'Ouses, Greenbelt and stuff
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Sure, I'm not dismissing any of the costs.
But there are a lot of places in the country where the market rate is well above the cost of building and land. Well above. We should have housebuilders fighting like rats in a bag to be building in these places but we've created a planning system that sucks all the money and the speed out of it.
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Re your last sentence you seem to have consistently opposed any suggestions to limit the main cause of UK population growth in recent years, I.e. immigration.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
I don't think coats for building a 4 bed house would be as low as 200k these days. £2k,£3k per square m is what ice been told. Okay that's "retail", but at the lower end £200k gets you 100m2, which isn't a 4 bed detached.
I'll wait for RSJT to chime in with the infrastructure costs, community contributions towards schools and affordable housing and so on. I don't think it takes long before you head towards 90% of your £800k house.
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I'm not going on this merrygoround again. If one of your biggest population cohorts is moving in to retirement, you can't expect living standards to stay level if you shrink the workforce.
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Possibly a thicko question, but when the boomers all die and there are progressively smaller cohorts moving through, what happens to house prices? (I don't want to get into a discussion about birth rates and immigration on this thread, just supply and demand).
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Over what time period? If it takes 10 years to get a site, plans, planning, completion and sale?
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That's the problem right? We want to make it easier to build houses.
A government can't do much about material bottlenecks. They may have a say over labour bottlenecks, depending on what's causing it.
They can do as much or as little as they want on planning however.
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It isn't. It is the sort of level Carillion would have bid in its final days. Your over confidence on things like this is a bit frustrating.
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People have covered above all the additional costs that get reflected in the price of a new build (add in professional fees and all the costs of actually getting planning plus that an element of the site will have to be given over to affordable housing). I'm sure there'll be an element of additional profit in the areas where houses cost more but the majority of it will be down to the land being more expensive - typical supply and demand.
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It's a significant part of the solution. Or should be. It's easier and cheaper than trying to build x million houses in a short space of time.
You seem to forget that there is evidence that immigration reduces GDP per capita (even if increases overall GDP), which I posted about a few weeks ago. If increased immigration makes us all richer, surely the last few years will have made us noticeably better off? You've spent a lot of time and energy over that period saying that we're not.
And even your new leftie heroes say that immigration is too high.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
So if they are making hundreds of thousands of pounds profit on each house, why doesn't someone outbid them on the land and make and easy hundred grand?
10% profit margin is OK but it's very easy to lose large sums of money if you encounter some issue like material prices suddenly jumping by 50%, contaminated land or have some unforseen delays on site. There are plenty of construction firms who flip from 10% profit to bust in the space of a year.
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So 10% is not a "decent margin"
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You mean they add 15-20% overheads and profit to their costs, that isn't the same as making 15-20% profit - not even nearly.
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A 2021 study by consultant Turner & Townsend found that the UK construction sector had the lowest margins in the world at just 3.9% average, compared to 4.6% in North America and 6.1% in Continental; Europe. Continental Europe stood at 6.1 per cent.
Another 2019 analysis by Construction News uncovered that the top 100 firms in the UK had an average profit margin of 2.6%, with the top 10 UK contractors running at an average loss of -0.1%.
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My suspicion, given the paucity of new houses, is that there is not a fat margin to be made.
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Unless you own a field just outside the green belt that might get planning permission.
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There is a difference between a contractor and a developer though - different risks. That said, I wouldn't be doing business with those margins!
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Or is it? Depends on what answer you want to select from the interweb to bolster your argument.
Does anyone actually know?
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And at the risk of banging on, this rather clear case of not having a scoobies and generating a discussion based on numbers without context is what I tend to bang on about when someone posts a chart.
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A standard development appraisal would be something like this:
Sales price = £100k
Developer's profit = £15k
Stuff = £65k
Land price (remainder) = £20k
Stuff would include the cost of a load of contractors all of whom would be making a profit to do their stuff.
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So if we have two beans and another two beans, how many beans do we have?
A big bean.
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I suspect that this will be going round the internet faster than you can say 'leftie hypocrite' 😊
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Pretty sure Rick highlighted that when he was appointed. I guess it's the difference between being a constituency MP and a Minister.
Edit - it's also unclear if he was opposed to any development on the site or just the specifics. I think objecting to the height of buildings is acceptable if it's a genuine concern rather than being opposed to any development.
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One would also hope that as well as trying to ensure houses are built where necessary, the housing minister would intervene should the development be inappropriate. If it were as simple as ticking a box to allow any development whatsoever, we wouldn't really need a government minister to oversee it . . .
Wilier Izoard XP0 -
Kicking off the weekend with a bit of leftie hypocrisy when it comes to house building. Quite a lot actually, as it appears more than half of Starmers cabinet are in the frame..
Nice pic of Wes Streeting making it clear where his priorities lie on the subject.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
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HUMAN RIGHTS lol
womp womp.
bangs on about “food security” (she never understood the corn laws in class so not surprised) but ignores the more relevant energy security.
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