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A lot of the issue in the UK is getting permission to build anything. My dad had a 160 acre farm near london, you can get nordic type cabins for ~£50k (https://

by tim333 1y ago

A lot of the issue in the UK is getting permission to build anything. My dad had a 160 acre farm near london, you can get nordic type cabins for ~£50k (https://www.quick-garden.co.uk/log-cabins/homes/ https://www.quick-garden.co.uk/log-cabins/homes/) and you could stick loads there for little money but can you get permission? On no. I can understand not wanting to give windfall profits to folks like my dad who did nothing but the government could buy land and develop it. Also they could maybe actually make something attractive? People tend to hate new development because it's so ugly. Maybe we could build like Cambridge or Venice rather than endless boxes.

meheleventyone 1y ago
The cost goes beyond the mere material cost of the house itself but if you have a sizable new development how does it fit within the infrastructure where it would be built. Everything from providing services to having adequate road infrastructure. No doubt there is some wonky things in planning but it's also not a case of YOLO'ing up a bunch of cabins. Not to mention that small single homes aren't a very efficient use of new builds.
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- tk6855 1y ago
  I built my house for materials cost. You can absolutely most definitely do it for nothing but material cost. My community is also all private roads with easements, so no public development costs of roads. I built mine with an axe and a shovel. As always the solution is to remove the government from the situation -- with private roads, private water, private septic, and private power there is no one to screech their deranged ramblings on why we need 1,000,000 safety regulations and $30,000 worth of paperwork and permitting to break ground because their precious public resources will be impacted. $60k for a house, near jobs, USA. Anybody with half a brain and a little brawn can do what I did, if they can come up with what would be a down-payment on a house in a coastal area. Although I admit, it would be much easier for most just to whine on the internet while watching others do what they say is impossible .
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
    > You can absolutely most definitely do it for nothing but material cost. > $60k for a house Where did you build the house? Presuming it's on land you own, how did you come to own the land? If you purchased it, the purchase amount should be included in the cost. If you did not purchase it, consider how lucky you are. Edit to reply to the dead reply: I do see the context of this being on already-owned land so my point is moot. Apologies for that. (For what it's worth, I'm not really convinced by the fact that you can get free land where nobody wants to live but that's another matter.)
    - tk6855 1y ago
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  - gamblor956 1y ago
    Private water works well until the well dries up. It's hitting a lot of homesteaders in the Coachella Valley (CA) and in Arizona right now. And people discover why CA's building codes are so onerous after the first earthquake knocks over their self-built house. Homes and offices built to current codes are designed to survive a Ritcher 7.0 earthquake with minimal to no damage. People don't even get out of bed for anything below a Ritcher 5. According to Caltech's earthquake tracker (https://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/Los_Angeles.html https://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/Los_Angeles.html, L.A. has had almost 3 dozen earthquakes in the last 3 days alone (the biggest was a 2.8)...and nobody noticed. (For comparison, a 5.x earthquake caused several billions in damage in Washington D.C.; comparable earthquakes have caused so little damage in SoCal it's impossible to find numbers. Fracking-related 2.x earthquakes have caused hundreds of millions in damage in the Midwest, but in L.A., even pets sleep through something that weak.)
    - sir0010010 1y ago
      Have you done research and found that the majority of the excess cost of constructing California homes is due to the specific regulations dealing with earthquakes? Are you sure there aren't other regulations and/or building codes there that have nothing to do with earthquakes or health/safety, yet massively impact the cost of homes in California?
drdunce 1y ago
There's not really an issue with planning. The actual problem is that developers will then sit on that land rather than build on it, as this is more valuable long term. See "land banks"
rich_sasha 1y ago
I agree there is a lot of red tape and planning issues, but I suspect a lot of it comes down to the problems I listed above. Eg. green belts are there to prevent infinite sprawl of cities, which don't have the infrastructure to support continued growth. For local homeowners, nearby developments are a problem, for selfish but logical reasons.

by tim333 1y ago

meheleventyone 1y ago

The cost goes beyond the mere material cost of the house itself but if you have a sizable new development how does it fit within the infrastructure where it would be built. Everything from providing services to having adequate road infrastructure. No doubt there is some wonky things in planning but it's also not a case of YOLO'ing up a bunch of cabins. Not to mention that small single homes aren't a very efficient use of new builds.

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tk6855 1y ago
I built my house for materials cost. You can absolutely most definitely do it for nothing but material cost. My community is also all private roads with easements, so no public development costs of roads. I built mine with an axe and a shovel. As always the solution is to remove the government from the situation -- with private roads, private water, private septic, and private power there is no one to screech their deranged ramblings on why we need 1,000,000 safety regulations and $30,000 worth of paperwork and permitting to break ground because their precious public resources will be impacted. $60k for a house, near jobs, USA. Anybody with half a brain and a little brawn can do what I did, if they can come up with what would be a down-payment on a house in a coastal area. Although I admit, it would be much easier for most just to whine on the internet while watching others do what they say is impossible .
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
  > You can absolutely most definitely do it for nothing but material cost. > $60k for a house Where did you build the house? Presuming it's on land you own, how did you come to own the land? If you purchased it, the purchase amount should be included in the cost. If you did not purchase it, consider how lucky you are. Edit to reply to the dead reply: I do see the context of this being on already-owned land so my point is moot. Apologies for that. (For what it's worth, I'm not really convinced by the fact that you can get free land where nobody wants to live but that's another matter.)
  - tk6855 1y ago
    [dead]
- gamblor956 1y ago
  Private water works well until the well dries up. It's hitting a lot of homesteaders in the Coachella Valley (CA) and in Arizona right now. And people discover why CA's building codes are so onerous after the first earthquake knocks over their self-built house. Homes and offices built to current codes are designed to survive a Ritcher 7.0 earthquake with minimal to no damage. People don't even get out of bed for anything below a Ritcher 5. According to Caltech's earthquake tracker (https://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/Los_Angeles.html https://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/Los_Angeles.html, L.A. has had almost 3 dozen earthquakes in the last 3 days alone (the biggest was a 2.8)...and nobody noticed. (For comparison, a 5.x earthquake caused several billions in damage in Washington D.C.; comparable earthquakes have caused so little damage in SoCal it's impossible to find numbers. Fracking-related 2.x earthquakes have caused hundreds of millions in damage in the Midwest, but in L.A., even pets sleep through something that weak.)
  - sir0010010 1y ago
    Have you done research and found that the majority of the excess cost of constructing California homes is due to the specific regulations dealing with earthquakes? Are you sure there aren't other regulations and/or building codes there that have nothing to do with earthquakes or health/safety, yet massively impact the cost of homes in California?

drdunce 1y ago

There's not really an issue with planning. The actual problem is that developers will then sit on that land rather than build on it, as this is more valuable long term. See "land banks"

rich_sasha 1y ago

I agree there is a lot of red tape and planning issues, but I suspect a lot of it comes down to the problems I listed above. Eg. green belts are there to prevent infinite sprawl of cities, which don't have the infrastructure to support continued growth. For local homeowners, nearby developments are a problem, for selfish but logical reasons.