this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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157
England worst place in developed world to find housing, says report (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Okay, hear me out here. Maybe we should stop treating housing as a commodity and allowing companies and individuals to accumulate large property “portfolios”?

Because this is the fucking problem; homes are not commodities to hold in a portfolio, they’re homes for people to live in.

The UK seems to have this as a recurring problem, we are the only modern economy that has a fully privatised water supply, something which is essential for human existence. Housing is a basic right, yet we allow massive profit to take priority over that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is a good idea but I have no idea how they would implement that in law

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Could be done fairly easily via the tax system. Each additional property you own increases the income tax on any rent and the capital gains tax when selling it. Bump up council tax for empty properties massively too and the market should correct itself with minimal direct intervention.

Set it up so having a second home means paying more for it, having 3 or 4 or 10 means it's not profitable to keep it at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The core question here, which I genuinely don't know the answer to, is how much of the supply crunch is being caused by the additional properties of individual parties? Are there really that many second, third, etc. homes in the UK?

Just from some quick looking, it seems like London's residential vacancy rate is something to the effect of 3%, so I'm inclined to think that the core problem is more lack of total supply rather than poor allocation of existing supply. We've seen cities boom all over the world in the past 20 years, but new construction hasn't remotely kept up with the pace of population growth. This is the pretty inevitable result.

Edit: Just to add numbers, London's population has grown by nearly 2 million since 2000. I would be highly skeptical that two million new apartments have been added in the same time. Add in the fact that a lot of those 2 million people are educated high-earning professionals, and this is what necessarily happens. When demand exceeds supply, price goes up. When the people driving that demand are relatively wealthy, price goes up a lot.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're absolutely correct that it's not solely an issue of landlords buying up property that's causing the shortage. I was just providing a possible legislative method to cut down on the number of properties being owned by speculators and corporate landlords.

There simply isn't enough housing being built for the population growth we've been seeing. That's 100% going to lead to an increase in prices.

In cities outside of London though there isn't always that same pressure (i.e. Liverpool still has a housing surplus), so why are housing costs rising past the point where people can afford to buy them? Supply and demand should mean that prices remain affordable for most people but they aren't.

A large number of rental properties are rented by investors of one form or another, if we can cut down on homes as speculative assets we should see more homes being sold to homeowners and prices fall back to more manageable levels for everyday people.

There are loads of other problems such as the UK building houses instead of things like apartments, planning permission bs, NIMBYism, economic activity being focused in the south, homeowners not wanting their valuations to go down, etc etc which are all part of the puzzle. Ensuring that more homes are owned by residents rather than investors can only be a good thing though imo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I read an article a few years ago about how some luxury London flats were sold indirectly - you purchased a company (which did nothing) and gained all their assets (which consisted of only one flat). You didn't own the flat, you owned a shell company which owned it; it's the same problem as having the wealthy create companies to avoid income tax. I think massive taxation for extra property ownership is a great idea, but I have no idea how you make it work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, but how does it work when a company owns a house? If a property developer builds a load of houses, wouldn't they be incentivised to sell the house for more to recoup the penalty to them?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think if it's a first time build you could work something out to not punish developers for building houses which take a little time to sell, but you'd also want to avoid developers building and sitting on properties. That will probably already happen though as they'll want to recoup construction costs asap I imagine. For portfolio property buyers they'll be incentivised to sell which is only a good thing.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Abolish landlording completely

Or, in legal terms, "an entity may not own a home if they cannot demonstrate that they occupy the residence for more than 10 months a year"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're assuming that this would magically drop all property prices to be affordable by all people, which is not at all self-evident.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're assuming there would still be a "market" in this scenario ;)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Respectfully, I think that's a safer assumption than the UK nationalizing the housing market, but by all means, feel free to wait for that if you like.

But even to play along, even if you could snap your fingers and abolish the housing market, the question of allocation doesn't go away. You'll still have certain units that are extremely desirable and valuable, others that are quite good, some that are fine, and some that are terrible. In other words, even in the absence of the market, inherent value will still drastically differ from unit to unit and location to location. So, if you're not using money to allocate things, how do you do it? What do you do if demand outstrips supply?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think landlords as a concept are a completely bad idea

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no good reason to own a home you don't live in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is a good reason to not buy a home that you live in though

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Put a cap on the maximum value a house can be based on bedrooms / floorspace? It'll never happen since those in power won't want their million pound houses suddenly being worthless.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's categorically impossible, because value in an economic sense is not determined by any one person.

You can put limits on price, but that's a very different thing, and has several downstream effects that are often negative. If you mandate that the price be below an asset's actual value, the owner is highly incentivized to either sell it in less legal ways, or simply not sell it at all and wait until regulations change or they find some other way of getting its true value. In the basic context of real estate, for instance, you might just meet with people, reject all offers, and then sell the house to a friend who agrees to "gift" you some extra money for it.

If, in a rental context, you mandate that rents remain below the cost of ownership from mortgage and maintenance, you incentivize the owner to do things like never do any maintenance (because what's the tenant going to do? Lose a rent controlled apartment?). You incentivize builders to never build anything, because rents won't be high enough to recoup costs. Some particularly bold landlords may even try to deliberately destroy their units as a way to get rid of an expensive asset (see upper Manhattan in the 70s, where many buildings "mysteriously" burned down).

Price != Cost != Value. Failing to understand this causes a lot of broken analysis.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh for sure, it's far too simple to just impose a limit. And if any limits imposed are too punitive, as you say, they'll likely do more harm than good.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My main point is that a lot of people read this as a simple problem of mis-allocation of existing housing stock, when essentially all economists agree that the fundamental issue is a lack of total supply. London alone has added two million residents since the year 2000, and I'm very doubtful that it has also added two million new apartments.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not the issue though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Arguably it is. The root cause is the same - treating basic necessities as investment vehicles

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Less of a housing issue, more of a cost of living issue.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

We've had a housing issue in the UK since long before the 'cost of living' crisis started to affect the middle-classes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Housing is the single largest cost of living that most people ever face, so yes, it is a housing issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's a both issue, not one or the other. But of the two, housing is a bigger issue.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A world beating housing crisis you say?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Now that's levelling up!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Canada?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Something tells me the English people who said that haven't been to Canada.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Canada was included in the report. The article seems to be focussing on the amount of vacant properties, which is 8.2% for Canada and 2.7% for UK

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I figure Canada probably has more houses (more space) but the prices to buy or let are much worse over there. We're not far behind, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

But renters on Wednesday night issued their own warning that “lots of expensive market-rate housing won’t bring housing costs down to affordable levels for the millions of people trapped in poverty by sky-high rents”.

Sure it will. Housing price is a function of supply and demand, like everything else. If you don't have enough supply of housing in London for people who want to live in London, then what happens is that housing prices rise until sufficient people are priced out.

If a developer builds new housing, then someone is going to live in it. If that person is living in that housing, then they aren't living in some other housing in London, which will make that housing more-affordable.

But what if a developer only builds luxury housing and nobody wants to live in it?

A developer has a pretty strong incentive not to build something that nobody actually wants, so that's unlikely to be a serious problem -- their incentive is not to do this. But, sure, assume that happens. Then that developer is going to need to recoup what they can by selling the development for what they can, even at a loss. The parties who invested in that development will wind up covering some of the cost of buying housing for people in London.

What's at issue isn't "fancy housing" or "not-fancy housing". It's the quantity of housing. Build more of whatever type of housing, and the price of housing will drop.

As long as one can profitably build housing -- the price of land and the price of construction and a reasonable return is lower than the price of housing -- developers have every incentive to build. They only won't build if they aren't allowed to do so.

Removing or relaxing London's height restrictions might be a good place to start.

https://archive.ph/jRQIm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY_movement

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

While the free market should be able to correct the problem, it can't.

I can't talk specifically about the uk, but in the US many locales have strict zoning regualtions that hamper building medium density cheap housing, perfect for all these people that can't afford to live where there's work.

Examples are things like minimum parking requiements, driveway setbacks, and limitations on multifamily homes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You're contradicting yourself. There's no free market when you have zoning regulations. That's the issue in Britain as well - too much red tape everywhere and too many fees to get any permissions. Builders are not allowed to build as much as they want or as much as people need. The housing crisis is created artificially by the government.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes prices go up and people get priced out that is the bloody problem!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

My rent is 60% of my income. That along with the cost of living crisis, I'm stuck in a debt spiral.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

About a quarter of private renters in the UK are also “overburdened” by housing costs – spending more than 40% of income, compared with just 9% in France and 5% in Germany, according to OECD data.

Labour has said it might release greenbelt for building when it is “dilapidated, neglected scrubland” and will “put social and genuinely affordable housing at the very heart of our plans to jump-start the housebuilding industry”.

Stewart Baseley, the executive chair of the HBF said the figures are “a wake-up call, demonstrating the urgent need to act now to prevent us falling even further behind”.

The study found the UK has the lowest number of homes built since 1980 of any of Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

The construction industry has been frustrated by the government’s stop-start approach to planning reforms, as it has weighed the need for more building against opposition from voters in Tory constituencies concerned about over-development.

By contrast the share of the population living with leaking roofs, damp or rot in Poland was 6% and 12% in Germany, figures from Eurostat show.

The original article contains 686 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

10% of Tory donations come from housebuilders. They are probably happy keeping demand artificially high and are paying to keep it that way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nobody should be talking about building on the greenbelt, that’s the point of the greenbelt. Where I used to live in London the council was constantly trying to get permission to build on the greenbelt when 500m away there was a huge plot of dilapidated concrete, I guess where there used to be a factory or something. But they were constantly talking about the greenbelt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Housing developers love greenbelt because they don't have to pay for the rubble and land clearing of brown belt land.

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