John Prescot tried to get the big builders prefab a lot of their construction, as other countries do. They can only operate on cheap labour - they know no better. Whoever tries to get them to build cheaply and quickly has little impact.
Look at Structural insulated panels (SIPs). They are gaining ground in a small way. Very popular in the USA. You do not need heating system with them and the weatherproof shell can be up in a few days for the finishing trades to move in.
Pop over to Spain and have a look at the houses they have built there. Hardly any have thermal insulation and a large majority leak like a seive whenever it rains. This is in comparatively new builds (the past 10 years), too. I would expect that a lot of other european countries have the same low standards.
Well, yes. You could easily build cheap houses on cheap land. But no-one would buy them. The trick is to have cheap land near major centres of employment (i.e. cities). That's something we as a country don't do well. For a start, there's the green-belt policy which restricts the amount of outward expansion. Secondly there's a lot of NIMBYism for building transport links so people could live further out. Finally, (and probably most significant) is the huge vested interest that all home owners have in preserving the high price of houses. Otherwise their mortgages become higher than the property is worth: foreclosure, bankruptcies, financial losses. No-one with a house would ever vote for that.
The only solution I can think of is to stipulate a minimum size for new builds. If regulations were created to require a minimum size of 100sq m. of living space then any new property would have to comply. Older. smaller houses could still be lived in, bought and sold, but they value would decline over time.
Spot on!!! About 2/3 of the price on average.
Look up Land Value Tax, which stops speculation of land and land price hypes which have caused two financial crashes, 1929 and 2008. Vince Cable is a big fan. It also keeps land prices low so homes are highly affordable - more money can be spent on the structure, not the land. Land plots will be larger as well. A win, win for all. The LVT movement is very big in the USA.
Only 7.5% of the UK is settled. We have a land surplus. Tory propaganda says otherwise, like concreting over the countryside.
Permison is owned by a well connected in the landed gentry Hooray Henry. They make their money in LAND not building houses. They buy agricultural land and then get PP which hypes the prices to silly levels. They always seem to know where to buy the land, to the point it indicates insider dealing.
Our new homes are a disgrace with egg-shell walls upstairs. The Labour party have made matters better by increasing the insulation levels and reduced carbon footprint working up to 2016.
Apparently there are 300,000 empty houses in Eire as a result of a property boom/crash that dwarfed what has happened in the UK. Whole estates, some admittedly unfinished, with only a few occupied houses.
Swiss construction standards are quite high.My mate in Geneva still has the original wooden triple-glazing that was fitted 30 years ago, and not a crack in the plaster anywhere.
Still - that's not too surprising, the house also has a nuclear bomb-shelter in the basement (a legal requirement at the time for all new build). Personally I'd have said it would protect against the Luftwaffle of the late 1930's but not much more.
Total tripe! SIP panels come in whole sides with doors and windows cut out. You order from a catalogue and they lock together like a house of cards. Any shape can be had and the exterior roof finished any way you like. What it Tudor? You got it.
Thermal mass can be incorporated inside a SIP panelled homes, by having the internal non-structural walls dense concrete blocks. Ceiling can have sand in the voids called pugging. Also the concrete slab can be masonry covered and no wood or carpets which add in a lot of thermal mass.
I thought it was 5%.
Whichever - it's small.
The UK now produces 80% of it's own food - much of the remainder being stuff that can't realistically be produced here.
(Domestic food production was 50% in wartime - modern farming methods produce more food with 10% of the workforce).
In fact there's plenty of space left - if it seems overcrowded, it's because were not building the infrastructure needed.
We could *double* the amount of the country that's built on, whilst only reducing the available agricultural land by 5%.
High prices for very small high density homes are the norm in the United Kingdom. UK house prices are amongst the highest in the world in comparison to comparable countries. The more land is a greater part of the total house price the higher house prices become. An acre of agricultural land can be purchased for £2,000, an attrcative, complete eco kit home for £20,000, yet the average price of a house in the UK is near to £200,000. Obtaining planning permission to erect a house in the countryside in a country with a land surplus will be near impossible. Few realise that the high land value is the reason why their homes are so expensive.
In the United Kingdom the average home costs seven times the average annual income. In the U.S.A. the average person pays three and a half their annual income on a home. In the United Kingdom the average size of the home will be
330 square feet per person, while Americans occupy 750 square feet per person. In the UK, on average, homes cost twice as much and are half the size as in the U.S.A.LAND VALUE TAX (LVT) The 1929 financial crash and 2008 Credit Crunch crash, were land fuelled as land and house prices spiraled out of control. When the economy expands demand for land increases, LVT prevents this occurring. LVT is a silver bullet to prevent booms and busts. Henry George, an American, devised LVT. The precursor of the board game Monopoly, was the Landlord's Game, named 'Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit' in the UK. The board game was designed to teach people the theories of Henry George. LVT is one tax, a tax on the value of land, no personal income tax, no Council Tax. LVT taxes only the "value" of the land based on the current market value, not the building on the land or any improvements. Someone in northernScotland on one acre will pay very little as the land is not worth so much. Someone in central London with one acre pays substantially more. A larger house will not be penalised, unlike the current Council Tax system.
Henry George initially proposed government ownership of all land, as the population, the state, owned it anyhow. Getting it across and accepted would have been virtually impossible. Redistribution of land, many view as Communism, and would accuse the state of taking away from them what is theirs. Henry George realised that the population will not accept that you cannot own land. It is in the psyche of the western world, especially the Anglo Saxon world. That is where LVT excels. Own land by all means, but if you own half of Scotland just to shoot birds on, tax will be due on that land, which currently is not the case. LVT will force large landowners to sell and not hoard land. It will also encourage them to make productive use of the land; if they cannot then they sell it to someone who can make productive use of it. It prevents land hoarding and encourages development in urban areas. LVT does not tax an individuals labour, and hence their productivity and personal growth, which the current system does, holding back advancement.
Not this propaganda again.
Relevant Facts on land
ONly 7.5% of the UK land mass is settled.
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 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 UK can support quite easily a population wice what is is. The UK has the same population desity as Germany. Over a period of thirty years, real house prices in the UK rose up by around 3% per annum while remaining stable in Germany and Switzerland.
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. German homes are also have far, far superior build in qualities.
It's interesting watching them in countries (such as where I am) making them from wood - they go up *fast*. Takes very little time to prep the site, get the foundation/subfloor in, then put the framework up. Trusses can be pre-assembled elsewhere and brought in if needed, speeding things up further. It's common for people here to buy some land and just have a house built on it to their spec, because it's the land that's expensive, not the house that sits upon it.
Perhaps the key for the UK is to not use brick for the low-cost stuff? The climate seems OK for it (wood-framed structures are used in plenty of areas with more extreme climates), and there's no seismic aspect to worry about.
Over longer timescales there are longevity issues - but it's probably still good for 100 years *if maintenance is kept up with*, and I'm not certain that the typical Barratt shed is designed to last much beyod that, either.
cheers
Jules
So the 50M in England live in 20M dwellings on about 3.7M acres. England is 50,300 sq mi which is just over 32M acres. So for England alone its more like 11.5%
And that's without counting the land occupied by roads, factories and other places of work, public buildings, shops, national parks, etc.
And the land needed to feed all these people.
Back c.1980 a small development of back-to-back starter homes in New Malden was done using volumetric units, basically container sized timber framed boxes all finished internally, craned into place, services hooked together, brick veneer facing and roof tiling. In Building Control our initial reaction was negative, but our tame structural engineer said he'd much rather see the majority of the work done in a warm dry factory with proper supervision.
No, wear a plastic mac and all the rain runs straight down and soaks the bottoms of your trouser legs. Similarly an impervious cladding will result in water running down the facade where wind will drive it through any imperfection. Brick cladding is much more forgiving.
Not exactly, because you value land by doing a residual valuation: value = SP of house - (build cost + fees + finance costs + required profit). The planning system chokes the supply of new housing which makes it more expensive, which in turn makes land more valuable /expensive.
In my old home of LBRuT various politicians of all persuasions have pledged to fight against 'garden grabbing'. The reality is that more intensive use of land that is within walking distance of shops and existing PT is something that should be actively encouraged. Instead new housing is built in areas that have neither leading to ever increasing car use.
Look at this site:
They would. They would line up to buy them. We have an artificial land shortage. There is an abundance of land to build homes on. No shortage of skills and labour to build them. No shortage of construction companies ready to build them. Yet we have a housing shortage.
Land Valuation Tax and a relaxation of planning is the answer.
Greenbelts, extensively introduced in the 1950s, were intended to be narrow and primarily used for recreation by the inhabitants of the towns and cities they surrounded. The belts were expanded in width, but continued to be used for farming. The shire counties used greenbelts to hold back the disliked populations of nearby towns and cities. Recreational uses disappeared and the greenbelts became green barriers to keep large numbers of urban inhabitants from mixing with a very small number of rural residents. This is a clear case of the few exercising their will over a massive majority. Often these greenbelts were not even green, containing industry and intensive industrial agriculture.
Instead of being a sports jacket they ended being a straight jacket.
Unless there was fund from Land Value Taxation to bind people over from negative equity in a transition. That is workable.
Or introduce Land Value Taxation across the board. LVT also funds infrastructure, as US cities are doing right now. Hong Kong built as metro out of it.
That should help, but nor much. Minimum sizes is essential in the pokey hutches on offer.Also the sound transfer properties should be very high which would make the homes more substantial.
I suppose that's essentially what they do this side of the Pond - wood frame, wood sheets over the top, plastic sheet over the top of that to act as moisture barrier, then siding (wood/vinyl/metal) over the top to deflect serious amounts of moisture (aka. rain).
cheers
Jules
You still can't comprehend and still think the UK is short of land.
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 (Kate Barkers report). Road and other uses account for littyelin the scale of matters.
Even that 11% figure you gave, if right of course which I doubt, it is still only a small figure.
The food?
Far too much land is given over to agriculture, about 78%, which only accounts for about 2.5% of the UK economy. This poor performing over subsidised industry is absorbing land that could be better used economically in commerce and for much needed spacious higher quality homes for the population. Much of the land is paid to remain idle out of our taxes. The UK could actually abandon most of agriculture and import most of its food, as food is obtainable cheaper elsewhere.
50% of the EU budget is allocated to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). CAP is supporting a lifestyle of a very small minority of country dwellers in a poor performing industry. In effect that is its prime function.The city of Sheffield, a one industry city of steel, was virtually killed by allowing imports of cheaper steel from abroad. This created great misery and distress to its large population. Yet agriculture is subsidised to the hilt having land allocated to it which clearly can be better utilised for the greater good of British society.
The justification for subsidising agriculture is that we need to eat. We also need steel and cars in our modern society, yet the auto and steel industries were allowed to fall away to cheaper competition from abroad, and especially the Far East. Should taxpayers money be propping up an economically small industry that consumes vast tracts of land that certainly could be better used? What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The overall agricultural subsidy is over £5 billion per year. This is £5 billion to an industry whose total turnover is only £15 billion per annum. Unbelievable. This implies huge inefficiency in the agricultural industry, about 40% on the £15 billion figure. Applied to the acres agriculture absorbs, and approximately 16 million acres are uneconomic. Apply real economics to farming and you theoretically free up 16 million acres, which is near 27% of the total UK land mass.
This is land that certainly could be put to better use for the population of the UK. Allowing the population to spread out and live amongst nature is highly desirable and simultaneously lowering land prices. This means lower house prices which the UK desperately needs. Second country homes could be within reach of much of the population, as in Scandinavia, creating large recreation and construction industries, and keeping the population in touch with the nature of their own countryside. In Germany the population have access to a large forests which are heavily used at weekends. Forests and woods are ideal for recreation and absorb CO2 cleaning up the atmosphere. Much land could be turned over to public forests.
The UK has imported most of its cereals from the US for the past 130 years.
Cheap fast transportation (the steam ship and trains) had meant food could be transported between continents from the mid-1800s. This prevented European famines. The USA and Canada were pouring out cereals super cheap. Global food production was in the hands of the USA and UK using the UKs sea lanes and massive merchant fleet to transport food - animal and human consumption. Liverpool was a massive grain importing and processing port.
40% of the world's trade at one time moving through the port.Food transportation between continents did not apply only to cereals. For e.g., Liverpool companies owned vast tracts of Argentina processing beef and transporting it to the UK and other European ports. The Vesty empire owned massive ranches, processing plants and the shipping fleets to transport the meat products - total vertical integration to the point they owned the shops it was sold in - Dewhursts. Only oil companies ever achieved such total control of their products.
That does not make economic sense. You want to buy something, increase its value and sell it as soon as possible so you can get on with the next bit. Remember that they will have to pay the going rate for their next plot so the "gain" is eaten up by the next purchase.
Well buy one that isn't cheaply built then. There are self build plots available now the big builders are struggling.
Too small. The urban footprint could be twice the size and it would not make an impact at all.
See my recent post on agriculture.
The UK is 60% self-sufficient in food overall, and around 74% self-sufficient in the types of food that can be grown.
It is not that at all. It is self-interest by large landowners, mainly aristocrats. 0.66% of the population own 70% of the land. They mainly take in rent being non-productive. It is breaking this monopoly on land that will improve matters. The monopolies commission does not appear to apply top land.
We could just stop this rural and urban nonsense and treat the lot as one. The autonomous house is virtually here. Superinsulation, septic tanks, combined heat & power units, grey water re-cycling, rainwater harvesting, wireless communications, mobile phones, amongst others, are all here. These houses have a low impact on the environment. Connection to urban utilities is no longer necessary.Locating homes with all modern conveniences, just about anywhere in the UK is now feasible. Herding the population into urban communities because they offered basic utilities no longer need be the case.
Many eco minded people would emphasise that more transport journeys would be needed if the population are more evenly spread amongst the land. Great leaps in battery and supercapacitors which promote electric hybrid and full electric cars is now a reality. These products are on sale with more constantly coming onto the market with increasingly advanced designs. Supercapacitor technology, clawing back and storing normally wasted braking energy and light-rail trains, have reduced the running and maintenance costs of electric trains. Electric vehicles have zero emissions creating a clean air environment.
A farmer can build a 40 foot ugly concrete barn structure without planning permission. The agricultural industry in some areas has blotted the landscape as far as the eye can see with polythene tunnels to grow fruits of which some are not native to the UK. If a good looking house was built to the local vernacular visually enhancing the countryside, without planning permission, it would be pulled down by the authorities. Houses are deemed to blot to the countryside and undesirable, yet raw concrete and polythene is not, and is accepted.
We should be living amongst nature, not having to drive out to see it. Walking on land is another matter, as most of it is fenced off, stolen under the enclosures.
"The vast majority of the British people have no right whatsoever to their native land save to walk the streets or trudge the roads"
- Henry George.
Build cost on a small house is £60-100k plus cots of laying in roads services etc..and the land never comes to anything like that.
Its just another Labour bit of spin.
What people do not appreciate is the fact that fundamentally a house represents about 5-8 man years of labour - productive labour - to build.
How can that ever be affordable by someone who has never had a job and is only 22 years old?
In a FAIR society, (where you get back what you put in). That is.
Basically a house represents 10% of your working life in (someone's) labour costs.
Think about it.
How can that EVER be anything other than 10% of your income, plus interest, for all your working life?
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