The Housing Shortage

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

12 hours ago, Foxy2600 said:

We can’t house anymore people unless we build at least Birmingham and a half every year.

UK is 242,000 sq km with probably 80m people

Let this sink in….

Canada 38.8 million people in 9.9 MILLION sq km

Australia 26.8 million people in 7.8 MILLION sq km

and even lowly (land mass wise at least) NZ is bigger at 268,000 sq km with a third of the population of London at 5.2 million people

We can’t take any more, the UN needs to address this inequality - not have Remoaners saying Take Back Control blah blah 

I can’t go to any of those countries and claim asylum - I’d be arrested and deported 🤷🏼‍♂️

I seem to recall the official population of the UK is won't hit 70M for another ten years - and 80 million by the end of century.

Why exaggerate ?

Population density is a rather poor meaningless measurement - many countries have large areas of wilderness and then large dense coastal cities i.e Japan (population 125M and now falling).

Falling populations with ageing demographics are of course a potential economic disaster (c.f. China, Japan etc) which the UK will hopefully avoid. We need a supply of young workers to look after and pay taxes for the old.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,562]

1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

I seem to recall the official population of the UK is won't hit 70M for another ten years - and 80 million by the end of century.

Why exaggerate ?

Population density is a rather poor meaningless measurement - many countries have large areas of wilderness and then large dense coastal cities i.e Japan (population 125M and now falling).

Falling populations with ageing demographics are of course a potential economic disaster (c.f. China, Japan etc) which the UK will hopefully avoid. We need a supply of young workers to look after and pay taxes for the old.

No need to exaggerate at all when 70,000,000 is 3.5 times what the island can support in terms of a sustainable biological system hence the degrading biodiversity exacerbated by the ever-increasing proportion of land going to housing.

Maybe the best thing for the UK would be for retirees who can afford it to move abroad.

Edited April 12 by littleyellowbirdie

[Fen Canary 848]

1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

I seem to recall the official population of the UK is won't hit 70M for another ten years - and 80 million by the end of century.

Why exaggerate ?

Population density is a rather poor meaningless measurement - many countries have large areas of wilderness and then large dense coastal cities i.e Japan (population 125M and now falling).

Falling populations with ageing demographics are of course a potential economic disaster (c.f. China, Japan etc) which the UK will hopefully avoid. We need a supply of young workers to look after and pay taxes for the old.

We need some immigration, but we only need replacement level or just above and it should be essential or very highly skilled. There’s no need to be importing a million Indian baristas annually 

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

7 minutes ago, Fen Canary said:

We need some immigration, but we only need replacement level or just above and it should be essential or very highly skilled. There’s no need to be importing a million Indian baristas annually 

You're making an excellent case for the reasoning behind the EU FOM Fen!

From the poorer European regions the young can move to find work where its needed - and in the process drag up the poorer regions where eventually most eventually return too. Neither do they bring a lot of their dependents - a bit like us temporarily working in say London or few years before moving back and raising our families.

Poland is the obvious example.

Edited April 12 by Yellow Fever

[Wings of a Sparrow 1,423]

19 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

No need to exaggerate at all when 70,000,000 is 3.5 times what the island can support in terms of a sustainable biological system hence the degrading biodiversity exacerbated by the ever-increasing proportion of land going to housing.

Maybe the best thing for the UK would be for retirees who can afford it to move abroad.

if only it was that easy... 🙂

Edited April 12 by Wings of a Sparrow

[Fen Canary 848]

3 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

You're making an excellent case for the reasoning behind the EU FOM Fen!

From the poorer European regions the young can move to find work where its needed - and in the process drag up the poorer regions where eventually most eventually return too. Neither do they bring a lot of their dependents - a bit like us temporarily working in say London or few years before moving back and raising our families.

Poland is the obvious example.

I wouldn’t class the bulk of the immigration from Eastern Europe as highly skilled. It was mostly just competition for the jobs usually done by what most of us would label the working class such as trades, factories, drivers etc (plus the baristas who have now been replaced by the Indians).

A good immigration system is one whereby numbers are set at a level that has the buy in of the domestic population and where the government has total control over who enters and limits it solely to skills the country is short of. Freedom of Movement had none of this 

[Barbe bleu 829]

1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

 the official population of the UK is won't hit 70M for another ten years - 

That's pretty much what the ONS says, 

"The UK population is projected to increase further; our 2020-based interim national population projections suggest the UK population will surpass 69.2 million by mid-2030 and reach 70.5 million by mid-2041."

Doesn't give us 10 years to think about it though.  You don't just grab a spade and go out and build a house so we need to be planning for this population now.

There's plenty of evidence (see the London Plan for instance) that we dont have the capacity in lots of places to meet the identified future need, and we are not even building at capacity.  

All of which is quote a long way of saying that it's not sustainable to carry on as we are.

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

15 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

That's pretty much what the ONS says, 

"The UK population is projected to increase further; our 2020-based interim national population projections suggest the UK population will surpass 69.2 million by mid-2030 and reach 70.5 million by mid-2041."

Doesn't give us 10 years to think about it though.  You don't just grab a spade and go out and build a house so we need to be planning for this population now.

There's plenty of evidence (see the London Plan for instance) that we dont have the capacity in lots of places to meet the identified future need, and we are not even building at capacity.  

All of which is quote a long way of saying that it's not sustainable to carry on as we are.

No one is arguing we need to look ahead and build the appropriate infrastructure/housing.

I was just 'correcting' Foxy's 80M people (today) - which isn't likely until 2100 (not now or soon)!

That's was the exaggeration which I guess was simply for effect.

[Badger 2,407]

43 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

No need to exaggerate at all when 70,000,000 is 3.5 times what the island can support in terms of a sustainable biological system hence the degrading biodiversity exacerbated by the ever-increasing proportion of land going to housing.

Maybe the best thing for the UK would be for retirees who can afford it to move abroad.

This would have been a lot easier if we hadn't voted for Brexit! With govt.s like Spain currently ending their Golden visas it would mean that us oldies would have to emigrate permanently, which you may not worry about, but we would have to pay all our tax there as well.

[Badger 2,407]

On 03/04/2024 at 09:54, king canary said:

But in your whole post you completely fail to mention you need to have THE DEPOSIT.

That is most of the issue for young people who are renting. When I bought my first house the mortgage was actually about £500 p/m lower than my rent at the time- me and my wife could easily afford the mortgage. But we needed a sizable desposit even at 5% which was very difficult to save for when renting.

Also to add in you'd need the £1,000 product fee, usually £1500+ in legal and conveyancing, likely another £1000 for surveys and valuations etc etc.

So for this example house the couple will need likely close to £15k in savings.

I've seen it suggested before that people who can demonstrate they have paid rent for a significant amount of time should potentially be eligible for 100% mortgages, which would be interesting but very risky.

 

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

27 minutes ago, Fen Canary said:

I wouldn’t class the bulk of the immigration from Eastern Europe as highly skilled. It was mostly just competition for the jobs usually done by what most of us would label the working class such as trades, factories, drivers etc (plus the baristas who have now been replaced by the Indians).

A good immigration system is one whereby numbers are set at a level that has the buy in of the domestic population and where the government has total control over who enters and limits it solely to skills the country is short of. Freedom of Movement had none of this 

But as it turns out we do need all these people - all these exceptions for care homes, nurses, agricultural workers and on and on. Instead of largely coming from Europe as in the past (easy come easy go) - as you allude too they now come form India and further afield - and yes with many dependents. 

Students (temporary) of course should excluded from the figures or treated as special case.

As to your protectionist views on unskilled UK labour - that's really at odds with 'Global Britain' competing in the 21st century. We need to re-skill and move such jobs up-market (c.f. Germany)

 

[Badger 2,407]

48 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

You're making an excellent case for the reasoning behind the EU FOM Fen!

From the poorer European regions the young can move to find work where its needed - and in the process drag up the poorer regions where eventually most eventually return too. Neither do they bring a lot of their dependents - a bit like us temporarily working in say London or few years before moving back and raising our families.

Poland is the obvious example.

This is an important point. One of the consequences of Brexit is that we limit our building capacity in any future attempt at building to address the problem. We have limited our supply capacity which makes meeting demand even harder. "Help to Buy" and similar schemes only increase demand and therefore will drive prices still hard. It is astonishing that the party of the free market do not understand this.

[TheGunnShow 5,953]

6 minutes ago, Badger said:

This is an important point. One of the consequences of Brexit is that we limit our building capacity in any future attempt at building to address the problem. We have limited our supply capacity which makes meeting demand even harder. "Help to Buy" and similar schemes only increase demand and therefore will drive prices still hard. It is astonishing that the party of the free market do not understand this.

Well said, focusing on demand when the supply isn't there is basically a prime example of not doing your internal marketing/preparation beforehand.

[Aggy 757]

2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Developers are getting around that by starting to go for prefab chalets on wheels where you can have a ground rent.

Not really. Virtually none of the big house builders use modular (less than 2 per cent of all homes built each year still) and even fewer of those are on wheels…

Edited April 12 by Aggy

[Aggy 757]

23 minutes ago, Badger said:

I’m sure someone will find a graph showing UK avocado consumption during the same period….

[Badger 2,407]

45 minutes ago, Fen Canary said:

A good immigration system is one whereby numbers are set at a level that has the buy in of the domestic population and where the government has total control over who enters and limits it solely to skills the country is short of. Freedom of Movement had none of this 

It is, of course, an important principle of democracy that govt policy has broad support of the governed. However, the domestic population needs to be given the correct information to form a decision, which is rarely the case.

Since leaving the EU, the govt does have total control who enters the country legally and in a preliminary estimate the ONS says the figure was 1.2 million, mainly from outside the EU. Given the populist nature of the govt, I think it is a reasonable assumption that they believe the vast majority of it is necessary. They may make some pre-election promises and "pretend policies" (remember "immigration in the tens of thousands" anyone?) but they won't be properly enacted because of the huge impact on supply of Labour shortages. In short, limiting immigration at this point would be economically disastrous, and even the Govt knows it.

"The provisional estimate of total long-term immigration for year ending (YE) June 2023 was 1.2 million, while emigration was 508,000, meaning that net migration was 672,000; most people arriving to the UK in the YE June 2023 were non-EU nationals (968,000), followed by EU (129,000) and British (84,000)."23 Nov 2023

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023#:~:text=1.-,Main points,) and British (84%2C000).

[Fen Canary 848]

9 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

But as it turns out we do need all these people - all these exceptions for care homes, nurses, agricultural workers and on and on. Instead of largely coming from Europe as in the past (easy come easy go) - as you allude too they now come form India and further afield - and yes with many dependents. 

Students (temporary) of course should excluded from the figures or treated as special case.

As to your protectionist views on unskilled UK labour - that's really at odds with 'Global Britain' competing in the 21st century. We need to re-skill and move such jobs up-market (c.f. Germany)

 

Nobody was ever complaining about importing nurses or carers, although they tended to come from further afield such as Asia from my personal experience, and agriculture workers can still be imported on short term seasonal work visas as they are in many other countries. Why do we need to give residency to unskilled Slovakian fruit pickers?

Potentially we now have a system whereby we only import those we need in numbers we can cope with, something that wasn’t possible under FoM. The fact that hasn’t happened is due to the incompetence of the Tories.

Ive also never had any interest in globalism or globalist Britain. I’ve no problem with state help or protectionism for key industries and to protect the wages of those at the bottom. Free market Thatcherism is of no interest to me

[Fen Canary 848]

1 minute ago, Badger said:

It is, of course, an important principle of democracy that govt policy has broad support of the governed. However, the domestic population needs to be given the correct information to form a decision, which is rarely the case.

Since leaving the EU, the govt does have total control who enters the country legally and in a preliminary estimate the ONS says the figure was 1.2 million, mainly from outside the EU. Given the populist nature of the govt, I think it is a reasonable assumption that they believe the vast majority of it is necessary. They may make some pre-election promises and "pretend policies" (remember "immigration in the tens of thousands" anyone?) but they won't be properly enacted because of the huge impact on supply of Labour shortages. In short, limiting immigration at this point would be economically disastrous, and even the Govt knows it.

"The provisional estimate of total long-term immigration for year ending (YE) June 2023 was 1.2 million, while emigration was 508,000, meaning that net migration was 672,000; most people arriving to the UK in the YE June 2023 were non-EU nationals (968,000), followed by EU (129,000) and British (84,000)."23 Nov 2023

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingjune2023#:~:text=1.-,Main points,) and British (84%2C000).

I’ve never said we didn’t have total control now, I believe we do. The fact the Tories have decided to ramp up immigration anyway is just one of many reason they’re going to get a colossal kicking at the upcoming election.

Successive governments have ignored the wishes of the majority on immigration since the days of Blair, as they have in many EU countries. It’s a large reason many populists are gaining votes on the continent, it’s only FPTP that stops smaller parties getting a foothold here 

[Badger 2,407]

2 minutes ago, Fen Canary said:

I’ve never said we didn’t have total control now, I believe we do. The fact the Tories have decided to ramp up immigration anyway is just one of many reason they’re going to get a colossal kicking at the upcoming election.

Successive governments have ignored the wishes of the majority on immigration since the days of Blair, as they have in many EU countries. It’s a large reason many populists are gaining votes on the continent, it’s only FPTP that stops smaller parties getting a foothold here 

Why do you think that the Tories have allowed such a huge number of immigrants when it knows how unpopular it is? The simple fact is that it would be economically disastrous to stop it at present. I know populism is on the rise in western Europe and the United States (and beyond) but the irony is that there is a shortage of young people in the West - in a sane free market politicians would be fighting for immigrants! Of course, the free market right knew this but were happy to exploit the immigration issue anyway. 

If you wished to limit immigration in the future you would have to accept much lower living standards or properly prepare the economy with massive investment in technology and training, but this would take at least a decade. Given peoples' preference for current consumption rather than long-term investment, this is a hard sell for politicians.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,562]

57 minutes ago, Aggy said:

Not really. Virtually none of the big house builders use modular (less than 2 per cent of all homes built each year still) and even fewer of those are on wheels…

Last week, I was literally sitting in a chalet in a park of about 300 similar chalets where the park is having properties added at a rapid rate that works on exactly the basis I've described and which is growing quite fast. The entire ground is privately owned, not by the residents and every chalet, which is year-round residence, works exactly the way I described. In this instance, the development is actually just the concrete pad; the occupier shells out the entire cost of the prefab chalet that's sat on it, which is hundreds of thousands. These are all full-time, year-round residences.

In fact, some people are also being tricked into buy holiday chalets as homes that they have no right at all to live in full time. What I'm talking about is an absolutely genuine part of the overall housing pictiure, without suggesting at all that it's the whole picture.

Edit: Look here; the Guardian even wrote an article about it, which is usually the threshold around here for believing something might be real, isn't it?

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jul/13/park-homes-cheaper-than-bricks-and-mortar-but-not-trouble-free

Edited April 12 by littleyellowbirdie

[littleyellowbirdie 2,562]

50 minutes ago, Badger said:

This is an important point. One of the consequences of Brexit is that we limit our building capacity in any future attempt at building to address the problem. We have limited our supply capacity which makes meeting demand even harder. "Help to Buy" and similar schemes only increase demand and therefore will drive prices still hard. It is astonishing that the party of the free market do not understand this.

Except somehow the entire point of the article in the OP, which is that actually there is enough housing stock, but there isn't fair distribution of access to that housing stock, has somehow got lost and replaced with 'Aha! Let's just build more houses! Isn't it awful that we're not building more houses?! I blame Brexit!'

It's not just labour to build houses; the UK is also running out of land to build on and is eating into the green belt to build, further destroying further adding to the overall environment sustainability and food security of the country.

 

Edited April 12 by littleyellowbirdie

[Barbe bleu 829]

51 minutes ago, Badger said:

 

If you wished to limit immigration in the future you would have to accept much lower living standards

Does this necessarily follow?

Sure having a big workforce drives up GDP and mitigates for an ageing population so the figures will work but does a high GDP equate to higher living standards? Is there often some value in the free things that no amount of accounting can really capture. Is it OK if we have less cash in our bank if we get to spend it on what we want rather than on rent that goes to an increasingly select few?

Edited April 12 by Barbe bleu

[littleyellowbirdie 2,562]

3 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Does this necessarily follow?

Sure having a big workforce drives up GDP and mitigates for an ageing population do the figures will work but does a high GDP equate to higher living standards? Is there often some value in the free things that no amount of accounting can really capture. Is it OK if we have less cash in our bank if we get to spend it on what we want rather than on rent that goes to an increasingly select few?

The Rest is Money had a good episode on this recently talking about how most of the press talks about the Consumer Price Index for inflation on goods only, while most of academia looks at CPIH, which also incorporates housing costs.  I believe the US index also favours looking at inflation incorporating housing as well.

[Barbe bleu 829]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

This is an important point. One of the consequences of Brexit is that we limit our building capacity in any future attempt at building to address the problem. We have limited our supply capacity which makes meeting demand even harder. "Help to Buy" and similar schemes only increase demand and therefore will drive prices still hard. It is astonishing that the party of the free market do not understand this.

Broadly agree with the first part, we have a housing capacity problem and no amount of demand management is going to fix that and supply what we need.  I would be careful in saying that it is labour we are ahort of though. Appreciate that there is comfort in linking this capacity issues to brexit but it helps no one to do do if the real problem is land and not labour supply

On the second point when I first heard of Help To Buy I thought exactly what you did- that will only lead to higher prices and won't solve anything.    But then I realised the futility of trying to apply free market principles to a market that is anything but free, shrugged my shoulders and thought that the only analysis worth having would be in the results and they could never really be seen.

 

[Barbe bleu 829]

3 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

The Rest is Money had a good episode on this recently talking about how most of the press talks about the Consumer Price Index for inflation on goods only, while most of academia looks at CPIH, which also incorporates housing costs.  I believe the US index also favours looking at inflation incorporating housing as well.

It's like Robert McNamara looking at a spreadsheet to see if the US was winning the Vietnam war.  

Numbers will only tell you so much, they are a tool, but if you can't measure what is important don't fall into the trap of giving undue importance to what can be measured.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,562]

Just now, Barbe bleu said:

It's like Robert McNamara looking at a spreadsheet to see if the US was winning the Vietnam war.  

Numbers will only tell you so much, they are a tool, but if you can't measure what is important don't fall into the trap of giving undue importance to what can be measured.

I think it's possibly to disappear down a real rabbit hole breaking down that statement, so I'll just say I don't fully disagree with it without fully agreeing with it either.

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

35 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Broadly agree with the first part, we have a housing capacity problem and no amount of demand management is going to fix that and supply what we need.  I would be careful in saying that it is labour we are ahort of though. Appreciate that there is comfort in linking this capacity issues to brexit but it helps no one to do do if the real problem is land and not labour supply

On the second point when I first heard of Help To Buy I thought exactly what you did- that will only lead to higher prices and won't solve anything.    But then I realised the futility of trying to apply free market principles to a market that is anything but free, shrugged my shoulders and thought that the only analysis worth having would be in the results and they could never really be seen.

 

Land isn't really the problem. 

Apart from the huge planning delays and so called land banks (look at Norwich... Anglia Square, Carrow Works, St. Mary's etc) but even if it was we can always build up as per any Asian city.

Oddly we prefer to sprawl.

Edited April 12 by Yellow Fever

[littleyellowbirdie 2,562]

8 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

Land isn't really the problem. 

Apart from the huge delays and so called land banks (look at Norwich... Anglia Square, Carrow Works, St. Mary's etc) but even if it was we can always build up as per any Asian city.

Oddly we prefer to sprawl.

Land shortage is a problem and has been the subject of academic study. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/two-million-hectare-shortfall-in-uk-land-possible-by-2030-study-finds

Although this is a 2014 study, the trends haven't stopped and we haven't magically found any new land since then.

I think awareness of the land issue has been somewhat buried in the bigger concerns  over manpower, fertilizer etc. of recent years.

Regarding building upwards it's a really good point though. There is definitely a reluctance to pursue building more high rises, and it is helpful.
Is that something that stems from widespread wariness of being tied into leases? 1960s concrete council monstrosities putting people off?

Edited April 12 by littleyellowbirdie

[Badger 2,407]

2 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

On the second point when I first heard of Help To Buy I thought exactly what you did- that will only lead to higher prices and won't solve anything.    But then I realised the futility of trying to apply free market principles to a market that is anything but free, shrugged my shoulders and thought that the only analysis worth having would be in the results and they could never really be seen.

I think that relying on free market principles to run an economy is similar to using 17th and 18th century medical techniques. There was by this time some attempt at empiricism and experimentation but it was only in its infancy. I don't think that the free market is wrong, but that it is insufficient. Hardly any modern economists believe that the untrammelled free market is an effective way to run the economy* but that does not mean that we reject all its basic principles.

Ceteris paribus, I can't think a more likely outcome to raising demand without a corresponding increase to supply than a price rise. You are right that the supply side of the market is constrained, which is why it could not fully respond to increased demand, hence it (Help to Buy) inevitably leads to rising house prices.

* It is the dream of fantasist idealogues without convincing supporting evidence, which is why Truss et al talk of the "left-wing economic establishment." These economists are not necessarily left wing, but they reject some of the more fantastic religious fervour that some free-marketeers have.

[Aggy 757]

4 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Last week, I was literally sitting in a chalet in a park of about 300 similar chalets where the park is having properties added at a rapid rate that works on exactly the basis I've described and which is growing quite fast. The entire ground is privately owned, not by the residents and every chalet, which is year-round residence, works exactly the way I described. In this instance, the development is actually just the concrete pad; the occupier shells out the entire cost of the prefab chalet that's sat on it, which is hundreds of thousands. These are all full-time, year-round residences.

In fact, some people are also being tricked into buy holiday chalets as homes that they have no right at all to live in full time. What I'm talking about is an absolutely genuine part of the overall housing pictiure, without suggesting at all that it's the whole picture.

Edit: Look here; the Guardian even wrote an article about it, which is usually the threshold around here for believing something might be real, isn't it?

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jul/13/park-homes-cheaper-than-bricks-and-mortar-but-not-trouble-free

Ah yes an article from 2019 proving your argument that developers are using this to get round a law which came in… after 2019.

And your example of being in one park of 300 chalets is absolutely definite proof that modular homes do in fact make up more than <2 per cent of new homes each year.

Good arguments.

Edited April 12 by Aggy