Housing Crisis - a novel idea

[doobin]

1 minute ago, AHPP said:

This fuqking fiddling while Rome burns drives me crackers. BAD MONEY is the root of all this. When money was vaguely real (linked to gold; finite, reliably hard to mine, durable), you could store wealth in money. Now the central banks print so much paper and digital bullshitcoin, that dilutes the money people have, people need to store wealth elsewhere. They buy land because the Bank of England can't print that and it drives the price up. Add all the rules about planning etc and it's a proper monopoly. 

 

Spend a few minutes looking up the history and reasoning behind the board game, Monopoly and prepare to be angry forever.

 

 

 

A gold backed BRICs currency (especially with OPEC trading oil in it) would signal the start of a terminal decline for the Western world.

 

Bring it on, I say.

[AHPP]

Details.They'd ****************that up in twenty years once they saw how well western dolescum lived off it. Let's force people live to 400 before giving them the opportunity to build such systems.

[Mike Hill]

1 hour ago, doobin said:

3.5 times the average wage, as it did twenty years ago. 

Then everyone building it,would have to take a giant pay cut.

 

Are you sure that only 20 years back a house cost 3.5 times average wage?

[pleasant]

Mike. In 2003 average house price was 5.9 times the average annual salary

 

The history of house price affordability UK over the past 40 years.

House price affordability is simply the number of times the average salary needs to be multiplied to buy the average house. For example, in 1983 the average house price was £26,000 and the average salary was £8,528. Therefore, it would take 3 times the average salary to buy the average house.

In 1993 the average house price was £56,000 and the average salary was £17,784. Therefore, it would take also 3.1 times the average salary to buy the average house.

In 2003 things got more expensive as the average house price was £125,000 and the average salary was £21,124. Therefore, it would now take 5.9 times the average salary to buy the average house.

In 2013, affordability took another hit as the average house price was now £165,000 but the average salary was only £27,011. Therefore, it would take 6.1 times the average salary to buy the average house.

In 2023 (figures from 2022), house affordability took another turn for the worse as the average house price rose to £280,000 and the average salary had only risen to £33,000. Therefore, it would take 8.5 times the average salary to buy the average house.

 

Here's the source:

House prices vs income. How affordable are UK homes?

WWW.AVTRINITY.COM

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Are houses getting more or less affordable in the UK compared to salaries and how much would a house cost now if prices...

 

[doobin]

41 minutes ago, Mike Hill said:

Then everyone building it,would have to take a giant pay cut.

 

Are you sure that only 20 years back a house cost 3.5 times average wage?

House prices are a product of how much people are allowed to borrow, and the system has gotten out of control. The house now takes less man hours to build- new builds are thrown up without any care or attenton to detail.

 

What costs more is the land with planning. If you let people borrow more, they bid more. Developers pocket a bit more profit on the way, but as house prices are bid up the value of land with planning also rises. With the stroke of a planners pen, land that would be worth £15k per acre is now a million per acre, and the landowner rides off into the sunset. This is all paid for from the future earnings of the first time buyers, enabled by the aforementioned deregulation of income muiltipliers, coupled with criminally low interest rates. These poor misguided fools think it's wonderful that restrictions are relaxed 'so they can borrow more to buy a better house'. They don't join the dots to realise that they are being shafted, and that had things stayed as they were then the same job would have bought them the same comparitively massive house that their average earner teacher and postman parents live in.

 

 

@pleasant- you are correct, it was 30 years ago (early 90s) that house prices were 3.5x average wage. The 90's was still twnty years ago to me v🤣 This correlates perfectly with my point above- the average 30 year old is now looking at the same houses as their parents did 30 years ago, but it's just not happening no matter how many avocado toasts they forego. That's because the same standard of living now demands more than twice the effort (wages) at 8.5x average earnings for an average house. Put in the simplest of terms, you now need to be a junior doctor to afford the house a dustman did thirty years ago.

 

The country is ****************ed, and 850,000 immigrants a year coming here are tipping us over the edge. We can't recover from this without a massive socialist intervention along the lines of the council house building program of the 50s. We're in a stalemate, where those with property (including myself, before anyone tries that angle) are either sitting pretty or getting stinking rich via rents off the labour of everyone who came afterwards. Rents are at an all time high, and all sucessive governments have done is funnel yet more money towards landlords from the taxpayer, via housing benefit. It's the same thing- if people can afford more, the price goes up and they end up no better off.

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by doobin

[Steven P]

If the government took house sales out of all of their financial reporting calculations I am sure the economy would paint a very different picture... not so rosy at all, there is no incentive centrally to encourage prices to fall.

We buy a house - nice load of tax

House builders make a nice profit - another nice lump of tax

House prices rise - government massage figures to make it a good thing

House prices rise, we think it is great since our pension pots increase.... for the homeowners

[AHPP]

11 hours ago, doobin said:

House prices are a product of how much people are allowed to borrow, and the system has gotten out of control. The house now takes less man hours to build- new builds are thrown up without any care or attenton to detail.

 

What costs more is the land with planning. If you let people borrow more, they bid more. Developers pocket a bit more profit on the way, but as house prices are bid up the value of land with planning also rises. With the stroke of a planners pen, land that would be worth £15k per acre is now a million per acre, and the landowner rides off into the sunset. This is all paid for from the future earnings of the first time buyers, enabled by the aforementioned deregulation of income muiltipliers, coupled with criminally low interest rates. These poor misguided fools think it's wonderful that restrictions are relaxed 'so they can borrow more to buy a better house'. They don't join the dots to realise that they are being shafted, and that had things stayed as they were then the same job would have bought them the same comparitively massive house that their average earner teacher and postman parents live in.

 

 

@pleasant- you are correct, it was 30 years ago (early 90s) that house prices were 3.5x average wage. The 90's was still twnty years ago to me v🤣 This correlates perfectly with my point above- the average 30 year old is now looking at the same houses as their parents did 30 years ago, but it's just not happening no matter how many avocado toasts they forego. That's because the same standard of living now demands more than twice the effort (wages) at 8.5x average earnings for an average house. Put in the simplest of terms, you now need to be a junior doctor to afford the house a dustman did thirty years ago.

 

The country is ****************ed, and 850,000 immigrants a year coming here are tipping us over the edge. We can't recover from this without a massive socialist intervention along the lines of the council house building program of the 50s. We're in a stalemate, where those with property (including myself, before anyone tries that angle) are either sitting pretty or getting stinking rich via rents off the labour of everyone who came afterwards. Rents are at an all time high, and all sucessive governments have done is funnel yet more money towards landlords from the taxpayer, via housing benefit. It's the same thing- if people can afford more, the price goes up and they end up no better off.

 

Step away from the socialism. 

[doobin]

3 hours ago, AHPP said:

Step away from the socialism. 

Let's hear your alternative plans? Like it or not people need housing.

 

I used to be all 'oh, free market', but eventually you come the realise that a free market will never exist. As one group grows more powerful their vested interests take over, as we see now with the dominance of developers.

 

My political tendancies align very strongly with the SDP. This problem can be fixed, but it requires a nationalist and socialist response.

 

[AHPP]

1 hour ago, doobin said:

Let's hear your alternative plans? Like it or not people need housing.

 

I used to be all 'oh, free market', but eventually you come the realise that a free market will never exist. As one group grows more powerful their vested interests take over, as we see now with the dominance of developers.

 

My political tendancies align very strongly with the SDP. This problem can be fixed, but it requires a nationalist and socialist response.

 

Dissolve the state, in its entirety, this second. Failing that, fix money, liberalise land use and buckle up to see some weird building projects for a few years. I’d tolerate an exclusive land value tax as a stepping stone somewhere in there.
 

Your solution is more realistic to put people in buildings in the short term but it will end with gas chambers like the other nationalist socialists. 

[Steven P]

There are loads of ways to readdress the housing market, but nearly all of them will get the politicians sacked at the next election, and this is the over riding consideration with all national projects... will it be good in the next 4 years to a general election, not the next 25 to 30.

 

(limit mortgage borrowing (to 6x salary)(demand will say "We want to buy your house, but this is the top price"), extend mortgage terms, offer tax breaks for first homes, make starter homes more future proof - don't need to move to a bigger home at 2 children, tax green field developments more and use that to subsidies the new owners (not developers) of smaller homes, solar panels on every house (make living there cheaper), 2 storey flats instead in 4 storey blocks, more busses to reduce need for a parking spot with every home, tax profits on any sale within 5 years of purchase to deter empty investment properties, set up more tax efficient saving schemes for house deposits... however I can't see any of these ideas being popular with the typical Conservative voter or the same voter who Labour are wanting to tempt)