The Great Housing Shortage Scandal

[It is different this time]

The Scotsman thinks it is about time and features a greenfield site that has had planning permission for housing for 30 years, but has stood empty ever since.

How the hell can they allow that to happen? empty for 30 years with a planning permission. Scandalous

[huw]

How the hell can they allow that to happen? empty for 30 years with a planning permission. Scandalous

I thought PP lapsed if not acted on (?)

[sikejsudjek]

I thought PP lapsed if not acted on (?)

Hmm... we have a field that's been empty and unused since a school closed down in the 80's near us. At long last the council have just decided to allow housing on it. One wonders how many other vacant sites and brown field sites could be used. If Brown managed to kick the Local Councils up the **** and build on this land he will have done a good thing.

[Fudge]

Hmm... we have a field that's been empty and unused since a school closed down in the 80's near us. At long last the council have just decided to allow housing on it. One wonders how many other vacant sites and brown field sites could be used. If Brown managed to kick the Local Councils up the **** and build on this land he will have done a good thing.

The Northampton tory council sold a lot of public land off to developers last year, school paying fields mostly

for £90m.

I wonder if theyintend to just land bank it, and therefore prevent houses being otherwise built, in an attempt

to keep house prices up in the area.

[Bushy Tail]

Do you think it's like the Tesco scandal where property developers buy and hoard land to cash in on the increases and fend off competition?

Edited July 12, 2007 by Bushy Tail

[Fudge]

Do you think it's like the Tesco scandal where property developers buy and hoard land to cash in on the increases and fend off competition?

You may say that, but I couldnt possibly comment.

[Selling up]

"Housing Shortage"

This is simplistic thinking. People assume that price rises mean a lack of housing stock.

But the truth is more subtle:

Price movements [edit: price movements over the last couple of years] suggest that there is a shortage of homes being put on the market for sale (relative to current demand to buy a house) and an oversupply of rental property (relative to current demand to rent).

This does not necessarily say ANYTHING about the adequacy of the housing stock, merely about people's willingness to buy, sell, let and rent.

Edited July 12, 2007 by Selling up

[dude wheres my house]

Link to story and comments http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1083202007

[joey]

How the hell can they allow that to happen? empty for 30 years with a planning permission. Scandalous

If musn't be on a floodplain or it would have houses built on it long ago.

[Capital Keith]

I thought PP lapsed if not acted on (?)

All you have to do is "start on site" within 7 years.

[chichi]

Bloke on homes under the hammer reckons he can build 3 1 bed appartments for 60 (attaching it to a terrace) or 40 for a single dwelling.

He's spent 24k on the land so potentially a house for 64k.

Probably expensive for stoke still ...

[Capital Keith]

How the hell can they allow that to happen? empty for 30 years with a planning permission. Scandalous

Development rights are nationalised. Planning permission simply means that particular land has development rights granted for a particular land use. So having planning permission simply means that an area of land can be developed in a particular fashion. There is no compulsion for development to take place once planning permission has been granted.

It is possible that this piece of land had planning permission granted and that the residents of the houses in the background bought it to stop the permission being implemented. Or it has been landbanked - which is a bit more scandalous in human terms, but it's capitalism innit?

Anyway, this is a post in defence of the public sector - I assumed they are the 'they' of your post. The lack of development will be due to private individuals and I doubt the case for compulsory purchase is all that strong in this instance.

Go planners!

[HouseDog]

The Northampton tory council sold a lot of public land off to developers last year, school paying fields mostly

for £90m.

I wonder if theyintend to just land bank it, and therefore prevent houses being otherwise built, in an attempt

to keep house prices up in the area.

Parklands Middle School Northampton and its surrounding land planning application is here:

http://planning.northamptonboroughcouncil....ber=N/2006/1052

and here:

http://planning.northamptonboroughcouncil....ber=N/2006/1052

[apom]

How the hell can they allow that to happen? empty for 30 years with a planning permission. Scandalous

There is no shortage of housing.

There are more houses per head of capita then there were a decade ago and the situation is improving still.

There is a housing market deliberately created by the MPC in order to generate a credit binge that would help UK PLC avoid a recession.

Gordon Browns miracle economy has been based solely on this credit binge.

To believe the Governments claims of a housing shortage is neive in the face of the most intensive house building since 1990, when they built even more.

When the still saw house prices drop.

It is about spin and lies and about the sale of credit to masses drunk on debt. It is not about housing and all articles like this do is serve the governments claim that house prices go up through a shortage.

The new housing minister claimed last night on the CH4 news that the 50% rise in prices in northern Ireland was not speculation, but was due to an empowered economy.

Whilst obvious tat like this is accepted by the media and spun in the press the government will continue to spin and lie.

This is a nice field, leave it be, there are enough houses.

[@contradevian]

Parklands Middle School Northampton and its surrounding land planning application is here:

http://planning.northamptonboroughcouncil....ber=N/2006/1052

and here:

http://planning.northamptonboroughcouncil....ber=N/2006/1052

In those docs is a comment that Northampton intends to build 25,100 new homes by 2021. Can't help feel Mr Brown, has announced stuff thats already planned to happen. So no change there then.

[Scunnered]

This seems to be the "Aren't things terrbile for the poor builders?" issue. There are three separate articles telling us how high house prices are due to lack of supply and how the builders would sort everything out if only the government would see sense and scrap the ridiculous planning laws:

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1083202007

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1083692007

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1083742007

There's also a couple of pay-to-read editorial pieces on the subject. As usual, the readers' comments are a lot more entertaining than the stories themselves. Here's a comment from the second piece above:

As for being represented (at least here) by "one of the country's leading estate agents", well, you might as well ask Harold Shipman for his views on geriatric care.

[Fudge]

I would prefer too many houses to be built than too few.

So housing is no longer a big deal. It will be necessary in the future to have cheap housing because we will

be increasingly competing for work with low wage nations.

Look what is happening in the USA, after the big housing bust, the younger generations will benefit from cheap housing, so workers will be able to compete in the global workplace, attracting capital and jobs.

How difficult is it to emmigrate to the USA from the UK?

[Selling up]

There is no shortage of housing.

There are more houses per head of capita then there were a decade ago and the situation is improving still.

There is a housing market deliberately created by the MPC in order to generate a credit binge that would help UK PLC avoid a recession.

I agree - see my post above.

Edit: Or to be more precise, I see no evidence of a housing shortage. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But rising house prices say nothing about the adequacy of housing stock, just about how many people want to buy and want to sell at this moment.

Edited July 12, 2007 by Selling up

[Come On Down]

We need facts and figures to put this one to bed for good. Please fill in the gaps

How many single owner home occupancies are there? ___

Has this value actually increased? ___

If so, are there any graphs around to show this? ___

How many houses are there in total? ____

How many second homes are there? - I think this is a big issue.

Empty houses. 700,000.

[phoenixdark]

There is no shortage of housing.

There are more houses per head of capita then there were a decade ago and the situation is improving still.

There is a housing market deliberately created by the MPC in order to generate a credit binge that would help UK PLC avoid a recession.

Gordon Browns miracle economy has been based solely on this credit binge.

To believe the Governments claims of a housing shortage is neive in the face of the most intensive house building since 1990, when they built even more.

When the still saw house prices drop.

It is about spin and lies and about the sale of credit to masses drunk on debt. It is not about housing and all articles like this do is serve the governments claim that house prices go up through a shortage.

The new housing minister claimed last night on the CH4 news that the 50% rise in prices in northern Ireland was not speculation, but was due to an empowered economy.

Whilst obvious tat like this is accepted by the media and spun in the press the government will continue to spin and lie.

This is a nice field, leave it be, there are enough houses.

Totally agree - there is no shortage of houses at all. Its purely smoke and mirrors to keep prices high. Every street in Britain has houses for rent or sale. If we have such a shortage, where are the surplus population needing these houses?

[huw]

It will be necessary in the future to have cheap housing because we will

be increasingly competing for work with low wage nations.

Have you seen the conditions in which poor people in low-wage nations like India and China live? Sorry to say it, but if we end up competing on those terms, it means competing on those terms. We can't live in (comparative) palaces and compete with people who live in shanties, ten-to-a-room.

It won't be as stark as that, though. As they get richer, they'll be able to afford better lodgings. As we get poorer, we'll be forced to settle for worse (unless we somehow manage to expand global per-capita wealth, which looks unachievable given rising population and resource depletion).

So enjoy the first-world ride while it lasts, and try to put something by...

[huw]

Totally agree - there is no shortage of houses at all. Its purely smoke and mirrors to keep prices high. Every street in Britain has houses for rent or sale. If we have such a shortage, where are the surplus population needing these houses?

There's a lot of sense to that. At worst, I think we have the wrong kind of homes. If so, is it a failure of the market, or of planning?

[phoenixdark]

Poor planning is a big part of the problem. They seem to allow huge amounts of poorly constructed inferior flats and apartments that are so badly designed and built that they will probably be torn down in twenty years. Every town is full of 'property developers' or builders as they used to be called, making hundreds of thousands due to utterly inept council planning departments.

[Guest d23]

There is no shortage of housing.

There are more houses per head of capita then there were a decade ago and the situation is improving still.

are you sure about that? UK population has gone up at least 2.5 million in the last 10 years and I wasn't aware that the building of new houses had kept pace with that.

[Si1]

are you sure about that? UK population has gone up at least 2.5 million in the last 10 years and I wasn't aware that the building of new houses had kept pace with that.

if there IS a shortage, then the 3% or so that this represents hardly justifies a more than 100% price rise. It also doesn;t explain the equivalent price rises in the regional areas that have housing to spare