baldrick
hmmmmm
Yep, exactly. The max number of bedrooms possible crammed into a house, no thought for the people who have to live there at all.
I have been working in Town Planning for ~20 yrs. Here is a lock-down induced rant on what I think is wrong with the housing market in the UK
- Thread starter teccuk
- Start date
baldrick
hmmmmm
Yeah, I could bang on about this all day. Wealth extraction from areas which were never particularly rich to begin with, all so landlords can make disproportionate amounts of money taking advantage of vulnerable people. And this is considered normal behaviour, they're not ashamed of what they do.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
This happened a lot in the suburbs of south Manchester. Well, not the cramming lots of vulnerable people into HMOs at a premium and trousering housing benefits. It was more that around 30 years or so ago, landlords were buying up loads of family homes in places like Rusholme, Fallowfield, Withington, Didsbury, and they'd turn a three bedroom family home into a four bedroom shared house for students - three original bedrooms, plus converting the downstairs sitting room into a fourth bedroom. Or turning a four bed family home into a five bed student house, five into six, etc.I suspect a lot of houses around here are divided up like that, high rents , relatively fashionable area.
And it ended up making lots of local residents miserable. Families were living next to student party houses. There was loads of disturbance and litter from drunken students staggering from from a night out having stopped off at the kebab shop or for a pizza, and lots of take-aways popped up to cater for the students, resulting in more mess. At the end of the year, stuff would be left outside in front gardens by shitty landlords, like mattresses and broken furniture. Gardens were overgrown. Houses weren't properly maintained or repaired. Crime rocketed, because burglars knew that if they broke into a house, they weren't just going to get one or two televisions and a computer, like they might in a family home, each bedroom would probably have a television and a computer or laptop, plus other electricals, keyboards/guitars, etc.
[I lived in a house in Withington that had been split in two. Landlord lived in ground floor flat, me and another mature student lived in the two bedroom flat on the first floor. One night we thought we were being burgled... my landlord tentatively opened the door after the noise died down, it turned out a drunken student couldn't find his house, (which was actually next door to ours), and there were a load of neighbours on their doorsteps who'd been woken up as the student had tried his key and rattled door after door in an attempt to find his own house.]
Anyway, the council eventually got into bed with property developers who started to build blocks of private sector student flats. And they introduced a licence scheme for HMOs, which prompted some landlords to sell up and discouraged others from buying up and converting family homes into student shared houses. The private sector flats were much more expensive, but they were very trendy, having single bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, instead of rooms with shared bathrooms like in many traditional halls of residence. Of course, that came at a premium. But student loans had been introduced, and some students were less cost conscious. The price of student accommodation went up and up and up, but the trend was set.
It became council policy to try to restore those former studenty areas back into desirable suburbs with decent sized family homes. Except they displaced the students into areas closer to the universities, which had been undesirable inner city areas. So they displaced the problem away from the suburbs which got re-gentrified, and into areas like where I live, which have become de facto part of the extended campus, which has swallowed up lots of land and facilities. Waste ground and green space has been built on by the unis, the uni and private developers are building student halls and 'apartments for professionals' aka yuppie flats, every which way you look.
Local pubs have been shutting, they're not financially viable - students are told to socialise in town, because it's 'not safe' to venture into our local community at night. So they stay inside their little gated communities and have parties with no social distancing (breaking Covid-19 lockdown laws), then they pop to our local shop in their pyjamas for more vodka or whatever, like modern day Typhoid Marys. They were all over the media last year. I nipped to the shop the other night, there were loads of them partying again.
Local residents are treated with contempt by the council and the universities. The 'big business' of the universities takes precedence over local people's standards of living.
baldrick
hmmmmm
AnnO'Neemus that is exactly what has happened in areas of Birmingham as well, with students. The council only introduced article 4 HMO licencing to cover areas of student housing initially. I think it has helped reduce the number of btl landlords concentrating on the student market. I personally know two people who have bought family homes in the trad 'student area' of Birmingham recently. I don't think that would have happened five years ago.
It's interesting what you say about the relocation of students affecting new areas. Most of the new halls are in close proximity to the town centre here.
It's interesting what you say about the relocation of students affecting new areas. Most of the new halls are in close proximity to the town centre here.
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
For Greater London the stuff that is wrong IMO is:
Green belt: Much of this is not that green - i.e. golf courses, intensively farmed arable land. There would be very little lost if bites were taken out close to major transport links and allocated to development.
Conservation areas: Lots of old areas in London where multistorey development will be prohibitively expensive because it needs to be sympathetic to the character of the area.
Protected views: Lots of height restrictions based on preserving views. I think one protects the view from Richmond (King Henry VIII's Mound) to St Paul's Cathedral: King Henry's Mound. Priorities are arse about tit in my view - there are a lot of people who could be housed by increasing density in the corridors affected.
Nationally, I feel a lot of the problem is due to the fact that councils don't retain revenues (go to central govt) and hence have no incentive to increase Council Tax paying residents. In Switzerland the cantons do receive the equivalent of council tax and so are much more receptive to development as more people in their area swells their budget.
Green belt: Much of this is not that green - i.e. golf courses, intensively farmed arable land. There would be very little lost if bites were taken out close to major transport links and allocated to development.
Conservation areas: Lots of old areas in London where multistorey development will be prohibitively expensive because it needs to be sympathetic to the character of the area.
Protected views: Lots of height restrictions based on preserving views. I think one protects the view from Richmond (King Henry VIII's Mound) to St Paul's Cathedral: King Henry's Mound. Priorities are arse about tit in my view - there are a lot of people who could be housed by increasing density in the corridors affected.
Nationally, I feel a lot of the problem is due to the fact that councils don't retain revenues (go to central govt) and hence have no incentive to increase Council Tax paying residents. In Switzerland the cantons do receive the equivalent of council tax and so are much more receptive to development as more people in their area swells their budget.
AnnO'Neemus
Is so vanilla
Same here. The halls are in close proximity to the town centre here. The 'new' student areas are closer to the city centre, I live on the very fringe of the city centre, rather than in the suburbs or the fringe of the suburbs. It was rough inner city maybe 25-30 years ago, been slowly gentrifying ever since, now it's like a local neighbourhood is being swallowed up and subsumed into the university campuses.
teccuk
fire kills children
A great plan actually... well a few miles up the road there is a place where HS2 and the Oxford -Cambridge Railway will interest. Around some nice lakes. Would make a great new town! (whatever you think of HS2... maybe i'll do another rant about that one day).
Oof. Maybe. France has that more or less for your third property to give a break to people who became 'accidental' landlords.
teccuk
fire kills children
Greenbelt may have made sense at the time but its a disgrace these days. I've done 'Urban Fringe studies' and most of it isn't 'green' in a way that benefits people or wildlife. As you say its scrap yards, horseyculture, golf course and so on. Good design can create ecologically and humanly better open spaces as well as housing.
Its sacrosanct to the tories though.
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
Happened/ing in Cardiff too
Leafster
.
I live in an area which is 94% greenbelt. Yes, there are golf courses and horsey culture but even they have some environmental benefits for flora and fauna. Where I live, most of the greenbelt is farmland and woodlands. In fact, Surrey, has the highest tree density of any English county. Not only are there significant environmental benefits of these green spaces but they are mostly accessible to the community and enhance our well-being. Many of the people around here cherish these open spaces and it's often a reason they chose to live here. I'm five minutes away from a Site of Special Scientific Interest - a last vestige of the chalk downland that covered much of this area in the past. I'm also on the edge of the Surrey Hills AONB too.
I'm not saying all greenbelt land is like it is here but some of it is.
I'm also not against some development in the greenbelt but it has to be done sympathetically and on the correct scale.
marty21
One on one? You're crazy.
I'm lucky to live in Zone 2 in London, so pretty central , but have access to a huge green space, the Lea Valley , I can walk to 4 marshes (Hackney,Leyton,Walthamstow, Tottenham) all less than a hour's walk, also 2 wetland bird reserves (Woodberry Down, and Walthamstow Wetlands (which is part of Walthamstow marshes) plus an inner city Forest (Wick Woodland) & The Olympic Park. Certainly, this has kept me sane in the various lockdowns over the past year.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
why don't you go to hackney downs?
marty21
One on one? You're crazy.
I can go there too, plus Victoria Park, Clissold Park, Springfield Park, North and South Millfields, Stoke Newington Common & Green , plus a few more I think.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
you could make a day of it
marty21
One on one? You're crazy.
Forgot London Fields !you could make a day of it
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
yeh but it's brimful of the people who go to broadway market.
maomao
普費斯
I moved out to zone 6 nearly seven years ago but I still miss the green spaces of Hackney. There's parks and stuffs round here but it's a good half hour walk to reach anything as good as the marshes or the filter beds.
I work in construction. The people leading the argument regarding building on greenbelt are the big volume housing builders. The likes of Persimmon and Redrow etc. They are doing so solely because of profit margin.
Green belt is cheaper to build on because there is no demolition package and no remediation as when building on brown field or urban sites. Fuck em frankly, its not our job to protect their already massive profits by letting them throw together their low grade housing wherever they want.
Look what's happening in East London, huge amounts of development going on all of it on urban and brownfield sites. It turns out they can build on these sites where there is a will.
Its actually a pretty good ruse when you think about it. Manufacture a system where demand outstrips supply (by not building enough) and the value of what you do build is high. Then use this as leverage against politicians to force them into allowing you build wherever you like and where your build costs are lowest and thereby again benefitting from the crisis you have helped to create. Lovely scam they've got going really.
Green belt is cheaper to build on because there is no demolition package and no remediation as when building on brown field or urban sites. Fuck em frankly, its not our job to protect their already massive profits by letting them throw together their low grade housing wherever they want.
Look what's happening in East London, huge amounts of development going on all of it on urban and brownfield sites. It turns out they can build on these sites where there is a will.
Its actually a pretty good ruse when you think about it. Manufacture a system where demand outstrips supply (by not building enough) and the value of what you do build is high. Then use this as leverage against politicians to force them into allowing you build wherever you like and where your build costs are lowest and thereby again benefitting from the crisis you have helped to create. Lovely scam they've got going really.
Last edited:
ChrisD
.
I'm a Town Planner in private practice. I work with all sorts of developers who work the system to maximize their profit (who wouldn't?).
We need much stronger local planning authorities and an end to the various new forms of permitted development which allow property owners to build slums in the wrong place.
This government (and most in the last 40 years I have been working) say that they are proud of 'reducing red tape' and expect the market to provide the housing needed....grhhh.
We need much stronger local planning authorities and an end to the various new forms of permitted development which allow property owners to build slums in the wrong place.
This government (and most in the last 40 years I have been working) say that they are proud of 'reducing red tape' and expect the market to provide the housing needed....grhhh.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Yep, I live in Zone 2 and there are still empty plots of land around where I live. No need to build on greenbelt. Anyway, as long as flats are being built as investments rather than homes it doesn't matter what you build or where. There's an infinite global pot of investment money waiting to flow in and out-bid the owner-occupiers. Of course it doesn't help that the government is deliberately pumping up the house prices. That advantages the investors overall, and they're only helping quite wealthy people onto the 'housing ladder'.
marty21
One on one? You're crazy.
I've worked on multiple section 106 developments in the past 2 decades or so. Under Ken, they seemed to be enforced more strictly, Boris less so
I've moved away from the HA section now where the majority of this 'mixed tenure ' building took place.There was always a weakness in the legislation, developers could pay to avoid having to include Social Housing (planning gain?) . I want stricter enforcement but not expecting it atm.
Mixed Tenure Housing has issues, poor doors are well documented. I did manage part of a scheme in Westminster, we had about half of the units , the other half were for sale/ key worker /shared ownership. There were tensions between the haves & the have not. Which led to some demanding we build a wall to divide the estate , we refused. This did make me think of the concept of mixed tenure.
In my Hackney street, there is mixed tenure, owner occupiers, private rented, HA, and Local Authority, residents in the main get used to this, and the tenures have evolved over the 120 years.
Originally Council Estates & HA estates had one tenure, then RTB came in , initially there was no change as tenants became owner occupiers and continued living there. But the next generation of owner occupiers often had little experience of living on estates, and clashes occurred, between old school council tenants and new comers , attracted by cheaper housing prices in attractive areas. In my long experience of managing Council/HA estates, these new owner occupiers are often less "robust" , than established residents.
Further problems occurred with private rentals and later with air bnb rentals, it becomes more difficult for housing staff to know who lives there .
My laboured point , mixed tenure takes decades to bed in , and forcing it has mixed results.
hash tag
Books, not bombs
This does not help. This is an area full of Peabody housing, this might but one such property, certainly similar. Peabody tenant dies or moves into care then the next thing you know, there is a property selling for hundreds of thousands Property for Sale in Sabine Road, London SW11 - Buy Properties in Sabine Road, London SW11 - Zoopla
Property for Sale in Sabine Road, London SW11 - Buy Properties in Sabine Road, London SW11 - Zoopla
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
i am lucky enough to own a house - a small 2 bed back to back in one of the cheapest areas of Leeds. My partner moved in a year ago and the two kids are too old to share (boy sand a girl). We need a 3 bed with more space - preferably in the same area. So we've put it on the market - and have three offers over the asking prices within less than a week. And this is really about as cheap a house you can get.
But this is not really good for us as the market is going insane - property's are going the moment they come up for sale. Going on the people interested in my place it is overwhelmingly driven by BTL investors and property developers - out of 20 viewings only two were buying it for themselves. Dont know what is driving this - suspect its brexit and covid related somehow. We are struggling to find something that meets our needs.
So prices are accelerating and prospective owner occupiers are being pushed out. should be a surcharge on BTL, much tougher standards on what you can rent and a massive investment in council housing. But - as ever - policy is being driven by the needs of speculative investment rather than people being able to get decent housing.
But this is not really good for us as the market is going insane - property's are going the moment they come up for sale. Going on the people interested in my place it is overwhelmingly driven by BTL investors and property developers - out of 20 viewings only two were buying it for themselves. Dont know what is driving this - suspect its brexit and covid related somehow. We are struggling to find something that meets our needs.
So prices are accelerating and prospective owner occupiers are being pushed out. should be a surcharge on BTL, much tougher standards on what you can rent and a massive investment in council housing. But - as ever - policy is being driven by the needs of speculative investment rather than people being able to get decent housing.
marty21
One on one? You're crazy.
Our neighbour downstairs, sold her flat late last year. We were worried that it might be btl , which has the potential to cause problems. (I have to deal with similar issues when council street properties are sold , we may have 2 flats , and 1 or 2 leaseholders, the tenants get concerned at constantly changing neighbours) Luckily it was sold to a young couple, I'm hoping they stay until we sell up , which is a few years away probably .
teuchter
je suis teuchter
It presumably also has something to do with the very low interest rates for savings at present.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
I thought that - but its the last few months when things have gone berserk. Partner sold her house last Autumn (which just about cleared her mortgage with very little to spare) and it was on the market for several months with about 6 viewings. We had nearly twenty viewings within a few days.
Leafster
.
There is a 3% SDLT surcharge on second homes which also applies to BTL.
I have read several things which suggest the there's more activity in the housing market as people have had time to re-appraise their housing needs as they've been stuck inside for so long over each successive lockdown. So perhaps this, together with the usual increase in buyers in the spring is fuelling the extra interest.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
Its mostly btl and property developers though
Similar threads
