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We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades, we need to build houses even faster than that, to c

We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades, we need to build houses even faster than that, to clear the backlog. This is not happening. Meanwhile, no-one will build infrastructure for settlements that do not yet exist, and we consistently elect a party that believes in less, rather than more, infrastructure in general. Rather than an investment, Tories fundamentally see infrastructure spending as an unrecoverable loss. At least if more housing gets built there will be more people in the area pestering their MPs for solutions to infrastructure problems - perhaps even enough to outnumber the NIMBYs. One can hope.

blitzar 3y ago
> We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades. Over those decades UK population growth [1] is lower than the new house building rate [see chart in article]. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/population-growth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/pop...
- tsukikage 3y ago
  The graph shows building rate as a proportion of the size of existing stock. But the existing stock is grossly insufficient to our needs. We've been building around 200k houses a year for decades, much less than that during most years of Conservative rule: https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new... This is around 0.3% of the population. The population increase year on year is consistently larger than this. We need to be building new houses much faster than we are. We need to build at 1960s rates or faster at least until it is possible for people on median wages to have somewhere sane to live again.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Couple of things to this: You're right it's growing faster than that. E.g. Mid 2018 to mid 2019, it rose by 361k people. But the UK average household size is 2.4, so 200k new houses should in theory accommodate a population growth of 866k. If those were the only numbers that mattered, it wouldn't be a problem. We'd catch up fast. But all houses are not the same. A large part of the problem is people following jobs, and so a significantly higher rate of construction may be needed because people move, and needed types of properties change. Unless you can make the places people are moving away from to be more attractive, e.g. by infrastructure improvement to tie areas together in ways that make them attractive regions for businesses. The bigger issues, however, I think are two structural problems: 1. As long as house prices go up at a sufficient rate, the soundest strategy for a developer may be to raise capital to buy land and then sit on it until house prices go up. Your cost of capital to finance it will be financing costs for the cost of the land for however many years you sit on it, and the financing costs for the construction itself only from you start construction until sold. Doubly so because if you're a large developer, holding a large parcel of land while you're, say, developing something else nearby, and releasing only limited numbers of properties onto the market contributes to keeping the prices up. Near me, one of the best properties in the area, a huge tract right next to one of the best connected train stations in the UK (East Croydon) remained undeveloped for over a decade because developers had no urgency to do anything. It's now slowly being developed, but they're taking their good time about it, because why wouldn't they? You could address that by progressively harsher taxes by duration of under-utilisation, or strengthen ability for local government to take over land, to make it necessary for developers to either move at speed or unload the land on others, but if you fix the house price increases by other means, this problem will also go away by itself. 2. There is no political will to cause house prices to drop, because that would mean a lot of people who have seen this as a pension investment, and plan to downsize, will vote against you. To fix this you probably need a combination of starting slow - reforms that gradually cause the market to stagnate so people stop seeing it as surefire way to make money - coupled perhaps with tax and pension adjustment structured to make it feel like your reforms are relatively neutral. E.g "package" it with substantial state pension increases, or allow for some degree of writeoffs for paper losses on declining property prices, perhaps limited to pensioners only, etc. Some of it you could sunset, and some might well end up being very unfair and effectively bribing people who shouldn't have gambled on their home as their main investment asset, but if that's what it takes to get support for crashing house prices, it'd be worth it.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    > The current population of U.K. in 2023 is 67,736,802, a 0.34% increase from 2022. > The population of U.K. in 2022 was 67,508,936, a 0.34% increase from 2021. > The population of U.K. in 2021 was 67,281,039, a 0.33% increase from 2020. > The population of U.K. in 2020 was 67,059,474, a 0.42% increase from 2019. 1 year old babies dont 4 bedroom houses of their own.
    - smcl 3y ago
      I'm not sure that posting the population growth figures over four years and adding a snarky remark about babies owning houses proves anything whatsoever other than your own ignorance and disinterest on the matter in hand. You'd need to also think about not only the number of homes built, but the kind of homes built, the location they're built in, the cost at which they're built, the incomes of those who need to be housed and where they and their jobs are located compared to the houses. And to cap it all you'd probably want to look at it over a meaningful time period because I don't think anyone thinks the current situation with UK housing started in 2019. Or you can save us all the bother and say what you really mean - you either don't care or you're quite happy with the current situation.
      - blitzar 3y ago
        I already posted the numbers from 1950 to date, both from the perspective of population growth and house building. The numbers are clear, perhaps you were not interested enough to look or were unable to understand. > Or you can save us all the bother and say what you really mean. Its pretty obvious that there is a change in the size of the household over the 73 years I cited, which everyone is comfortable ignoring. The number of homes built is clearly not the dominant issue, but the kind of homes built, the location they're built in, the cost at which they're built, the incomes of those who need to be housed and where they and their jobs are located compared to the houses is the issue. I could magic up 10million studio appartments in the geographic center of the country - it would make absolutely fuck all difference to the price of a family home in Manchester or Bristol (it would probably make them even more expensive as it would drain all the house building resources of the country). It would however, fully satisfy and surpass the targets of those that "care or are unhappy with the current situation" and their caring solutions. Actually a large number of issues did start just after 2019. Something happened and the demands and tastes changed drastically nearly overnight, suddenly the kind of homes built, the location they're built in for the prior 10 years was not what everyone wanted. Will it last? Will it flip back overnight? I dont know. Obviously I am not as knowledgeable or as interested as you are.
vidarh 3y ago
The irony is that historically, a lot of rail was built for settlements that, while they may have existed, did not support the cost of rail, and this has driven a lot of development. And this is both how it ought to work and means that the UK has a lot of existing rail that could help solve this problem if the government would just commit to streamline planning processes and to increasing routes and frequency to stations where there is a potential for density increases at lower cost.
- mhotchen 3y ago
  I think this is a really interesting perspective. This could decentralise the population and solve many problems that way, and also reduce the costs and risks associated with utilising fully modernised technology; no need for compromise
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I think about this more than I should, because it drives me crazy how many rail routes in the UK are there but ridiculously underutilised because few people live there now, but so many of those stretches of rail also have immediate surroundings of rail station with no historic value, yet built on, that could provide extra density very cheaply if only people felt they could rely on faster commutes.
dignick 3y ago
We actually have excess housing in the UK: https://positivemoney.org/2023/01/more-than-building-new-houses/ https://positivemoney.org/2023/01/more-than-building-new-hou...
- tsukikage 3y ago
  > "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 folks are giving us money to build empty houses; use it! Once supply outstrips all demand, prices fall - that's how markets work. Let the invisible hand of the free market inform the foreign investors that housing bubbles are a bad bet. Certainly nothing else has worked.
  - dignick 3y ago
    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.

blitzar 3y ago

> We need to build houses at least as fast as the population grows. Because this has not happened for decades. Over those decades UK population growth [1] is lower than the new house building rate [see chart in article]. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/population-growth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/pop...

tsukikage 3y ago
The graph shows building rate as a proportion of the size of existing stock. But the existing stock is grossly insufficient to our needs. We've been building around 200k houses a year for decades, much less than that during most years of Conservative rule: https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new... This is around 0.3% of the population. The population increase year on year is consistently larger than this. We need to be building new houses much faster than we are. We need to build at 1960s rates or faster at least until it is possible for people on median wages to have somewhere sane to live again.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Couple of things to this: You're right it's growing faster than that. E.g. Mid 2018 to mid 2019, it rose by 361k people. But the UK average household size is 2.4, so 200k new houses should in theory accommodate a population growth of 866k. If those were the only numbers that mattered, it wouldn't be a problem. We'd catch up fast. But all houses are not the same. A large part of the problem is people following jobs, and so a significantly higher rate of construction may be needed because people move, and needed types of properties change. Unless you can make the places people are moving away from to be more attractive, e.g. by infrastructure improvement to tie areas together in ways that make them attractive regions for businesses. The bigger issues, however, I think are two structural problems: 1. As long as house prices go up at a sufficient rate, the soundest strategy for a developer may be to raise capital to buy land and then sit on it until house prices go up. Your cost of capital to finance it will be financing costs for the cost of the land for however many years you sit on it, and the financing costs for the construction itself only from you start construction until sold. Doubly so because if you're a large developer, holding a large parcel of land while you're, say, developing something else nearby, and releasing only limited numbers of properties onto the market contributes to keeping the prices up. Near me, one of the best properties in the area, a huge tract right next to one of the best connected train stations in the UK (East Croydon) remained undeveloped for over a decade because developers had no urgency to do anything. It's now slowly being developed, but they're taking their good time about it, because why wouldn't they? You could address that by progressively harsher taxes by duration of under-utilisation, or strengthen ability for local government to take over land, to make it necessary for developers to either move at speed or unload the land on others, but if you fix the house price increases by other means, this problem will also go away by itself. 2. There is no political will to cause house prices to drop, because that would mean a lot of people who have seen this as a pension investment, and plan to downsize, will vote against you. To fix this you probably need a combination of starting slow - reforms that gradually cause the market to stagnate so people stop seeing it as surefire way to make money - coupled perhaps with tax and pension adjustment structured to make it feel like your reforms are relatively neutral. E.g "package" it with substantial state pension increases, or allow for some degree of writeoffs for paper losses on declining property prices, perhaps limited to pensioners only, etc. Some of it you could sunset, and some might well end up being very unfair and effectively bribing people who shouldn't have gambled on their home as their main investment asset, but if that's what it takes to get support for crashing house prices, it'd be worth it.
- blitzar 3y ago
  > The current population of U.K. in 2023 is 67,736,802, a 0.34% increase from 2022. > The population of U.K. in 2022 was 67,508,936, a 0.34% increase from 2021. > The population of U.K. in 2021 was 67,281,039, a 0.33% increase from 2020. > The population of U.K. in 2020 was 67,059,474, a 0.42% increase from 2019. 1 year old babies dont 4 bedroom houses of their own.
  - smcl 3y ago
    I'm not sure that posting the population growth figures over four years and adding a snarky remark about babies owning houses proves anything whatsoever other than your own ignorance and disinterest on the matter in hand. You'd need to also think about not only the number of homes built, but the kind of homes built, the location they're built in, the cost at which they're built, the incomes of those who need to be housed and where they and their jobs are located compared to the houses. And to cap it all you'd probably want to look at it over a meaningful time period because I don't think anyone thinks the current situation with UK housing started in 2019. Or you can save us all the bother and say what you really mean - you either don't care or you're quite happy with the current situation.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      I already posted the numbers from 1950 to date, both from the perspective of population growth and house building. The numbers are clear, perhaps you were not interested enough to look or were unable to understand. > Or you can save us all the bother and say what you really mean. Its pretty obvious that there is a change in the size of the household over the 73 years I cited, which everyone is comfortable ignoring. The number of homes built is clearly not the dominant issue, but the kind of homes built, the location they're built in, the cost at which they're built, the incomes of those who need to be housed and where they and their jobs are located compared to the houses is the issue. I could magic up 10million studio appartments in the geographic center of the country - it would make absolutely fuck all difference to the price of a family home in Manchester or Bristol (it would probably make them even more expensive as it would drain all the house building resources of the country). It would however, fully satisfy and surpass the targets of those that "care or are unhappy with the current situation" and their caring solutions. Actually a large number of issues did start just after 2019. Something happened and the demands and tastes changed drastically nearly overnight, suddenly the kind of homes built, the location they're built in for the prior 10 years was not what everyone wanted. Will it last? Will it flip back overnight? I dont know. Obviously I am not as knowledgeable or as interested as you are.

vidarh 3y ago

The irony is that historically, a lot of rail was built for settlements that, while they may have existed, did not support the cost of rail, and this has driven a lot of development. And this is both how it ought to work and means that the UK has a lot of existing rail that could help solve this problem if the government would just commit to streamline planning processes and to increasing routes and frequency to stations where there is a potential for density increases at lower cost.

mhotchen 3y ago
I think this is a really interesting perspective. This could decentralise the population and solve many problems that way, and also reduce the costs and risks associated with utilising fully modernised technology; no need for compromise
- vidarh 3y ago
  I think about this more than I should, because it drives me crazy how many rail routes in the UK are there but ridiculously underutilised because few people live there now, but so many of those stretches of rail also have immediate surroundings of rail station with no historic value, yet built on, that could provide extra density very cheaply if only people felt they could rely on faster commutes.

dignick 3y ago

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

tsukikage 3y ago
> "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 folks are giving us money to build empty houses; use it! Once supply outstrips all demand, prices fall - that's how markets work. Let the invisible hand of the free market inform the foreign investors that housing bubbles are a bad bet. Certainly nothing else has worked.
- dignick 3y ago
  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.