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Why Britain doesn’t build

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Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#511

Post by dignick »

tsukikage wrote: post #495
dignick wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually have excess housing in the UK: https://positivemoney.org/2023/01/more-than-building-new-hou...

> "Home ownership has increasingly become the preserve of the wealthy, with billions pumped into property purchases by overseas investors, landlords and retail banks." So the UK population is not the complete set of entities that want to buy housing stock, and measuring population alone is not sufficient to capture the entirety of the demand. This means we need to build even faster! Saturate these markets. Those folk…

That’s what we’ve been doing for a while now - why hasn’t it worked? I guess we could deregulate and approve more building, but then we end up with a load of empty boxes of substandard/dangerous quality, with inadequate local resources, and a few very rich property developers. Sounds a foolish pursuit in the face of a climate crisis.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#512

Post by robertlagrant »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #415
robertlagrant wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You don't fix government/zoning disincentives to do things with government disincentives to not do things.

It's just more time and money wasted on people to inspect and enforce and run appeals systems (what if they had a good reason for not starting?) and write and update rules (what do we count as a good reason?). All of this costs endless tax money that could've been spent on building or buying houses. Or, in 2023, just buying enough food.

Fix the underlying issues, and people will build.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#513

Post by PaperOliver »

kypro wrote: post #402
nomaD_ wrote: post #340

I am in Indian immigrant living in the UK for past 5 years. The housing system here feels extremely stupid to me. They basically resell houses 100+ years old at 5% higher value every year. It's kinda like gold or bitcoin, except those assets are actually very limited in number. But housing is simply artificially limited due to policies. Total UK housing stock is worth 10T GBP vs 2.2T GBP GDP output. Don't think any o…

Great comment. You've described the issue at the upper-end of the income spectrum well. I think you're correct that excess income in this country tends to largely be funnelled into real estate rather than building businesses, but equally on the lower income spectrum (where individuals don't have the income to afford their own homes) their income gets redistributed to the wealthy via high rents (and I'd argue taxation…

Out of curiosity how would someone earn £20k of benefits while also getting a house? That seems outlandish to me.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#514

Post by danjac »

sefrost wrote: post #186
danjac wrote: post #26

This is an interesting political trap for the ruling Conservatives that they have made for themselves. The traditional Conservative voter is a home-owner. So you might be a rabid socialist in your youth, but once you get a job, save up for a deposit, and buy your own home, you eventually transition to become yet another middle-aged Tory voter. That pipeline is now broken - young people are unable to save up for their…

Another trap they have created: I am one of the millennials that managed to get on to the housing ladder by buying a one bedroom flat in London. Then the government significantly changed the fire safety and building safety laws and now the building requires significant sums of money spending on it until the flat will become sellable again. The person that owns the building is not required to pay for that - only the l…

The whole concept of leaseholding is a reminder that Britain, despite its pretensions of modernity, is really just a feudal society under the surface.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#515

Post by throwaway2037 »

Detrytus wrote: post #430
throwaway2037 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period. where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, b…

Such problems only exist in third world countries, such as US or UK. My country solves this by issuing a plastic ID card to each citizen. You apply for it at your local town hall, and it is free of charge. You can use that ID for voting, or any other interaction with the government when they need to confirm your identity. Hell, they even issued a smartphone application recently, that can be legally used as ID.

I need a Google Chrome plugin to block all HN comments that include the term "third world countries". That term is so grossly out of date. Read about it on Wiki. Yes, in wealthy countries, it is a proxy for very poor countries. Still, I do not like that term in 2023. It feels lazy.

And more HN vagueness in this post: "My country" Why not just say your country name? After all, most of the world is developing. You don't have much to lose.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#516

Post by bloqs »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #52
bloqs wrote: post #31

Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. The decision was made to make them a good investment, and thus our lazy, entitled economy that is addicted to foreign goods and services became what it is today.

> Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. Roads are a perfect example of a good investment that is accessible to all. It's called a "common good", and it exists.

I mean in a financial sense. A good investment with a high guarantee of high return cannot also be financially accessible to all (read: affordable)

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#517

Post by bloqs »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #497
beisner wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP means something more like "a security which appreciates on average faster than inflation", AKA an asset I can purchase and hold and sell later for more than I paid for it+improvements in real terms.

I don't mean to be a jerk, and this isn't directed at the parent poster, but when someone makes an argument that contains an unsound point that in a vacuum cannot hold up, that unsound point critically degrades the entire argument. When someone includes statements in an argument that can be trivially disputed, they should fully expect those weak points to be disputed. The rest of the argument, imo, does not deserve c…

I didn't make an unsound point, there was a misunderstanding by you. When talking about financial assets or investment, accessible means affordable, but affordable is a relative term, whereas somethings accessibility is a useful observation - "can working-class people buy one easily?"

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#518

Post by bloqs »

oh_sigh wrote: post #218
bloqs wrote: post #31

Something cannot both be a good investment and accessible to all. The decision was made to make them a good investment, and thus our lazy, entitled economy that is addicted to foreign goods and services became what it is today.

Sure it can be. You can have some bare minimum of housing available in the boondocks which is cheap and accessible to all, and then have much more desirable housing which may be a good investment if the region is up and coming.

Every government has attemped to balance these two things, with tax credits, trusts and public/social housing tenders. But you cannot escape market forces on everything from materials, labour and the rest coming into play. The macroeconomic environment for it being a good investment needs to be build primarily, and then any accessibility intervention comes next.

At some point it becomes a government handout. Ok, so every person of 25 gets a 90%-off-your-first-home-voucher. So all the private companies building homes are getting 90% of their money straight from the government. This very quickly leads to a nimbyism/conservative local political environment which puts a stop to it.

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#519

Post by brigandish »

okeuro49 wrote: post #498
brigandish wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More complicated than that. You should try reading Isabel Hardman's book "Why we get the politicians we deserve". I'm left thinking "why?"

The book covers what is necessary economically to run to be an MP. > Running for MP can bankrupt you if you haven't got a passive source of income. MPs become landlords for the passive income that is necessary given that running to be an MP can leave you destitute. Landlords aren't (usually) becoming MPs in order to vote for more favourable conditions for landlords. Indeed, there have been many policies detrimental t…

Landlords don't need to become MPs in order for MPs to become landlords or for their interests to emerge as it would with any other contingent with shared interests making up 18% of sitting MPs.

> Indeed, there have been many policies detrimental to landlords e.g. removal of mortgage interest income tax relief.

For all we know there would have been more legislation of this kind if they hadn't been there.

Aside from that, why is it that, since the majority of MPs are aligned with major parties and major parties pay for prospective MPs to run, and since MPs are remunerated well above average and have lavish expenses compared to the rest of us, that they would become bankrupt?

On top of that, they can earn big money if they get into cabinet[1], and they don't even lose that much when they leave[2]:

> For MPs defeated at the 2019 election, the average loss-of-office payment was £5,250 – equivalent to just under one month of their £84,000 salary.

The average UK salary for that year (2019):

> The Office of National Statistics has released its provisional update of the UK Average Salary 2019, showing that the average full-time salary is £36,611 and average part-time salary is £12,495.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/mps-second-jobs-why-it-pays-to-le...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-medals-pa...

[3] https://www.findcourses.co.uk/inspiration/average-salaries-u...

Re: Why Britain doesn’t build

#520

Post by aetherson »

majormajor wrote: post #480
aetherson wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's purely short term. Long term development is good for everybody's property values, in the exact opposite way that losing businesses and residents is bad for those property values. Phoenix vs Detroit, say. "Demand" is a dynamic thing, it responds to changes in the built environment of a city, region, or nation. London didn't spring into being fully-formed and fully in-demand at today's levels. It found a virtuou…

There are in-demand cities that have relatively affordable housing (like Tokyo), that allow lots of housing to be built, and cities that have extraordinarily high costs of housing (like London) generally have a hard cap on housing development.

While there is obviously some amount of this whole thing where more housing allows more people to come to a city which can in some circumstances drum up more jobs or whatever, I think it's a significant oversimplification to say that more housing increases property values in the long run. Ceteris paribus, more housing depresses property values. It is possible for there to be a feedback cycle where more people in the area increase the overall prosperity -- and thus property values -- of the area, but I do not think that generally more housing is the most important factor there.

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