Right to build needs to be brought back after 525 year absence.

[Happ Hazzard 10]

The population should never have been allowed to get so high.

[angos 10]

The population should never have been allowed to get so high.

 

The problem is that the majority of people didn’t and still don’t see the problems associated with over population.

[Longcol 604]

The population should never have been allowed to get so high.

 

Yes - Queen Victoria set a terrible example - 9 kids. And the Victorians only liked to carry out genocide in the colonies, not at home.

[chem1st 10]

15,655 posts about the same subject! How can one person be so obsessed with housing?

 

Less than half of my posts are about housing.

 

---------- Post added 06-08-2013 at 19:30 ----------

 

I thought "sheds with beds" were a bad thing?

 

They are, they are being built illegally due to the demand for housing.

 

Give people a right to build and they will build decent housing.

[tinfoilhat 11]

Less than half of my posts are about housing.

 

---------- Post added 06-08-2013 at 19:30 ----------

 

 

They are, they are being built illegally due to the demand for housing.

 

Give people a right to build and they will build decent housing.

 

What are you basing this fantasy on? If you let people do what they like they'll do it on the cheap with little or no thought to the environment, neighbours or safety.

[Guest]

Give people a right to build and they will build decent housing.

 

Do you have a source for that? How exactly are these people going to build their own houses, you do know how much it costs to build houses I assume.

[tinfoilhat 11]

Do you have a source for that? How exactly are these people going to build their own houses, you do know how much it costs to build houses I assume.

 

that's not the issue. The bigger issue is who and where they are building and with what (not to mention power, water and most importantly sewage removal - they just tipped it out a window 500 years ago)

[perplexed 10]

Less than half of my posts are about housing.

 

---------- Post added 06-08-2013 at 19:30 ----------

 

 

They are, they are being built illegally due to the demand for housing.

 

Give people a right to build and they will build decent housing.

 

You cannot be serious.

 

That is one hell of an assumption.

[chem1st 10]

What are you basing this fantasy on? If you let people do what they like they'll do it on the cheap with little or no thought to the environment, neighbours or safety.

 

Some might, but most won't.

 

The largest cost involved in building a house is land cost.

 

If you give people a right to build you massively reduce the land cost. The artificial scarcity of land for building would be gone overnight.

 

A plot that costs some £100 000, would quite quickly reduce to some £500.

 

So instead of paying £100 000 for a plot and spending £30 000 on building the actual house, and acquiring a very modest home for some £130k.

 

You could buy a bigger plot for some £1000, spend three times as much on the actual building, and build a luxury home for a very modest £91k.

 

---------- Post added 06-08-2013 at 22:23 ----------

 

You cannot be serious.

 

That is one hell of an assumption.

 

The majority cost of building is acquiring land with planning permission. There is an artificial scarcity of such land. The artificial scarcity would be removed if people were given a right to build.

 

House prices could then reflect build cost much more closely, rather than remain completely detached from their true worth due to artificial scarcity of land with planning permission for building.

 

People could be housed in decent housing, lower wages wouldn't be so much of a problem and productive business could return to the country.

 

The right to buy would have to be scrapped - at the minute is doesn't matter so much, as even with a 60% discount, most council houses still cost more than their true worth.

[tinfoilhat 11]

Most wont? Bobbins. You need skills, money, services and boundaries, in every sense of the word. If I want to build a penis shaped glass house and walk round naked in it, I can't be stopped can I? What if I encroach your land or build a thwacking great tower that throws a permanent shadow over your allotment all day? You want to live in a place with poorly regulated buildings, take a hard hat and a locator beacon and move to Bangladesh.

[I1L2T3 10]

You cannot be serious.

 

That is one hell of an assumption.

 

Not really.

 

Fundamentally this is about providing plots to build on. Planning and building regs would still have to be applied. Hopefully some requirement for greener building too.

[*_ash_* 88]

Chemist, what about a project... a societal experiment.

 

Find a large area of land (perhaps where DVS is once it has gone), and sell plots for a few thousand to ordinary people say 10m x 20m and allow people to build what ever they want (up to a certain height perhaps). Building regs would have to be a goner for a while.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing what would happen myself.