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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#301

Post by lmm »

dahwolf wrote: post #194

In the Netherlands we don't really have a big NIMBY issue and we still can't keep up supply with demand. Supply is complicated and not just restricted by zoning. One key thing to understand is that private companies build homes, not governments. And if it's not profitable to do so, it will simply stop. And if not at least 75% of the project is sold beforehand, the project is stopped altogether. And this is how our go…

> private companies build homes, not governments. And if it's not profitable to do so, it will simply stop.

> There's an economic downturn and the building of new homes slows down or stops. This happened over here from 2008-2014 creating a massive backlog, in turn leading to a pricing boom in recent years. Ideally, you'd keep building during a downturn but nobody knows how as there's no buyers and it's too big to subsidize.

If the return of demand was predictable then deep-pocketed investors could have kept the building running and made a big profit. Why didn't they? In my experience this is usually down to overregulation one way or another, either rules that make it too hard to invest in housing or because rules that make new homes a lot more expensive than existing ones (e.g. you mentioned energy rules, accessibility requirements, that sort of thing).

If the return of demand wasn't predictable, then stopping building was arguably the correct move.

> Surely the entire western world would not have this problem if it was a simple as a policy change.

The correct policy change is known but counterintuitive and unpopular. (And for many of the voting public it's not seen as a problem; they benefit from rising house prices, so who cares about the young people being priced out?)

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#302

Post by asdff »

renewiltord wrote: post #300
asdff wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, however, build willy nilly copies of things that you've already approved previously and deemed are still habitable. Even that though is unpalatable, by right development hardly happens anywhere these days.

The thing that changes is where you're building it. China tried the cookie-cutter approach and see what they got: buildings falling down. It turns out that even if you approved something in one circumstance it doesn't apply to another. Since the ground conditions are different, each building is truly different. This isn't software where you can put it in a Docker container. There's a reason why everything requires pl…

If you got rid of cookie cutter buildings because they might be fraught then you'd have to condemn most of nyc and most of london. The home era boom these articles all cite came because they were just churning out the same floorplans or more or less the same buildings with the same materials all day. In the US you could even order one of these standardized homes from the sears catalog, have it shipped to you already cut and build it yourself or hire a contractor who does these same homes all day. I really believe we are letting perfect be the enemy of good here, and saying we'd rather tolerate things like people living in overcrowded tenemant conditions or in cars or tents, because that's the status quo today for many of the working poor with these prices, over potential unknowns of reusing a building plan.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#303

Post by jahewson »

bobthepanda wrote: post #229
tormeh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely it. It's a question of demographics. The developed world used to be for young people because people there were mostly young. Now decisions are taken by and for old people, and those of us who aren't are afterthoughts. A good example of this is the age at which our constitutions were drafted vs how old politicians are now. This is also the case in Norway but I think the US is a more relatable exampl…

The millenial generation is now the largest cohort in the United States. The issue is that generally, it takes a while for a cohort to build up political power.

Gen X matters though as they’re almost as big and are split on who won the housing/education lottery and who didn’t. Its oldest members are 58.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#304

Post by jahewson »

com2kid wrote: post #190
ggm wrote: post #3

I find the economic reductionism in housing planning really irritating. It's not like other public utility functions, but it is damn close to a fundamental and is included in human rights declarations. What kind of state throws up it's hands and claims "it can't" fix housing when states can do precisely that? Thatcher's revolution in council housing is a cesspit of counterfactual outcomes. It made individual househol…

The developed world has one great example of functional housing policy: Japan. A single policy that allows for unique neighborhoods, affordable houses, supports small businesses, and enables walkable cities. Just.... do what we know already works. For anyone not familiar, here is a primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

This is a terrible example as Japan is demographically imploding. If you buy a house in Japan it’s worth less over time.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#305

Post by Grimburger »

jahewson wrote: post #304
com2kid wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The developed world has one great example of functional housing policy: Japan. A single policy that allows for unique neighborhoods, affordable houses, supports small businesses, and enables walkable cities. Just.... do what we know already works. For anyone not familiar, here is a primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

This is a terrible example as Japan is demographically imploding. If you buy a house in Japan it’s worth less over time.

That's exactly how it should be. Housing is a consumable, not an investment.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#306

Post by Grimburger »

moffkalast wrote: post #131
quickthrower2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So China has an overbuilding problem, right? To the point of demolishing apartment blocks, etc. How does this marry up? Is it the age old problem of building too much in suburbs people don't want to actually live in? Or the old problem of new build apartments being too expensive for most people, so require a bubble?

China's problem is two fold afaik: They allowed apartment buildings to be built that aren't up to code or even structurally sound enough to live in and must be demolished because they're completely unsafe, and all of the ones that were up to code were immediately bought up as investments and left empty by real estate speculators. Letting people have homes would kill demand and lower prices of course, can't have that.

This is hilariously wrong.

Yes in a country of 1 billion people there are dodgy apartments, but then again in my country of 26 million people an estimated 60% of new apartments have flaws, big ones in the middle of Sydney have been deemed unlivable only a few years after being built.

China overbuilds entire cities and everyone mocks them for it, but a few years later those cities fill up and people conveniently forget about that.

Even the commentator who coined the term Ghost Cities admits they have become functional economic powerhouses.

> Reporting in 2018, Shepard noted that "Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under-occupied_developments_in...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#307

Post by renewiltord »

asdff wrote: post #302
renewiltord wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that changes is where you're building it. China tried the cookie-cutter approach and see what they got: buildings falling down. It turns out that even if you approved something in one circumstance it doesn't apply to another. Since the ground conditions are different, each building is truly different. This isn't software where you can put it in a Docker container. There's a reason why everything requires pl…

If you got rid of cookie cutter buildings because they might be fraught then you'd have to condemn most of nyc and most of london. The home era boom these articles all cite came because they were just churning out the same floorplans or more or less the same buildings with the same materials all day. In the US you could even order one of these standardized homes from the sears catalog, have it shipped to you already…

They came from a different time when we didn't care about the lives of construction workers. We have unions now to protect workers' rights and we have regulations and code to protect people living in these buildings.

That's why they say regulations are written in blood. People have lost their lives so that we can have the rules and regulations that keep our standard of living so high.

We need more regulation, not less. OceanGate has just reminded us of that. We should take five souls worth of lessons to heart.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#308

Post by aetherson »

majormajor wrote: post #280
pitaj wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of real estate development is to make real estate more valuable. Nope. It's to make money for the developers. > Even ones not doing the development benefit financially - landlords love being able to raise the rents cause other people in the area built a bunch of new shit. Gentrification is a result of shortage. When wealthier people are priced out of rich neighborhoods, the only place for them to go is…

> Nope. It's to make money for the developers. Sure. Let's look a simple condo case: Developer pays X for property. Developer spends Y to build a building. Developer sells N units for Z. To make money, N Z has to be greater than X Y aka the total value of that parcel is now higher. > Reversed causation. It's literally just supply and demand. Places with high demand and not enough supply have growing property values.…

When you build new housing (as in, increase the number of units of housing that are available in total), you make your lot more valuable, which makes other lots less valuable. So a developer makes makes money by making their lot more valuable, but they do not "make real estate more valuable" generally.

This is much like, you know, every other thing in the world. When a shoe manufacturer makes shoes, their shoes have value, but the value of all other shoes are slightly less because there's now one more competitor for demand for all those other shoes.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#309

Post by aetherson »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #256
dahwolf wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". Sounds like democracy?

> Sounds like democracy? Here is an example - 16 year olds who have a keen interest in their futute, are not allowed to vote. A 90 year old, who does not even remember that USSR has already collapsed, votes for a war-Mongering government. 18 year olds are drafted into the army and sent to fight a war, and they never had a chance to vote at all. Maybe their entire experience of democracy is getting sent to faraway lan…

The last time the United States had a draft was 1973. The last time the UK had a draft was 1960. Who is the 18 year old who is drafted into the army and sent to fight a war and getting sent to a faraway land to die? I mean. Russians, for at least some value of faraway. But I don't think they're the central example that you're thinking of.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#310

Post by physicsguy »

vidarh wrote: post #28
bluescrn wrote: post #2

There's loads of houses being built in the UK (often of questionable quality, built for maximum profit, packed into minimal amounts of space). It may still not be enough to match the demand, but the real problem is we don't seem to be building any infrastructure to support these homes. More people and more homes requires more roads, railways, hospitals, police stations, power stations, sewer capacity, even reservoirs…

One of my pet peeves is that UK infrastructure focus seems to be about getting people to the centre of London faster, and that just makes the pressure on London greater at excessive costs, and then you start the cycle all over. You see that even with HS1 and HS2, where instead of focusing on lines towards London it'd have been better to strengthen the triangle of Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and pour money into effe…

The majority benefit of HS2 is significantly improved freight and passenger services throughput nationally which allows intercity lines to run many more trains in Birmingham.

The government knows this but completely missold it to the public.

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