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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#411

Post by roenxi »

ricardo81 wrote: post #321
roenxi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run me through, order of magnitude, where you think this 25% reduction in per capita energy use is coming from. Lightbulbs and vacuum cleaners aren't going to cover anything interesting.

Efficiency gains. Transport, combi boilers, electronic devices (such as TV) are all far more efficient. Also the transition from manufacturing to service sector. Quite likely that the inefficient burning of coal would explain away some of the difference. We barely burn any coal for electricity generation now, and residential coal fires are far less common.

You didn't even guess at orders of magnitude. Probably because if you had you'd be nervous.

> Efficiency gains. Transport...

Picking on this first one, population in the UK has gone from 50 to ~70 million since the 1950s. Transport energy use has risen from Ironically, thanks to the logic of Jevon's Paradox, transport probably is much more efficient. That is why it is consuming more energy per-capita than it did before.

And how much do you think electronics efficiency gains can explain since the 50s? Electronics didn't exist at any significant market penetration in the 50s. Computers may as well not have existed. Ditto phones.

What we're seeing is the UK de-industrialising, and likely that is being accompanied by reductions in goods availability (and building things like houses).

> combi boilers

How much of the 25% per capita energy reductions do you think this accounts for, and with what justification?

> Quite likely that the inefficient burning of coal

The BBC says there is an energy crisis [1]. They say global, China is surprised by that. Based on the countries they name, it seems to be a euphemism for "places with no fossil fuels". So much for these efficiencies gained by not using fossil fuels.

[0] chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60112068

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#412

Post by rcarr »

robertlagrant wrote: post #407
rcarr wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private landlords have been enriched at the expense of the wider society. We are literally subsidising the least productive "profession" in society, to the tune of billions. It's an absolute joke.

They aren't being subsidised. They're being paid to rent out their property.

And what would happen if the government passed a law saying that housing benefit could no longer be paid to private landlords? Looking over the instant wide spread homelessness, you would get a sharp spike in landlords either selling their houses or going bankrupt because their business model is no longer viable. Without that government money, they can’t pay their buy to let mortgages and the whole thing collapses - so they’re essentially getting property for free, paid for by the government, all because they managed to have enough capital to get in on the racket at the ground floor. Not to mention all the other less indirect ways the government passes laws to benefit landlords and property owners at the expense of renters.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#413

Post by blitzar »

Jochim wrote: post #82
blitzar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing, housebuilding, planning etc is such a divisive topic, where everyone has anchored in to a heavy bias that there is little rational conversation. The problems are so poorly diagnosed that the solutions (that people then double down on) only worsen all the problems.

I don't necessarily agree. Different countries have different issues but in the case of the UK neo-liberal policy has clearly been the root cause. Social housing stock was sold off, ostensibly to occupiers, at significantly less than market value. This comical scheme is still going on today, imagine the reaction of landlords if private renters were offered a 70% discount[0] on the purchase price of a property. An int…

Right to buy - was a "good" idea, give a one time discount so you dont have to pay for someones housing for the rest of their life. The proceeds (75% of) were given to councils and they had a mandate to spend it replacing the housing stock sold off. I have no idea where it went wrong, but it did.

> At the same time councils were prevented from reinvesting that capital in the construction of new housing stock.

They were formerly obligated to reinvest that capital in the construction of new housing stock. Current legislation forces the councils to replace the stock and gives councils 100% of the proceeds, but again it doest appear to work.

> Privately rented flats

I have seen nightmare land lords - and nightmare tenants. Its a wild unreglulated system full of the worst of humanity, along with estate agents. I have no solutions.

> Private builders are incentivised to invest where demand is currently hottest leaving other regions to deteriorate

Unironically I expect that government would build in the same places ... as these places have the greatest demands for social housing as well as being the hottest regions. Relocating people from "their home" to areas where the is less demand is one of the unacceptable solutions that I would propose and would be considered to be heartlessly destroying communities.

The social housing system is broken, social houses are free houses for life and its not uncommon to see multiple generations of families never live in any different environment. People who grew up in social housing in Kensington expect that they and future generations should be housed in Kensington.

Geographic mobility is nearly 0 as well. For those that do want to move to somewhere else, its a new council to apply to a new housing association, if you give up your (social) house in one place you go to the back of the queue.

> disposable income only recently recovered to 1960s levels, both members of the household are now working

The not working poor, the working poor and incresingly the middle classes are now poor in the UK. If you want to buy a home in the UK you can, there are lots of them for sale, but even if you reduced the number on the asking price sticker by 20%, 30% even 50% people just dont have the money. At 50% off though, the litteral bricks and wood of the house is worth more than that, let alone the land / labour etc to make a house.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#414

Post by robertlagrant »

Jochim wrote: post #102
tsukikage wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a limited amount of space So build denser, taller housing. We sprawl massively compared to developments on the continent. > a non-negligible portion of society are unable to afford market rates If we increase supply, market rates will fall. That's how markets work. Therein lies the real problem, of course: real estate investors with existing holdings don't want the rates to fall, and they have influence ove…

> To be clear, the failure was not in the act of selling itself, but in the decision to not reinvest the proceeds into new housing stock. This is the part that made the housing problem worse instead of better. The kind of mass sell-off that occurred could only be considered a massive failure. Selling individual properties at market value when the intention is to reinvest that money is clearly without objection. But t…

> It is a direct transfer of public wealth into private ownership and it has invariably led to worse outcomes where it has occurred. Social housing, royal mail, and water infrastructure are the obvious examples but less obviously there's PFIs, energy, and the nhs.

This is too broad a category. You can't criticise people owning homes by using examples of private(ish) ownership of infrastructure.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#415

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #405
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If youre both managing a property portfolio as well as building on it, free capital gains for no work are a pretty good deal. Sure, if you're a small builder you want to build ASAP for cash flow reasons. However over the past decade both the UK and Irish building markets have become dominated by REITs who do in fact benefit from increased land prices in the absence of building.

Yes, because of the regulatory and zoning environment. Of course they should do this - in an environment where it's more profitable to do nothing than to build, building companies should do nothing. The problem is the environment they exist in. Fix the environment, and they will build more.

> in an environment where it's more profitable to do nothing than to build, building companies should do nothing.

I mean, sortof. I get where you're coming from, but if a development has planning permission (i.e. it's allowed to be built) then it should be massively penalised if development doesn't begin pretty soon after this. As a society, it's problematic for a whole bunch of reasons to have companies sit on land that could provide housing when there's a shortage.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#416

Post by stuaxo »

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…

Neoliberalism seems based around the idea the government shouldn't do things, and this is the result, in housing and other areas.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#417

Post by carlosjobim »

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.

Europe and America are also demographically imploding, but real estate just keeps getting more expensive. Japan is a great example.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#418

Post by vidarh »

physicsguy wrote: post #310
vidarh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know that is what they're aiming for, but the point is that I'm disagreeing with the goal of prioritising transport to/from London because it actively encourages further centralisation, which keeps driving the need for even more upgrades while at the same time driving up the cost of doing them.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#419

Post by jlokier »

DeathArrow wrote: post #374
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adult social care crisis, a pension crisis, and in some areas a rundown NHS I remember about 10 years ago, "the idea" was that retirees would, as their health starts to decline, do equity-release in their homes to pay for their care needs (on the basis that the NHS would start to means-test care based on the value of all assets, including housing, so that if an OAP has £1m locked-up in their house and they probably…

So people are expected to pay twice for healthcare, just because they own a house?

No. At the moment it's people who don't own a property and have savings instead who "pay twice". People who couldn't get a mortgage to buy a house so saved instead are expected to pay more towards old age care than those who did get a mortgage to buy a house. The proposed policy change was to rebalance the current rules which greatly benefit property owners over involuntary renters of similar means, to make the rules fairer.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36489768

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#420

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #49
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…

It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes. It makes me question whether there is any real democracy; did we all just happen to make the exact same decisions in lock step since the 70s by incredible coincidence? And it’s not as if the eventual negative outcomes of housing costs continually outstripping wage growth weren’t obvious and growing year on year. Who is actuall…

> It’s the whole western world at the same time. The same policies, the same social outcomes.

Cities were pretty similar to how they are now for all of human history except a brief period where things were weird after WW2 - see A Farewell to Alms and everything by Ricardo.

The US has one of the lowest Price to Rent ratios in the entire world.

And it's not like the US is rosey. There's really no where to look on the planet for somewhere that's doing things right beside maybe Singapore (which is a single city and has somewhat socialized the entire housing market) and Japan (which suffered through a lost 30 years and has a pretty rapidly declining population - possibly mainly as a result).

In both cases, I'd argue the US has a better housing market than either of those places. And again, it's still pretty sucky in most places in the US.

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