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Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

buildwithtract.com

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Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#51

Post by bcjdjsndon »

sjducb wrote: post #35
youngtaff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what problem does move to the US actually solve in this case? House builders don't seem to have a problem acquiring land and rights to develop it Indeed there're permission granted for over 1mn yet to be build residential properties in the UK The problem is UK house builders drip feed houses on to the market to keep their profits up, and slow down building when house prices fall

They get away with drip feeding because there’s no competition, because it’s really hard to get permission. A simpler planning system would allow smaller developers to operate and they would buy, build and sell as fast as they can. The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline so they don’t want the price to drop at all, because it affects the price of the houses in the pi…

> The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline

So they'd expedite things to avoid risk surely? Doesn't make sense

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#52

Post by bcjdjsndon »

jimnotgym wrote: post #43
youngtaff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what problem does move to the US actually solve in this case? House builders don't seem to have a problem acquiring land and rights to develop it Indeed there're permission granted for over 1mn yet to be build residential properties in the UK The problem is UK house builders drip feed houses on to the market to keep their profits up, and slow down building when house prices fall

Hence Andy Burnham's threat to build council houses again. It is a good threat, get on with building the houses before we reduce the demand

Except he will come to realise the UK relies massively on house prices continuing upward. Construction is 20% of UK GDP. So many people and businesses in the country rely on it.

If house prices fall, or even stagnate, it'll start a chain reaction that leads to recession.

Its basically free economic growth, and UK made it's money largely from empire anyway, so now the empire has largely fallen it's no surprise the country has been cutting public services for nearly 20 years and still isn't breaking even

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#54

Post by sjducb »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #51
sjducb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get away with drip feeding because there’s no competition, because it’s really hard to get permission. A simpler planning system would allow smaller developers to operate and they would buy, build and sell as fast as they can. The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline so they don’t want the price to drop at all, because it affects the price of the houses in the pi…

> The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline So they'd expedite things to avoid risk surely? Doesn't make sense

If you dump 100 new houses onto a small town you will cause a crash.

My town has a population of 15000 people, ~250 houses are sold per year and there is a development with permission to build ~400 new homes.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#55

Post by sjducb »

jimnotgym wrote: post #44
sjducb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get away with drip feeding because there’s no competition, because it’s really hard to get permission. A simpler planning system would allow smaller developers to operate and they would buy, build and sell as fast as they can. The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline so they don’t want the price to drop at all, because it affects the price of the houses in the pi…

Small developers struggle to get hold of land though. You have to be in the know to get hold of building land

Agreed, Thats why the planning system needs to change.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#56

Post by bcjdjsndon »

axod wrote: post #4

" Housing in Britain is expensive because getting planning permission is difficult. " Nothing to do with millions of new people arriving wanting to live somewhere?

UK needs foreigners just to maintain population. It needs population growth to keep house prices rising. It needs rising house prices to prop up it's economy because it has no industry or export. It has no industry or export because it existed by invading and stealing from other countries as an empire, which is finished now

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#57

Post by physicsguy »

brabel wrote: post #18
pjc50 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could apply clever modelling to work out what minimal set of upgrades would best increase capacity .. and then spend the next 30 years trying to get one line built. We're stuck at basic political questions like "should there be efficient trains between London and Manchester?" At least Burnham knows what a Manchester is.

If the system is just at capacity, but not beyond, it’s in fact well optimized. Empty trains are a loss to the company running it. Similar to airliners: they want every flight as full as possible. No company cares if it’s comfortable for the passengers since they either have no competition, or if they do it’s always the one offering the lowest price who wins. The passengers who want comfort can buy first class for a…

There is no "company" in effect and hasn't been since 2020. The government is the operator and tells companies where they can run trains and what they charge while the companies have levied a % of revenue. That's changing as the government is now bringing operation back in house as 'Great British Rail'.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#58

Post by physicsguy »

gilleain wrote: post #3
brudgers wrote: post #2

Tract was founded to build software to fix Britain’s housing crisis. Though there are problems software can fix, software cannot fix most problems because most problems are not software problems. In the case of real-estate, it is a mistake to assume general market inefficiency. For example, the "housing crisis" might be a crisis for people looking for housing, but it is not a crisis for land owners and land owners ar…

Reminds me of an interview I saw at the height of the NFT/crypto craze, when the interviewee was challenged to come up with a use-case, and they threw out "buying a house". So there is (AFAIK) just one part of the process to buy a house that blockchains could address, and that is transfer of ownership. The rest of the process is an estate agent (realtor) communicating between buyer/seller/legal/etc to make it all hap…

Transfer of ownership is probably the least controversial part of owning a house in the UK too.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#59

Post by cryptopian »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #36
cryptopian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was discussing railways to somebody and noting how at-capacity the British network is. He was adamant that we just hadn't optimised the system enough and that more maths and more software was needed. I tried my best to explain that we had in fact done that, and that in the end, there's no getting around the bottleneck of moving 100 tonne vehicles along a finite set of steel rails.

Actually- there is.. if you give up on the idea of "stopping at the station".. you just pick up a car that raced ahead and up to speed- and drop a car that gets left behind and pulls into the station.. okay maybe not with the UK-Rail.. Basically the train never stops- it just reorganizes.

Let's say you managed this. Say you designed trains and safety protocols for coupling/decoupling at 100mph, completely reconfigure the signalling system, solve the inevitable accessibility issues for embarking the fast train... You still have 100 tonne vehicles that need conflict management between different finite sets of steel rails. And all of those other things would need physical reconfiguration as well.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#60

Post by bcjdjsndon »

sjducb wrote: post #54
bcjdjsndon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason big developers drip feed is that they have 100 identical houses in the pipeline So they'd expedite things to avoid risk surely? Doesn't make sense

If you dump 100 new houses onto a small town you will cause a crash. My town has a population of 15000 people, ~250 houses are sold per year and there is a development with permission to build ~400 new homes.

> If you dump 100 new houses onto a small town you will cause a crash.

This has never happened once... There are plenty of developments built bigger than that that do t cause a crash

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