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Wonderful, let's make new homes even more expensive! And to those who are downvoting this, every building code requirement like this jacks up the price further

Wonderful, let's make new homes even more expensive! And to those who are downvoting this, every building code requirement like this jacks up the price further. Not everyone is a SWE with a TC of $250k+ you over privileged ninnies.

m000 4y ago
I can sell you a nifty cave, and I'll throw in my top-of-the-line 56k modem for free if you want to avoid the price jackups.
hgomersall 4y ago
UK house prices in no way reflect the build cost. The developers do the least they can get away with, which generally means the shittiest fabric with some polish that lasts until the end of the warranty period, just about satisfying the building regs (which are not really checked properly), then they flog the result at whatever the market will bear and pocket the difference. What the market will bear is entirely dictated by where the identikit houses have been built and little else.
- djbebs 4y ago
  Of course they reflect build costs, as well as regulatory costs...
- lhnz 4y ago
  Everything you say is correct apart from "house prices in no way reflect the build cost". The build cost is expensive as there aren't many skilled trades people nowadays and there is a market of lemons. The few high quality building contractors that are trusted can charge huge amounts of money -- all of the others charge as much as they can get away with and just hope that you don't check their work...
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    Maybe, but around me, house demand hugely outstrips supply, so everyone buys at the limit of what they can afford. For sure, proper dumps that need significant renovation go for less, but they are super rare. Everything else goes for a price set by the size of the home and increasingly, the size of garden. New builds command a slight premium, but that's mostly a marketing premium, which doesn't hold for resale. It's hugely complicated by the location aspect of course - older houses tend to be in better locations. Basically, my point is that trying to attribute regulatory costs to house prices is essentially impossible, and is very much in the noise.
    - lhnz 4y ago
      Not to argue, but rather to add my experience as it is fairly unique, I did a renovation to a property that cost a low six-figure amount of money (£). Few have done this so whenever this conversation happens everybody talks about house prices as if there is nothing driving them other than "planning permission is an expensive, time-costly and risky endeavour" -- that's not all as the cost of doing building work is very high! While there were a range of build costs given to us by building contractors, they were all eye-wateringly expensive and at the lower end you have to carefully consider the risk of fraud. Overall we had a very painful experience and the project was beset with poorly executed work and fraud until we realised what was happening half-way through the project and diverted a large amount of our resources into sorting everything out [0]. As a professional software engineer, I'm used to being able to trust that people will do what they say, but this market is a whole different game and much more cutthroat. We specified exactly the work that should be done and the materials that should be used with an architect's help but this isn't enough: you have to carefully evaluate every single piece of work to ensure compliance and be ready for gamesmanship/fraud or even financial/legal conflict from contractors. My point is that house prices must reflect the the costs/risks of building and these are numerous: - Designing, quantifying and specifying work - Navigating bureaucracy and failure to get sign-off causing costly re-designs - On-site supervision of workers completion of jobs and assessment of materials used - Evaluations of work completed by independent surveyors - Organisational and project management skill - Understanding of construction and contract law with its many peculiarities (e.g. were you aware that you must pay *any* amount that a building contractor specifies in a validly constructed payment notice unless you have sent a pay less notice with calculations showing otherwise? This is often used in "Smash and Grab" abjudications to force clients to pay money as "if the paying party does not serve the right notice against your application then they must pay first and argue later." [1]) There aren't as many skilled tradespeople as there used to be and quality building work is labour/skill intensive, complex and risky. My experiences leads me to believe that the lack of competition between contractors is just as likely to be driving high house prices as overall planning risks/costs. (It's just that the former is opaque and invisible to most people even if they work in research/policy.) [0] Our contractor went as far as attempting to extort money from us by getting a subcontractor to send threats to us and finally slinked away unscathed once we involved a quantity surveyor and lawyer. [1] https://helix-law.co.uk/smash-and-grab-adjudication-overview/
idontpost 4y ago
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m000 4y ago

I can sell you a nifty cave, and I'll throw in my top-of-the-line 56k modem for free if you want to avoid the price jackups.

hgomersall 4y ago

UK house prices in no way reflect the build cost. The developers do the least they can get away with, which generally means the shittiest fabric with some polish that lasts until the end of the warranty period, just about satisfying the building regs (which are not really checked properly), then they flog the result at whatever the market will bear and pocket the difference. What the market will bear is entirely dictated by where the identikit houses have been built and little else.

djbebs 4y ago
Of course they reflect build costs, as well as regulatory costs...
lhnz 4y ago
Everything you say is correct apart from "house prices in no way reflect the build cost". The build cost is expensive as there aren't many skilled trades people nowadays and there is a market of lemons. The few high quality building contractors that are trusted can charge huge amounts of money -- all of the others charge as much as they can get away with and just hope that you don't check their work...
- hgomersall 4y ago
  Maybe, but around me, house demand hugely outstrips supply, so everyone buys at the limit of what they can afford. For sure, proper dumps that need significant renovation go for less, but they are super rare. Everything else goes for a price set by the size of the home and increasingly, the size of garden. New builds command a slight premium, but that's mostly a marketing premium, which doesn't hold for resale. It's hugely complicated by the location aspect of course - older houses tend to be in better locations. Basically, my point is that trying to attribute regulatory costs to house prices is essentially impossible, and is very much in the noise.
  - lhnz 4y ago
    Not to argue, but rather to add my experience as it is fairly unique, I did a renovation to a property that cost a low six-figure amount of money (£). Few have done this so whenever this conversation happens everybody talks about house prices as if there is nothing driving them other than "planning permission is an expensive, time-costly and risky endeavour" -- that's not all as the cost of doing building work is very high! While there were a range of build costs given to us by building contractors, they were all eye-wateringly expensive and at the lower end you have to carefully consider the risk of fraud. Overall we had a very painful experience and the project was beset with poorly executed work and fraud until we realised what was happening half-way through the project and diverted a large amount of our resources into sorting everything out [0]. As a professional software engineer, I'm used to being able to trust that people will do what they say, but this market is a whole different game and much more cutthroat. We specified exactly the work that should be done and the materials that should be used with an architect's help but this isn't enough: you have to carefully evaluate every single piece of work to ensure compliance and be ready for gamesmanship/fraud or even financial/legal conflict from contractors. My point is that house prices must reflect the the costs/risks of building and these are numerous: - Designing, quantifying and specifying work - Navigating bureaucracy and failure to get sign-off causing costly re-designs - On-site supervision of workers completion of jobs and assessment of materials used - Evaluations of work completed by independent surveyors - Organisational and project management skill - Understanding of construction and contract law with its many peculiarities (e.g. were you aware that you must pay *any* amount that a building contractor specifies in a validly constructed payment notice unless you have sent a pay less notice with calculations showing otherwise? This is often used in "Smash and Grab" abjudications to force clients to pay money as "if the paying party does not serve the right notice against your application then they must pay first and argue later." [1]) There aren't as many skilled tradespeople as there used to be and quality building work is labour/skill intensive, complex and risky. My experiences leads me to believe that the lack of competition between contractors is just as likely to be driving high house prices as overall planning risks/costs. (It's just that the former is opaque and invisible to most people even if they work in research/policy.) [0] Our contractor went as far as attempting to extort money from us by getting a subcontractor to send threats to us and finally slinked away unscathed once we involved a quantity surveyor and lawyer. [1] https://helix-law.co.uk/smash-and-grab-adjudication-overview/

idontpost 4y ago

[dead]