re-painting French-style windows

[Jules]

I think it's close on 400 people per sqkm these days, isn't it? That seems pretty high (it's 10 per sqkm here)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yup

most crowded country in teh world, after Bangladesh and S Korea.

Whuch goes nicely with Drivel's 'not crowded at all'

Wales and Scotland, are by contrast, pretty empty. Send all the Scots back, I say. Well Gordon at least. And Campbell.

[Jules]

yes, and the less-crowded bits are doubtless the ones where you couldn't easily put any rail network through, anyway.

... and they get a shitty rail service, too :-)

(not that I can talk - I think my nearest passenger service is three hours' drive away)

cheers

Jules

[Doctor Drivel]

> 3rd most crowded country in teh world, after Bangladesh and S Korea. England is NOT a country. It is not an independent sovereign state. We live the in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Doctor Drivel]

Relevant Facts.............................

The UK has a land surplus.

We are living in crowded and dense cities, not a crowded and urbanised country

Contrary to popular belief, the UK has approximately only 7.5% of its land settled upon. The Urban plot of 4 million acres is only 6.6%. The UK actually has a surplus of land. Despite claims of concreting over the South East of England, only 7.1% is settled with the Home Counties being underpopulated. The North West of England is densest with 9.9% settled.

The value of the land accounts for 2/3 of the average house price.

Over 90% of the population now live in urbanised areas, the second highest percentage in Europe, leaving the countryside virtually empty, because of the draconian Town & Country Planning act. This crams near 55 million people into around 7% of the land, which is only 4.2 million acres out of a UK total of 60 million acres. 60 million people own just 6% of the land.

The UK has 60 million acres of land in total

70% of the land is owned by 1% of the population.

Just 6,000 or so landowners - mostly aristocrats, but also large institutions and the Crown - own about 40 million acres, two thirds of the UK.

Britain's top 20 landowning families have bought or inherited an area big enough to swallow up the entire counties of Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire, with more to spare.

Big landowners measure their holdings by the square mile; the average Briton living in a privately owned property has to exist on 340 square yards.

Each home pays £550/ann. on average in council tax while each landowning home receives £12,169/ann. in subsidies. The poor subsidising the super rich. In Ireland where land redistribution occurred, there is no council tax.

A building plot, the land, now constitutes between half to two- thirds of the cost of a new house.

60 million people live in 24 million "dwellings".

These 24 million dwellings sit on approx 4.4 million acres (7.7% of the land).

Of the 24 million dwellings, 11% owned by private landlords and 65% privately owned.

19 million privately owned homes, inc gardens, sit on 5.8% of the land.

Average dwelling has 2.4 people in it.

77% of the population of 60 million (projected to be more in new census) live on only 5.8% of the land, about 3.5 million acres (total 60 million).

Agriculture only accounts for 3% of the economy.

Average density of people on one residential acre is 12 to 13.

10.9 million homes carries a mortgage of some kind.

Average value of an acre of development land is £404,000. High in south east of £704,154, low in north east of £226,624. London is in a category of its own.

Of the world's 15 most expensive prime commercial property locations, five are in England.

London's West End occupation costs of £98 per square foot are the most expensive in the world. They are around 40 per cent more than any other city in the world, and double that of Paris, the next most expensive European city.

Prime site occupation costs in Manchester and Leeds are around 40 percent more than mid-town Manhattan.

Reservations of land have been placed by builders to a value of 37 billion to build the 3-4 million homes required. The land reserved is almost wholly owned by aristocrats; with none of it on the land registry. This land is coming out of subsidised rural estates, land held by off-shore trusts and companies and effectively untaxed.

Tony Blair ejected from the House of Lords 66 hereditary peers, who between them owned the equivalent of 4.5 average sized English counties.

The averaged sized new home in the UK is a paltry 76 square metres, while in Germany with a similar population density new homes are 109 square metres, nearly half as much again in size. In Australia the average sized new home is 205.7 square metres, in the Netherlands 115 square metres and in Denmark

137 square metres. Danish rooms are twice as big as the hutches now on offer in the United Kingdom. In Japan, a country once notorious for small homes, the average sized new home is now 140 square metres.

The averaged size living room in the UK is a miniscule 13 foot by 15 foot; a room which has to function as TV room, children's play room, entertainment room and relaxation room. If the averaged sized man stands in the middle of a typical British living room and stretched out an arm he will hit either a wall or ceiling. British TV has many programmes dedicated to giving a larger feel to a room by careful choice of furnishing and colour co-ordination. People attempt to create an impression of space in undersized homes.

The housing charity, Shelter, estimate 500,000 households are officially overcrowded.

[Jules]

Really? I'm not sure there's that much of it that isn't at least woodland or farmed. Not having buildings on it doesn't mean that it isn't being used for something - which in turn makes it difficult to just throw a sensible rail network through it all.

That was some interesting reading in your post, however. Those land price figures are just plain scary :-( (I think it works out at about £4000 per acre where I live for building land, although it'll obviously be more nearer to town)

cheers

J.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doctor Drivel" saying something like:

Cock. One has f*ck all to do with the other.

There were domestic rates until about twenty years ago and they were abolished as a vote-getter by the incumbent government. Business rates were not abolished and are rather high. There is a high chance of the re-introduction of domestic rates or similar very soon, because of the parlous state of the economy.

[Roger Chapman]

snip

Dribble has been spouting this nonsense for years. Other sources have a different take on the subject. A quick google came up with the following quote from Self Build ABC.

"The value of plots of land for sale can be found by identifying similar sized plots that have already been developed. The land should equate to approximately 35% of the market value of the entire property."

snip

[dennis]

Think for a moment.. it costs about £50k to build a three bedroom detached that then sells for between £120k to £600k depending on where it is. I would imagine the land price makes up the difference and that the average may well be 66% or even more.

If you think £50k is too cheap then just cost it out and you will see how cheap they really are even without using Polish labour.

[Andy Burns]

I would imagine there's some element of profit ....

[Doctor Drivel]

Yes the figures were given. Only 7.5% of the UK is settled. What didn't you understand about them?

£4,000 an acre for building land. In your dreams!!!! That is what agricultural land goes for. An acre will go for at least £500,000.

[Doctor Drivel]

Again...In Ireland where land redistribution occurred, there is no council tax.

[Doctor Drivel]

Wow!!! He got that from Selbuild ABC!!!!!!! Yes, that authorative, reliable source of data. Only a plantpot could come up with that!

[Doctor Drivel]

A 3 bed detached cost around £100,000 to build. A mass developer building tiny box rooms with Paramount boards for walls (egg-carton insides) can do it for £50,000.

Got that right.

[The Natural Philosopher]

For once I agree with you.

However what has pushed up the price of residential land is the=20 availability of cheap credit for people who dont earn money.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Surprisingly little.

[Doctor Drivel]

Wrong and a little right. Land is gone up because of demand. However the initial high price was because of an artificial land shortage. Read my post and the figures given.

[Doctor Drivel]

Surprisingly little.

[Jules]

Well, presumably by 'settled' you mean 'lived on'? The rest isn't all "surplus" - it's mostly used for *something*, even if it isn't to stop people dropping dead from concrete overdose :)

I'm not living in the UK, though - merely passing comment on how incredibly high UK land prices have become. The 2-acre plot next to us is up for sale for what works out to about £4k, with no land-use restriction other than that new houses cannot be put on anything less than 6 acres here (to put a house on it we'd have to combine it with our existing plot

- which is nice, as we know no bugger can buy it as it is and just slap a home on it; they'd have to buy additional land from us or our neighbour first. I suspect we'll snap it up cheap one day when the owners get fed up with having to keep it mowed)

I'd heard a rumour that the place where I worked back in England before I left sold off some of their land at over a million / acre, but I'm not sure if it really was that high. It's a bunch of rabbit hutches these days...

cheers

Jules

[Roger Chapman]

It may be possible to build a house for £50k but it does not follow that those that sell for £600k would have been that cheap to build. Single plots with pp can be had for less than £30K. Really desirable locations are rare and do cost the earth but typical single plots are in-fill and reflect the current value of the existing neighbourhood.

Buy a property on a new estate and not only are you buying the land the property sits on you are also contributing to the developers costs (provision of roads and services and, most probably these days, some civic aminity as a condition of pp) as well as the developers profit.

You tend to get what you pay for but would you actually want to live in a jerry built hovel?