From Friday's Evening Standard (7 June 2013, page 59, bottom right):
Self-build is one clear option to create more homes. In other EU countries it is the main delivery mechanism in the majority of new home constructions.(1)
There is no "land banking",(2) and it makes big developers up their game by introducing competition.(3) Self-build could happen on greenfield or brownfield sites.(4)
It wouldn't just just help those who choose to go down this route - the extra supply would help hold down rents and house prices in general.(5)
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange.
1) A lot of new construction in e.g. Germany is classed as self-build, in reality it is no such thing. It's largely tax driven. If you buy a completed new home with land there is VAT on the full selling price and Stamp Duty on the full selling price.
If you buy the land from A, there's Stamp Duty on it and you then get a builder in to build a fairly off-the-shelf house for you and there's VAT on that. So you save yourself the VAT on the land element and the Stamp Duty on the buildings element.
2) Of course there is!
In the UK, home builders have two quite different rôles. One department buys land and makes windfall gains by obtaining planning permission, they can restrict supply of new housing to try and keep prices up, basic cartel behaviour = "land banking". The other department actually organises the construction, which is largely carried out by sub-contractors.
In Germany, the home builders are exactly that. They don't own land. They have their basic house types and price lists, once you've bought the land, you get in touch with them and agree what's going to be built. There are lots and lots of such companies as there are few economies of scale and they are in a competitive market. So the German "self builder" gets a good quality, spacious 3 or 4 bedroom detached house for €100,000 to €150,000.
The "land banking" is not carried out by the home builders (who make their money from volume), it is carried out by the landowners, i.e. those lucky farmers who find that they own land next to a growing urban area.
And the price of land is set under normal market rules. Houses in a cheap area sell for €200,000, so the self-builder deducts the €150,000 build costs and pays up to €50,000 for a plot in a cheap area. Houses in expensive areas sell for €1,000,000, so the self -builder deducts the €150,000 build cost and pays up to €850,000 for a plot in an expensive area.
3) Yes, there is more competition between home-builders, so construction is good quality and good value.
And every Euro the self-builder can save on construction costs means the price of land goes up by one Euro, neither the home builder nor the self-builder benefit from this, all the gains go to the landowners. There is little or no competition between landowners, they act as a cartel and each landowner is a local monopoly.
4) Irrelevant.
5) All his assumptions are wrong, his facts are incorrect and so his conclusion is entirely and completely wrong. And he hasn't considered the NIMBY factor either.
It Should Have Been A Cull, Not A Ban...
2 hours ago
47 comments:
There are more landowners in the UK than landbanking spec builders, so presumably their numbers would reduce their bargaining power?
F, no not really.
The sum total of behaviour of landowners is scarcely different whether
a) There are ten million people who all own a bit of spare land or a couple of buy-to-lets or
b) One mega-corporation owns all the spare land and all the buy-to-lets.
The value of any bit of land or any home is dictated entirely by where it is and not who owns it.
Assuming all landowners want to get the profit maximising price or rent, then that profit maximising price or rent is the same whether the owner of any one bit only owns that bit or owns all of them.
Is that why the Germans buy those Huf houses?
Now if it became socially acceptable to live in teepees or old army tents, we could spend very little on construction, and spend all our money on land-rents. Maybe govt. could even supply the tents together with a revamped help-to-buy; borrow 100% on a lot and get a tent for free!
Location, location, location - the three most important words in real estate
farmland investments
TS, for example, yes.
Kj, exactly.
PTLL, although that was spam, that illustrates the point, doesn't it? You say "Location location location" and I say "community generated land values".
I think self-build could reduce Nimbyism.
1. It would mean instead of the Nimby community organising against a new glut of houses from a developer, they would have to organise against individual households wishing to build a single home for themselves. It shifts the target away from "greedy developers" and onto the individuals who want to live there. That's a far less emotive target for the Nimbys to criticise.
2. Self-build should drive up the architectural value of what gets built. Part of what drives Nimbys into action is the appalling aesthetic quality of what our developers currently churn out. Having the people who are going to live in the house at the heart of what gets constructed should mean nicer houses getting built and less Nimby outrage.
DS, maybe, maybe not.
1. There are still thousands of instances of NIMBYs campaigning against one single house being built, and of local councils demanding that individual houses built in breach of planning reg's to be torn down again.
2. Some self-builders have surprisingly wacky ideas - see Grand Designs. I'd rather have ten nice little Barratt's houses near me than one of those monstrosities.
And none of which addresses the question of the vast unearned capital gains going to the landowner.
1. I'm afraid I have to agree with MW here, NIMBYism on a grand scale is only a facet of the same behaviour that [some] people will have no problem expressing towards a single household, if given the chance to "have a say". If you believe in democracy, please try going to an open planning meeting or own a property subject to a coop board or similar, for a refreshing antidote.*
2. MW: some, but most people are conservative when it comes to houses if given a choice. I think DS has a point, and it's a known fact that third party architects (hired by developers) have consistently built buildings (both houses and commercial), that would not be the preference of the end user if they had ordeed it themselves. That much I agree with the New Urbanism folks.
Plus the few ones who build crazy stuff are important flies in the face of the NIMBY middle-class t***s in all of us, and it makes neighbourhoods a little bit more interesting. IMO etc.
*I actually feel as strongly against neighbours minding their business about developments, (except with violations of any common sense rules ofcourse), that there should be heavy fines/floggings for people just attempting to "voice their concerns". Seriously.
Kj,
The Barratt homes are a symptom of home-owner-ism. We restrict planning permission, raising the cost of land, and as a result, the builders are doing everything to keep the costs down as buyers (in a boom) are struggling to buy.
If we liberated planning, a lot more of this would happen naturally.
Kj, I'm ambivalent on 2.
It looks nice if all the buildings are broadly similar; it looks nice if all the buildings are wildly different. But not if 97 look similar and 3 look wildly different.
TS, correct, expensive land = cheap houses. I'm not sure if liberating planning would reduce land values much though, that's a job for LVT-man.
TS: agreed re planning. Also, current planning practices have high transaction costs, favouring large developers over individual lots. You could keep planning on a very simple basis though, having blanket rules.
MW: That's a matter of taste I guess. Sure, some planned developments with a given style are quite nice, pleasing, etc.. But stuff sticking out are how incremental changes happen, and that's how it should be (change that is).
BTW I don't think Barratt homes are that bad. But then again I'm not british, and we all think everything in the UK looks quaint.
Kj, there is a good reason why houses in different places look different.
Where you live, it's wooden cabins, where I live it's brick terraced houses. I like the look of Norwegian villages, and I like the look of London terraced streets.
I do not know how and why people arrived at this as being the optimum solution for London or Norway, but it probably is the optimum.
But if you built an English-style terraced house in the middle of a load of Norwegian wooden cabins, it would look like shit.
And if you build a Norwegian style wooden cabin in the middle of a row of brick terraced houses in London, well that would look like shit as well.
MW: actually, there are some neighbourhoods in a couple of our cities where they've copied english-style terraced houses, they look quite good and are extremely popular. I think english traditional architecture (even the neo-fakeish Barratt ones) is regarded as generally pleasing and appropriate for much of the temperate region ;) But a log cabin would be inappropriate in London, that much I agree.
Mark,
More than anything, housing design reflects the cost of materials and construction using those materials.
Bath was built with sandstone because it was local stone. My breeze blocks (in Swindon) have some coal in them, because of the old quarry.
One of the FBRI problems is that people want housing near pretty villages, but the house builders would much rather use bricks as it's cheaper and faster than local stone that was used for much of the housing. It became cheaper to make bricks and ship them to a village for builders to use than to build with local materials.
It's why you can pretty much date FBRIs to around the mid-late 1980s. If you go to some large villages, you find 1970s houses built in villages that don't fit in with the local aesthetic, back when villages were cheap.
Kj: "actually, there are some neighbourhoods in a couple of our cities where they've copied english-style terraced houses, they look quite good and are extremely popular"
Exactly, so that ticks my two boxes:
1. It is whole streets or neighbourhoods which look the same.
2. It's in cities.
Sometimes you see a row of terraced houses in the middle of the English countryside, with nothing for miles around them, and it looks absolutely horrible.
TS, again, we are back to the issue that it's best if all buildings look similar. So if all in slate, or all in brick, or all in sandstone or all wattle and daub, that's fine.
I can't understand your last paragraph.
Is "Faux Bucolic Rural Idyll" an actual style of building which only started in the 1980s? Or is the 1980s when new construction in FBRI areas stopped?
MW: it's certainly strange living in terraced houses in the middle of nowhere, but I don't think terraced in the countryside are aesthetically horrible. As TS says, it's mostly about whether the bricks have some relevance for the area, and agreed, that they are the same.
Anyway, it's obvious that where there are terraced houses, there have been some concerted effort, and it will/should have a common design. The point is that you can also have dense development with individual lots, that without design planning, will also usually turn out quite nice and pleasing. Take for example some areas of Boston and San Fransisco, or some ares of urban Japan, which has extreme diversity per single lots. This also has the added benefit of accomodating much more choice and and experimentation.
" There are still thousands of instances of NIMBYs campaigning against one single house being built,"
Spoken like a politician: without knowing the total number of NIMBY campaigns within the (unstated) time period to which you refer, that statement is meaningless and is in no way a rebuttal of DS's first point.
I don't believe NIMBYs are part of some vast Home-Ownerist conspiracy to keep house prices up; they are simply people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that someone else is benefiting to their detriment. In a majority of cases it is a developer as landowner who is benefiting by "vast unearned capital gains" and this benefit is resented as much by the NIMBYs as it is by you.
"I'd rather have ten nice little Barratt's houses near me than one of those monstrosities."
Yes, but "those monstrosities" are few and far between, whereas Barrett boxes are ubiquitous and DS is right, people who are going to live in the houses that they build are prepared to spend much more money on aesthetics and making sure the building fits in with the ones around, compared to a developer, who is only interested in building for the least money.
Kj, I find terraced houses in the countryside upsetting, but not because of the style of the house but because the gardens are so small.
Yes, in towns land is very expensive, so gardens are small. And even in small villages, there is an advantage if the houses are built close together. So that looks nice.
But sometimes in England you see three or four terraced houses in a row and then nothing for miles around. Even as a child I thought this was weird and asked my parents "There's plenty of land round here, why didn't they give those people bigger gardens?"
They couldn't answer that question then and I still don't know the answer.
I suspect the answer is "Because the landowners who built the houses are complete shits."
B, you see television programmes about it, you read it in the papers, and as a matter of fact there are hundreds of thousands of planning applications a year, plenty of which are for single dwellings and by and large, there is opposition to every single one application.
So we can safely assume that there are "thousands" of NIMBY campaigns against single houses.
You note that I did not say "tens of thousands" or "hundreds of thousands" I went on the very low side and said "thousands".
If I do not specify a time period you can safely assume "per year".
And you are talking like a politician - you are far too kind to NIMBYs. They are complete and utter hypocrites (they all live in a house, don't they?).
"people who are going to live in the houses that they build are prepared to spend much more money on aesthetics and making sure the building fits in with the ones around"
Have you ever watched Grand Designs?
MW,
Sorry... what I'm saying is that until the rise of the FBRI, no-one was too worried about local aesthetics. People built what they liked in villages.
As villages became less productive, more dormitory, and often higher value than towns, so the desire to protect the old became more normal.
On principle, I'd argue against the "consistent aesthetic" argument, that it is an intrusion into private choice. And yes, that might mean that some places like Bath and Lacock lose their tourism value, but isn't that basically the same as some home owners will lose their house value if more houses are build next door?
No-one built those old homes because of a consistent aesthetic - it was simply the cost of building that drove them to be consistent by using the cheapest materials.
TS, thanks for clarification.
"it was simply the cost of building that drove them to be consistent by using the cheapest materials"
Exactly, and that is why they look nice!
Houses made out of slate in Bath would be ugly; houses in the Lake District made out of sandstone would be ugly.
Similarly, small cabins in town centres are ugly, terraced houses in the countryside are ugly. Skyscrapers in town centres are cool, skyscrapers at the edges of towns look hideous.
If you get the economics right, then the result is pleasing aesthetically as well.
On principle, I also say people can build what they like. As a design purist, I say people can build AS MUCH as they like, but it ought to "look nice".
If it doesn't "look nice" that is a clue that the economics are wrong.
MW: undoubtedly it's a result of landownerism of the old flavour, where the help were offered a small corner by the road yes.
B: No, NIMBYism is not some sort of conspiracy, it's an ingrained genetic potential that is turned on in approximately one in three persons whenever they get access to a political forum to decide what other people should and should not do, and will make up any reason why anything that marginally affects "moi land" or "moi view" is unacceptable. Yes I picked the one in three number out of the air/as anectdotal experience from such venues.
B,
I don't believe NIMBYs are part of some vast Home-Ownerist conspiracy to keep house prices up; they are simply people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that someone else is benefiting to their detriment. In a majority of cases it is a developer as landowner who is benefiting by "vast unearned capital gains" and this benefit is resented as much by the NIMBYs as it is by you.
As someone who recently had some houses planned to be built in the next field, I can tell you that you're wrong.
The "we paid more for this house so that we wouldn't be near council tenants and would get a nice view, if we'd wanted those, we'd have paid less" argument that came from nearly everyone is a homeownerist view.
If they'd been renting, they'd have said "really? well, we liked it here but now we'll just move somewhere else with a meadow" or else be demanding a cut in their rent as it's no longer a house with a meadow view.
TS:
On principle, I'd argue against the "consistent aesthetic" argument, that it is an intrusion into private choice. And yes, that might mean that some places like Bath and Lacock lose their tourism value, but isn't that basically the same as some home owners will lose their house value if more houses are build next door?
Excellent point. If it's an agreed norm that the neighbour will and can build whatever they want, everything will reach a new equillibrium. Ensuring high land values as a function of neighbourhood conformity shouldn't necessarily be a policy target. Anyway, areas that are unplanned and look slightly out of place today might be wildly popular and have a tourist value in a different time.
B, now I think about it, there were two applications for small single developments on my street recently, one to replace a small shed with a small office block, and one to replace an old house converted into flats with a new block of flats, and both were vehemently opposed by the local NIMBYs.
One of them was very rude to me when I told him I wasn't too fussed about the new office block next door to me (and yes it is ugly, the windows don't match from one floor to the next).
That's only anecdotal, for sure, but I have no reason to assume it's different anywhere else.
TS, MW, Builders are not philantropists. Cheaper land would not mean better houses, cheaper land would mean cheaper houses of the same quality. Builders build to the quality they think they can get away with, whether they are building for sale or building for a particular client.
Bath is all built of Bath stone (which is limestone BTW) because what the buyers wanted was uniformity. The builders ran up the facades because peole wanted their new houses to look like next door. Behind the facades, the houses are usually different, because people didn't want their house to be the same as next door. Aesthetics mattered to people now then and still matter now. The fact that you, Mark, aren't particualarly bothered about aesthetics, doesn't make it wrong that other people should be. Sure, there is a lot of old housing around that is ugly, but by and large it was put up by people who were only really interested in price, mainly because they weren't going to be living in or near what they were building.
What you pay for when you buy land is location and part of that location value is made up of the aesthetics of the surroundings, that doesn't mean to say that you own the view, or the pleasantness of the street or the nearness of the railway station, or the closeness of the park, but you have still paid for it and it is still perfectly reasonable to feel aggrieved if something that you have paid for is taken away, whether it be an ugly office building on your street, the park turned into a shopping mall, the railway station closed, or your view blocked by a new development.
B, yes you've done the lecture about buildings in Bath before and I said "sandstone" deliberately to wind you up.
"The fact that you, Mark, aren't particularly bothered about aesthetics, doesn't make it wrong that other people should be."
Woah! I think if you actually read my comments you'll find I'm very fussy about aesthetics indeed! Perhaps overly so.
That's my only quibble with the office block next door to me. It's nice bricks, good quality finish, bot too big for the area etc, it's just that it looks as if the windows on each floor were designed by a different ten year old.
For example, the lintels and window sills on the first floor end flush with the windows instead of sticking out six inches top and bottom. They look like shit.
TS and Kj were the ones saying "let 'em build it" (perhaps they are right and I am wrong, I do not know).
"but you have still paid for it"
That's Homey propaganda, I'm afraid. Possibly you paid £x in the vague HOPE that nothing new would ever be built, but that's a bit of a stupid assumption.
TS, how does everyone holding the same, perfectly reasonable view i.e. that we don't want the value of our land reduced just so that some other bugger can have the value of his land vastly increased, make it a conspiracy? Do you honestly think that these people are in touch with other NIMBYs all over the country or that there is some sort of secret society, headed by bankers that "sends out the word" whenever they get to hear of a building development and the faithful rally to fight for the cause?
The problem is that land prices are too high, therefore a small percentage adjustment makes a disproportionate difference in what people see as their total wealth. If you earn £25K a year and your house cost you £15K (a not unreasonable scenario 40 years ago) you are not going to be half as much worried by a 1% change in value as you are if you earn the same and your house cost you £150,000. This problem affects everyone, everywhere, so it is hardly surprising that it produces the same results everywhere. There is no cabal.
B: "is there some sort of secret society, headed by bankers that "sends out the word" whenever they get to hear of a building development and the faithful rally to fight for the cause?"
Yes of course, but it's not done secretly.
The Mailexpressgraph pump out such propaganda on a daily basis saying that the hallowed green belt is being concrete.
Local papers up and down the land run "horror stories" about new developments.
People collect signatures door to door and in shops.
Being a total shit and wanting other people to overpay for overcrowded housing "somewhere else" is seen as being a vital part of Englishness nowadays.
This sort of behaviour is seen as very socially acceptable and positively desirable - look at the leaflets you get at election time, they all pander to the NIMBYs without question.
B,
What you pay for when you buy land is location and part of that location value is made up of the aesthetics of the surroundings, that doesn't mean to say that you own the view, or the pleasantness of the street or the nearness of the railway station, or the closeness of the park, but you have still paid for it and it is still perfectly reasonable to feel aggrieved if something that you have paid for is taken away, whether it be an ugly office building on your street, the park turned into a shopping mall, the railway station closed, or your view blocked by a new development.
No, you haven't paid for it. You've paid for a house and the land it's on and access and light to it and if you have been realistic, you have paid for the probability of that field remaining near you. Anyone who pays for the value of the field view, rather that a percentage value based on the possibility of it remaining so is a fool.
We don't take this attitude to work. No-one says that a guy who takes a job in an agency supplying government fake charities with websites has a job for life doing it. We know that a government with a different perspective on spending is going to wreck that. That you'll be making good bonuses under Labour, but be looking for another job under UKIP. If you want a safe job in advertising, sell soap powder. You might not get the same sort of bonuses, but you'll have a job for life.
And that's partly how I determined where I live. I minimised risk. I'm surrounded by housing, which means that the chances are that nothing is going to upset my living situation. The green spaces are the 2 municipal parks that I'm damn sure aren't going to be built on as they're the only green spaces left for tens of thousands of people. That's the choice I took because I'm not a risk-taker with housing, and I'm also more of a townie anyway. If you live next to a field, that's the risk you take, or else, buy the field.
MW: yeah I've gotten the same treatment once when stating how I thougt some improvements of a near neighbour were not the business of anyone else, I got back "obviously you don't care about the community, it's everyone on his own with you isn't it?" Like being irrationally annoyed by other people's taste somehow constitutes a "caring attitude towards the community" when said person wouldn't give a sh.. about even popping by said neighbour for a chat.
B: true enough, there's a tax policy that reduces the amount people put into the sunk costs of "hope value". Anyway, even without this policy, the idea that people have the right to oppose individual decisions just because they don't like it is ridiculous. Fair enough, people can make up generic rules about what you can and cannot do, like height-restrictions, banning light-shows on the roof or whatever, that can be reasonably upheld. But most nimby activity is ad-hoc directed at stuff they don't fancy, and usually don't even affect land values like they believe it will anyway.
from the BBC Archives - May 2002
"The word was first recorded in 1980, but for a British audience it was the late Nicholas Ridley, an arch Thatcher-loyalist, who brought it to wider usage, in the late 80s.
As environment secretary, Ridley had no fear in appearing abrasive. He was, after all, the man in charge of the poll tax.
He also used his position to attack the rural middle classes for their opposition to development, calling it "crude Nimbyism".
At the root of distaste for Nimbys is a belief that the protesters are putting their own interests ahead of the needs of society, and that their objections are selfish rather than principled.
It's an analysis which was only strengthened when Ridley himself was later revealed to be opposing the building of new houses which he would have been able to see from his Cotswold country home."
B,
TS, how does everyone holding the same, perfectly reasonable view i.e. that we don't want the value of our land reduced just so that some other bugger can have the value of his land vastly increased, make it a conspiracy?
Where did I say it was a conspiracy? People who think they are entitled to something are going to get pissed when their entitlement gets taken away from them. It's no different to journalists whining that bloggers take "their jobs" or dockers complaining that containerisation to theirs.
"That's Homey propaganda, I'm afraid." "No, you haven't paid for it."
Am I still reading the same blog? Are you saying that a house on the edge of the park is not more expensive than the same house next to the sewage works? Have I not read in this blog that this is an observable fact, that people pay more to be next to a park, therefore, they have paid for being next to a park and not a sewage works? In what way does the fact that paying more for a house because of factor X not mean that you have paid for the presence of factor X?
At no point have I said that that the householder has any rights or entitlement to these things that they have paid for, but that doesn't mean to say that they haven't paid for them in the first place.
Mark, do pay attention. It was TS who talked about sandstone, not you, so you couldn't possibly have been winding me up, unless of course, you are one and the same...
"Where did I say it was a conspiracy?"
Here:
Me "I don't believe NIMBYs are part of some vast Home-Ownerist conspiracy"
You "I can tell you that you're wrong"
Once again, I wasn't talking about having rights or entitlements, I was talking about being forced to pay for things that you don't have any rights or entitlements to.
"At the root of distaste for Nimbys is a belief that the protesters are putting their own interests ahead of the needs of society, and that their objections are selfish rather than principled."
Whereas the developers are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts and to benefit the country generally, with no thought to their own profit, presumably.
"I minimised risk. I'm surrounded by housing, which means that the chances are that nothing is going to upset my living situation. The green spaces are the 2 municipal parks that I'm damn sure aren't going to be built on as they're the only green spaces left for tens of thousands of people."
So if you lived in Istanbul and those parks were going to be turned into shopping malls, you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "we must have progress", I suppose.
B,
My apologies. I had failed to read your comment properly.
Whereas the developers are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts and to benefit the country generally, with no thought to their own profit, presumably.
That's a given, but in a world where people increasingly believe they are entitled to decide the fate of others "democratically", it's rather comfortable having the known constant of developers wanting to turn a profit.
Bayard,
So if you lived in Istanbul and those parks were going to be turned into shopping malls, you'd just shrug your shoulders and say "we must have progress", I suppose.
Well, every town and city has open spaces, and the people in those towns and cities like them, so it's a daft hypothetical question.
If a council did do it, they'd likely find themselves rapidly out of office. So, not going to happen, anywhere. Where councils turn parks into building land, it's where there's a glut of municipal park land that no-one is using.
B, re sandstone, I refer you to my comment at 14.38.
Secondly, don't you start deliberately mis-quoting me, I know perfectly well that the RENTAL value of houses near the park etc is higher.
But if you buy such a house (and pay a premium for it), you are not paying for the park. You are giving a large sum of money to the previous owner on the assumption that the park will remain there (and in nearly all cases it will).
You are not actually paying for the park. The park is provided by and belongs to the whole community - when you buy a house you are not paying fair shares to the whole community or paying towards the annual upkeep thereof.
Paying money to a third party who then withdraws from the whole affair, didn't provide the park in the first place and who is not in a position - or under any legal obligation - to ensure the park stays there and is kept looking nice, means you simply haven't paid for the park.
It's like buying stolen goods.
"B, re sandstone, I refer you to my comment at 14.38."
But I wasn't replying to you at 14:38, I was replying to TS at 13:28.
"It's like buying stolen goods."
Exactly, except it's more like being forced to buy stolen goods at gunpoint. You have to pay for being next to the park, whether you plan benefit from it or not. To say that you are not paying for the park is disingenuous. I never said that you were paying for the park in the way that you pay for a car, I meant that you are paying for the park in the way that you pay for a mistake: it costs you money but you don't get the right to possess anything in return.. Also the fact that the person in receipt of your money has nothing to do with the park doesn't alter the fact that money has left your possession that wouldn't have done if the park had not been there. AFAIAC, If the presence of something means that I have to pay more money for something else, which I wouldn't have to pay, had the thing not been there, then I have paid for the presence of that something, in short, I have paid for it. If you take your son to a football match, you have to pay more than if you went by yourself. If somone asked your son "who paid for you?", he'd say "Dad did", but you wouldn't own your son any more than if you hadn't gone to the football match.
"If a council did do it, they'd likely find themselves rapidly out of office."
It didn't slow down the old GLC, nor the LCC before them. Great ones for building on public open space, they were.
B, so are you sticking to the Homey line that people have "paid for" the park or do you agree that the park doesn't "belong to" them (in which case they can't have paid for it).
A far cleverer system would be for the council to demand an annual cash payment from the owner of each house which benefits from the park. If they think the payment is too high, they can ask the council to develop the park, and the next purchaser has the insurance that he is paying less up front - if the park does get developed, well at least he won't have to make the annual payments.
We could call it "Location Benefit Levy" or "Land Value Tax" or something.
In any event, you haven't addressed the original post, which was on the issue of whether "self-build" reduces land banking.
Mark, are you reading my comments or are you being deliberately obtuse? I have given you two instances where, in the English Language, the concept of paying for something is demonstrated to be separate from the concepts of getting any rights to something in return and yet you insist on claiming that you can't pay for something without it then belonging to you. If you part with your money to someone else and that money is neither a gift or a loan, that money is a payment, regardless of what you get in return. You have said above that the rental value of a house on the park is greater than the same one by the sewage works, therefore the tenant is paying more to be by the park. If he is paying more to be by the park, he is paying to be by the park, the state of "being by the park" is costing him money, therefore it has a measurable value. Similar with householders. The fact that the state of "being by the park" has a measurable value and therefore a price, a price, moreover, that the householder paid when they bought the property, is totally independent of and unaffected by the lack of any rights or entitlements that the householder enjoys over the park.
It is difficult to see how I can make this more clear. However, I will try another example. A man buys a house near a railway station. The presence of the railway station is not important to him, as he never travels by train and beleives that the railways are a waste of money and should all be closed down. He buys the house because it is the only one in the loocality that fits his other criteria. Nevertheless, the proximity of the station has added £10K to the price he pays for the house, which £10K he can reasonably expect to get back when he sells, neither house nor railway station having moved in the meantime. However, the railway company decides to close the line. What should our hero do? Celebrate because the railway has gone, or grumble because he will get £10K less for his house when he sells, a £10K to which he never had any entitlement to, but which he was nevertheless forced to pay? There is no way that you can look at this scenario and say that our hero is not £10K worse off, i.e that the decision of the railway company has cost him £10K, despite there being no rights, entitlements or contractural agreement between him and the railway company whatsoever.
B, I'm not being obtuse and you have made yourself perfectly clear and given some real life examples etc.
But the fact is, if you pay extra for a house near X, Y or Z, you have not paid FOR X, Y or Z.
You have paid more to the previous owner ON THE ASSUMPTION that X, Y or Z will remain where they are, or that some other state of affairs completely outside your control or the control of the previous owner will continue.
Remember - even if the contract for a sale of land is between two private individuals, the SUBJECT MATTER of the contract is actually the benefits which accrue to the owner of the land from time to time as a result of the actions (or inactions) of the rest of society.
If it were truly a private contract and e.g. the railway station shuts down, then your purchaser would be able to claim back £10,000 from the vendor (subject to whatever terms and warranties they agree - if the vendor doesn't want to give this warranty, then the price payable would fall accordingly).
That is what you are paying for - you are paying to obtain a privileged position vis a vis the rest of society who by definition must be bearing the burden.
Or to give a real life example - farm land subsidies. The government has sort of committed itself to paying £x per acre of farmland, so when you sell farmland, you are selling two things - the land itself and the right to collect the subsidies.
Those subsidies are paid by and a burden on "the rest of society" but the benefit is collected by the owner/the vendor (and the subsidy stream can be sold separately to the land).
Surely you cannot be suggesting that the simple fact that somebody might have bought that subsidy stream commits the UK government to continue the payments for all eternity?
Post a Comment