[lhopki01]

The utility of building on the green belt is questionable. The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there. The UK's biggest issue that the government housing stopped being built in the early 1980s and the number of privately built housing never increased. There has been a deficit of 200,000 housing units a year for over 30 years. Even now almost all housing that is built is built for the top end of the market and will do nothing to bring housing prices down.

[glomph]

Exactly. What we need is for money to be put into affordable housing on brownfield sites in and around the cities. People don't want to live miles away from anything. Why ruin undeveloped land when there is an abundance of land (and buildings) that sits unused. The reason is because the real estate companies don't want to lose out on profit by building affordable homes on high value land. If the government actually enforced affordable housing requirements (or heaven forbid actually invested in housing directly) then that would be worth something. Instead they are pushing 'garden towns', which whatever the hell it means will probably result in facility deserts and degenerating estates as well as the unnecessary destruction of the countryside.

[djmobley]

People don't want to live in the London green belt?

Let's lift the restrictions and see if that holds true, shall we?

I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring as a result of the housing crisis, and the range of alternatives that would be considered an improvement for those people.

[lhopki01]

No I'm just realistic about what the private sector will do. If you look at the long running trend in house building since the second world war private companies have built roughly 200,000 units a year varying by about 50,000 units a year. Significantly this held true when the government also built 200,000 units a year and also when the government stopped building too. The private sector will only ever build for the top end of the market and never in the quantities actually needed to reduce house prices.

So yes if we opened up the green belt it would be built on but it wouldn't achieve anything to alleviate the housing crisis.

And before you say anything I am a late 20s person living in London without any hope of owning my own house.

Finally sprawl is a massive issue and encouraging sprawl over densification will only make the situation worse.

[Lazare]

> No I'm just realistic about what the private sector will do. If you look at the long running trend in house building since the second world war private companies have built roughly 200,000 units a year varying by about 50,000 units a year.

It would be more accurate to say:

> I'm just realistic about what the government will do. If you look at the long running trend in the granting of planning permissions since the second world war, the government has allowed roughly 200,000 units a year to be built.

The private sector builds as many houses as it is legally allowed to do so. This is, as you note, an insufficient number. And yes of course, when they're not allowed to build enough houses to meet demand, they will prioritize building the most profitable ones.

> The private sector will only ever build for the top end of the market and never in the quantities actually needed to reduce house prices.

Yes, we've passed laws to make damn sure of that.

> So yes if we opened up the green belt it would be built on but it wouldn't achieve anything to alleviate the housing crisis.

It's quite possibly true that focusing on denser, brownfield developments is a better idea. But it's rather absurd to suggest that building more houses isn't going to help with the problem of there not being enough houses.

[crdoconnor]

>People don't want to live in the London green belt?

I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could. The housing crisis was entirely a deliberate creation of both the Tories (and to an extent, New Labour).

>I think you vastly underestimate the suffering millions of people in the UK are enduring

I think you're vastly overestimating the effect this would have on alleviating that.

Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this.

[mrec]

> Corbyn's approach (let councils start building again) is a far more rational approach than this.

Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes from (both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them), doesn't this run afoul of parliamentary sovereignty?

If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change", then even if under the current government councils manage to build a zillion new homes, won't the next Osbornean Tory or Blairite Labour government just give them all away again as electoral bribes?

My gut feeling is that the #1 problem is excessive lending on housing and way too much tolerance for housing as a speculative investment. That's certainly not the only problem, but it's addressable relatively cheaply via macroprudential measures and tax law, so I'd like to see uk.gov start there and then see what further action is needed.

[crdoconnor]

>Leaving aside the question of where the money and land comes

The money would come from "people's QE" and lifting the housing revenue account cap.

Building UP, as I mentioned before, is a better way of packing more people in than creating sprawling suburbs in the green belt. For a city its size London's density has been ridiculously restrained.

>both main parties have announced impressive housebuilding targets at the last few GEs, and nobody's even come close to hitting them

Neither Blair's government nor the Tories have ever had any intention of building council housing, instead setting targets for the private sector.

>If "no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change", then even if under the current government councils manage to build a zillion new homes, won't the next Osbornean Tory or Blairite Labour government just give them all away again as electoral bribes

Would you prefer people didn't have homes? Just say it if that's what you want.

>My gut feeling is that the #1 problem is excessive lending on housing and way too much tolerance for housing as a speculative investment.

The financialization of housing exacerbated the problems caused by the shortage of housing, they obviously didn't create them.

[mrec]

> The money would come from "people's QE"

Oh, yet more printy printy. Wonderful.

> Would you prefer people didn't have homes? Just say it if that's what you want.

No, I wouldn't prefer that. I'd quite like an affordable home of my own at some point before I die, thank you very much. I believe social housing - free from the inflationary incentives of the PRS - has an important role to play in keeping the PRS honest, much like (AUIU) the NHS does a lot to keep the UK's private health sector honest compared to the situation in the US. But after the past few decades I don't trust uk.gov to treat social housing as an asset in the long term.

> The financialization of housing exacerbated the problems caused by the shortage of housing, they obviously didn't create them.

I don't think that's at all obvious. When some "investors" are buying houses and leaving them empty while they appreciate, that seems to demonstrate that this is at least as much a demand-side problem as a supply-side one. Where I live, new high-rise housing is going up everywhere you look, and prices for a 1-bed are still stuck at around 15x average earnings.

I know I sound negative. 20 years of watching this madness unfold will do that to you. I have a kneejerk suspicion of "just build on brownfield land" - it's the housing equivalent of "we'll improve services and reduce taxes by cutting red tape and reducing government waste" - sounds nice, doesn't frighten anyone, but if it were really that easy you'd think it would have actually happened the last 20 times someone said it.

[lhopki01]

> My gut feeling is that the #1 problem is excessive lending on housing and way too much tolerance for housing as a speculative investment.

Does this mean you think that supply is adequate and the only issue is that? We have been running a deficit of 200,000 units of housing a year for over 30 years. The shortfall has been made up, in London at least, by turning flat living rooms into bedrooms and splitting up housing into smaller and smaller units.

Also 200,000 units over 5 years is not impressive it's downright pathetic. We used to build 200,000 units of council housing a year as well as 200,000 units of private housing a year.

I don't care if a party gives away the housing as an electoral bribe down the line I just want the housing to be built now and continue to be built to keep house prices from ever going up.

[mrec]

> Does this mean you think that supply is adequate and the only issue is that?

If only I'd written a second sentence directly after the one you quoted which could have answered such questions...

I want lots of housing built too, and I want prices to collapse and stay collapsed, and I want Mark Carney tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, but as you say we seem to have become congenitally useless at building houses in this country.

By all means let's work on improving that, but we're probably looking at more decades even in the best case. I think the sentiment and finance and speculative aspects of the problem could be tackled much more quickly if the politics align to allow it.

[djmobley]

> I'd rather live centrally. If height restrictions were eliminated and councils started building pretty much everybody who wanted to, could.

High-rise buildings are a hugely inefficient use of land and energy. 5-6 storey mansion blocks would be the optimum.

But it is not height restrictions that preclude that kind of development in central London. The foremost problem is a lack of available land.

We could build millions and millions of houses in the green belt. In a country of ~20m homes, that will necessarily have a huge effect.

If we can break free of the notion of UK property as an ever-appreciating safe investment, we may also deter some speculators and crater prices entirely.

[crdoconnor]

>High-rise buildings are a hugely inefficient use of land and energy.

High rise buildings are MORE efficient, not less. The more dense the city, the more energy efficient it is: http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-gr...

>But it is not height restrictions that preclude that kind of development in central London. The foremost problem is a lack of available land.

You just have to look at the number of people packed into a smaller area in Manhattan to see that that isn't true.

>We could build millions and millions of houses in the green belt.

You could also build millions of apartments inside it and then maybe people wouldn't have to live in Uxbridge and Barnet AND you wouldn't have to make air quality in London even worse.

[djmobley]

> The London green belt is so far away from the city center that you'd be better of living in Birmigham and taking the train than trying to get in from there.

Utter nonsense. Vast swathes of the green belt around London are within walking -- or a short bus journey -- distance of rail stations providing very reasonable commute times into central London.

You mention the failure of private builders to meet demand for new houses. Why do you think that is?

Do you think it might be something to do with inflated land prices and onerous planning restrictions? The green belt, for example?

[lhopki01]

> You mention the failure of private builders to meet demand for new houses. Why do you think that is?

No I don't think that's true. If you look at the number of privately built units of housing it has been remarkably consistent at about 200,000 units a year since the second world war. Now are you going to tell me that the regulatory regime has been the same the entire time?

I'd have more sympathy for your arguments if the biggest complaint from councils about new housing was that they give planning permissions and then developers just sit on the land and send in further speculative planning applications.

[Lazare]

> If you look at the number of privately built units of housing it has been remarkably consistent at about 200,000 units a year

Between 2006 and 20015, planning permission was awarded in England for 2,035,835 housing units. That is an average of 204,000 per year.

> I'd have more sympathy for your arguments if the biggest complaint from councils about new housing was that they give planning permissions and then developers just sit on the land and send in further speculative planning applications.

That is something they complain about. The data does not support it.

[lhopki01]

> Between 2006 and 20015, planning permission was awarded in England for 2,035,835 housing units. That is an average of 204,000 per year.

You've completely missed my point. The private sector has been building 200,000 units a year since the second world war. So if the planning regime is holding them back it's been doing it since the second world war. But we haven't had a housing crisis since the second world war because we used to build enough houses. The difference is that in addition to the 200,000 privately built housing units we used to have 200,000 units of government built housing a year. That stopped at the end of the 70s and we're paying the price of 30 years of shortfalls. There's only so many living rooms that can be turned into bedrooms before it comes to a head. What I want is for councils to be given the money to build housing again. They used to do this but then the funding was cut in the very early 80s.

> That is something they complain about. The data does not support it.

http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/11831/Unimplemented+... This report from local governments shows that around 50% of granted planning permissions are still waiting to be built. Additionally it says that councils approve 9/10 planning permissions really suggesting that the planning process is not at fault here.

[Lazare]

> The private sector has been building 200,000 units a year [...] we used to build enough houses. The difference is that in addition to the 200,000 privately built housing units we used to have 200,000 units of government built housing a year.

Right, so government stopped building public housing, but didn't allow private sources to fill the gap. That seems clear enough.

> This report from local governments shows that around 50% of granted planning permissions are still waiting to be built.

That's not at all what that report says. Again, in the past 10 years permission has been granted to build over 2 million homes; the overwhelming majority have been built. Planning permissions are the most critical input in the house building process; of course builders keep an inventory on hand. That inventory ballooned a bit during the crisis; as your own link notes, it's now falling again, and only amounts to about a 12 month supply.

> Additionally it says that councils approve 9/10 planning permissions

The existing rules are pretty clear, and obviously people don't apply for permissions which they know will not be granted. I mean, this entire thread is on the context of loosening restrictions; you're surely not claiming that 90% of applications to build in the greenbelt would be granted?

What would be relevant - and what is crucially NOT in your link - is evidence that there are building sites for which planning permission would be granted, if anyone applied, but for which no one is applying. But what seems to be the current status (and which your link supports) is that the supply of building sites for which permission can be obtained is about 200k/year, of which the overwhelming majority are 1) applied for and 2) built upon.

[lhopki01]

Or that the private sector only caters to the top end of the market and will never cater to the the lower ends. Where do you get that the government didn't allow them to make up the shortfall? What you're claiming is that the planning permissions were tightened just enough so that despite twice the demand there was no real increase in housing built?

Housing is something that is too important to leave to just market forces because it isn't really a market. Land is scarce and you can't import to make up the shortfall. Additionally the government has committed to providing housing for the less fortunate which means that they now have to pay market rents further inflating prices. Everyone is better off if they just go back to building houses.

Just saying build in the green belt will not achieve much. It'll divert developers from building on brownfield and lead to even more of a sprawl than there currently is in cities like London.