Can’t government just start a huge house-building project? Aren’t huge project is the very reason of the existing of the government? What’s the problem? Build a few million houses/flats, sell them for their real price, and the problem will go away.
There are huge house building projects going on, at least there are in my area. However there’s constraints as to how fast you can actually start these projects as you need to find suitable land, go through all the red tape and have enough resources (materials, people) to build them. So if demand keeps outpacing supply, the prices will still continue to rise.
Interestingly, I saw an article recently that average rents actually started to decrease, so maybe the increased supply is very slowly having an impact on the rental market.
Slightly off-tangent, but it frustrates me when sellers complain that they can’t sell their house and then take it off the market. No, you can’t sell it at the price you want, it’s obviously over-priced. If you were to knock off £50k or £100k, I’d guarantee that you’d be able to sell the house.
I’m reminded of a place near me that’s on a flood plain. It’s been on the market for ages. They seem perplexed as to why it’s not been snapped up for their ridiculous asking price.
“A couple of sandbags and you’ll be fine!”
To be fair if it’s on a flood plain then it should be unsellable, mortgage providers and insurers might not want to deal with it.
I think with some additional flood defence it’d be fine but I’d expect the price to reflect that.
However there’s constraints as to how fast you can actually start these projects as you need to find suitable land, go through all the red tape and have enough resources (materials, people) to build them.
These constraints are negligibly small for the government, no? And this project can be active for years if needed. “Till it’s over, over there.”
I wouldn’t say they’re small constraints because they’re not necessarily easy to fix. They could ease the load on the local authorities planning offices by hiring more staff or easing regulations, which will always drag on and take time. There’s the fighting with NIMBY’s in courts. And there’s also only so many builders in the country that can be on projects at any given time.
Yes in theory but … large private housebuilders buy up land and bank it, leaving it unbuilt to restrict supply and prevent competitors building. This drives up house prices without having to do anything.
Government likes using house prices as a measurement as to how well the economy is doing so they don’t want to see house prices fall.
Building a shit load of houses to make them more affordable isn’t in the interest of builders or government.
Government can disincentivise this or just expropriate banked land.
Last I read though, land banking isn’t as big of a problem as it’s made out to be, and is mostly just builders having a pipeline of projects, and buying the land for projects when it’s cheapest rather than the day before the spades are ready.
A land value tax should sort it out though.
Lots of MPs are landlords, more housing means lower prices on their assets and income.
Grown by another £100,000 in the last decade, then. 😬
I think about this 2016 Newsnight intro fairly often.
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