that other property. If it becomes more expensive to build an extension, the balance changes and now I might move instead, increasing the bidding pressure for that other property.

It's not exactly scientific, I'm not going to spend more time defending this, it's just a casual observation. I believe that there is also upward pressure on house prices due to inflation and wage inflation. If others don't believe it, that's fine, we can move on.

And for what it's worth, the downward pressure of higher interest rates will more than counteract this. I expect nominal price falls YoY within the next year or so.

[sta100]

1 minute ago, dugsbody said:

 

But, I know how people think when they think about houses, because I am one of them. I had to consider very carefully whether to build an extension or move to a larger house. If building an extension is quite cheap, I'd choose to do that instead of paying more to move, so there will be less demand for that other property. If it becomes more expensive to build an extension, the balance changes and now I might move instead, increasing the bidding pressure for that other property.

 

This is how people have been thinking about houses. A mindset shift is not outside the realm of possibilities. Will people put a premium on space as they have given the increase in energy and maintenance costs? Furthermore if there is no HPI, what will people prioritise, somewhere more expensive or a smaller cheaper place?

I'm not disagreeing that there are factors which could cause upward pressure, but this could just snowball into a complete mindset shift about the way we live. In 2020 it was larger houses with big gardens in 2023 these could be seen as money pits and smaller terraced or flats with low or communal running costs could be the new trend.

 

[winkie]

23 minutes ago, sta100 said:

The price of building a new home could be brought down easily if the Government was forward thinking and pushed for adoption of new pre-fabricated carbon neutral housing technology.

The increased cost for building work should theoretically make houses decrease in value since the premium for extendability has been diminished and the maintenance costs increased

I'm not sure why we're still on the bricks and mortar model, it's not fit for purpose anymore

3d printed homes......been around in Europe for a while.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-63180726

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44709534

 

[Trampa501]

14 minutes ago, sta100 said:

This is how people have been thinking about houses. A mindset shift is not outside the realm of possibilities. Will people put a premium on space as they have given the increase in energy and maintenance costs? Furthermore if there is no HPI, what will people prioritise, somewhere more expensive or a smaller cheaper place?

I'm not disagreeing that there are factors which could cause upward pressure, but this could just snowball into a complete mindset shift about the way we live. In 2020 it was larger houses with big gardens in 2023 these could be seen as money pits and smaller terraced or flats with low or communal running costs could be the new trend.

 

For some time I wondered why folk (in particular the older ones) preferred living in larger properties. It's not just the higher cost of energy and upkeep. It's all that cleaning, unless you prefer living in squalor. I suppose though that the monies class merely employ cleaners/housekeepers to keep things tidy.

[scottbeard]

1 hour ago, Trampa501 said:

For some time I wondered why folk (in particular the older ones) preferred living in larger properties. It's not just the higher cost of energy and upkeep. It's all that cleaning, unless you prefer living in squalor. I suppose though that the monies class merely employ cleaners/housekeepers to keep things tidy.

There's a sliding scale though - the spare room being a bit dusty is not the same as squalor.

[TheResponsibleHouseBuyer]

30 minutes ago, scottbeard said:

There's a sliding scale though - the spare room being a bit dusty is not the same as squalor.

If i was an older person, i would find the biggest house i could afford (probably they got there because of HPI) away from any squalor (big cities). 

Surely working for so many years you wanna find a place you call home and live the rest of your life and die peacefully?

[scottbeard]

47 minutes ago, TheResponsibleHouseBuyer said:

Surely working for so many years you wanna find a place you call home and live the rest of your life and die peacefully?

What if you already live in a house that feels like that, just it happens to have 4 bedrooms?

One set of my grandparents did exactly that, retired to a nice little bungalow in a village.  But the other set kept living in the street they'd lived in all their working lives, with friends and neighbours all around them, which was already in a country village (my grandpa cycled into the city for work).

[TheResponsibleHouseBuyer]

3 minutes ago, scottbeard said:

What if you already live in a house that feels like that, just it happens to have 4 bedrooms?

One set of my grandparents did exactly that, retired to a nice little bungalow in a village.  But the other set kept living in the street they'd lived in all their working lives, with friends and neighbours all around them, which was already in a country village (my grandpa cycled into the city for work).

Whatever makes them happy. Some prefer to sell their house and go on cruises till the money runs out. Some prefer to buy in France/Spain abroad etc.

[kzb]

6 hours ago, Depressedpedro said:

Although you've not really answered the question, I am pleased you posted this.  As can be seen, there was not a thermometer within a hundred miles of the supposed temperature record area.

6 hours ago, Depressedpedro said:

Using that you can paint a fairly decent picture of the weather patterns at the time and the temperatures, and the models these days can easily fill in the gap as I say (like a puzzle piece).

Computer models can output strange results sometimes.

 

6 hours ago, Depressedpedro said:

I'd never use that data for things like record,

Agreed, but that is apparently what was done.  The model output was reported as a temperature record.

 

6 hours ago, Depressedpedro said:

should also add here I'm not some climate activist. I think its deeply ironic that the extreme lot talk about humans dying out from global warming when even now the numbers who directly die due to the cold and winter VASTLY outweigh deaths caused by heat/summer. You have to really broaden that field out for it to be closer (by including famine, which is partly attributed to GW but other factors matter as well so tough to say how much a role it actually played.)

Good, and I have stated many times that some of the warming is anthropogenic.  But do I think there is a climate emergency?  No.  That we should be handing over 40 billion at COP27 for weather problems in other countries ?  No. Do I think we should be trying for net zero ahead of everyone else ?  No.  That is all I am saying.

[Dopamine]

6 hours ago, dugsbody said:

I had to consider very carefully whether to build an extension or move to a larger house. If building an extension is quite cheap, I'd choose to do that instead of paying more to move, so there will be less demand for that other property

That’s another known unknown - the effect of increased build costs. I remember it being common for rebuild costs to be more than purchase costs. Moving back to that would require a shift back to seeing houses (as opposed to land) as a depreciating commodity. Which makes sense as they do wear out.

 

in the current context the impact might be seen if the nominal falls we will almost certainly see drive enough upsizers to move rather than extend, sufficient to counterbalance the general impact of recession on economic decision making (ie too risky to borrow more for whatever reason - extend or move). You’d predict there would be an amount of nominal fall at which that effect would manifest but given build costs it might be a smaller one than in the past, assuming there’s enough people in that situation for it to affect the market.

[Gurgle]

14 hours ago, scottbeard said:

There's a sliding scale though - the spare room being a bit dusty is not the same as squalor.

You clearly haven’t met my wife 😂

[clarkey]

On 11/7/2022 at 2:19 PM, kzb said:

+1.15 degrees since the average of 1850-1900 temperatures.

Honestly, they don't know the global average temperature for 1850-1900 to a precision of 0.01 degrees.

Your climate expert on the radio would be looking at the climate model outputs.  Nearly all of them seriously overpredicted the temperature.  By now, Blackpool should be like Benidorm if they were correct.

Models overestimating things. Where have I seen that before. Did professor Ferguson write the software?

[14stFlyer]

 

There is a weather station AT the North Pole.  It takes temperature readings. 

11 hours ago, kzb said:

As can be seen, there was not a thermometer within a hundred miles of the supposed temperature record area.

Is there a climate emergency?  Yes

Should we be providing billions in aid to help poorer countries cope with climate change and decarbonise? 
Yes

Should we be providing global leadership by moving towards net zero as fast as we can (and faster than others can)?

Yes

[kzb]

3 hours ago, 14stFlyer said:

There is a weather station AT the North Pole.  It takes temperature readings. 

But is it an accredited station and does its data feed into the model in question?  It scarcely matters anyhow, because the temperature record temperatures were not measured temperatures.  They were model outputs.

3 hours ago, 14stFlyer said:

Should we be providing billions in aid to help poorer countries cope with climate change and decarbonise? 
Yes

Should we be providing global leadership by moving towards net zero as fast as we can (and faster than others can)?

Yes

It ain't gonna happen.  At COP27 they want $1.3 trillion a year, some of which will go to China and India. 

This is at a time when we are going into recession and people can't afford to heat and eat.  Tax increases and cuts to services while we give billions to the Chinese is not a winning formula with normal people, believe me.