Wednesday 5 October 2016

"Build homes with smaller rooms so landlords can afford them, Tory housing minister says"

From The Independent:

Private housing developers should build homes with smaller rooms that do not meet existing minimum space standards so that landlords can afford to buy them, the housing minister has said.

Gavin Barwell told the Conservative conference in Birmingham that he wanted the private sector to “innovate” to solve the housing crisis and that relaxing the rules on how cramped a flat can be might stop investors from being priced out.

9 comments:

Dinero said...

in the short term directly increasing land prices and in the long term increasing population density and increasing land prices.

Steven_L said...

Hasn't he heard of bunk beds? London is already full of HMO's / 'youth hostels' packed with young (and older) people living in bunk beds anyway and has been for years.

mombers said...

Legalise beds in sheds next.
FFS, the PRS has a dismal record in 'innovation' - the worst value private rentals in the world. 'You can get better, but you can't pay more®'
How does the rest of the world provide bigger homes for less money?

Ralph Musgrave said...

"How does the rest of the world provide bigger homes for less money?" Where that's true, it's because land with planning permission is available at far less than the million pounds an acre that it costs in the UK.

Lola said...

PS. The problem is that the people who pass Oxbridge degrees are all trained by the same people with the same flawed philosophies that are really just aimed at getting and keeping power. It's a feedback loop. They train the people who then promote the trainers and fund them and then become the trainers themselves.

DBC Reed said...

@L
Very true.Theresa May seems to have reverted to the old Statist policy of her era at the varsity and is gunning for tax dodgers and their advisors amongst all kinds of other heresies, as if the Chemistry graduate's revolution never happened.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Thanks and agreed with all the comments.

RM, you should't work backwards from land prices - they are a residual figure. If you actually cap rents and house prices (by fair means or foul) then by definition, land prices go down in tandem.

So our houses aren't expensive because land is expensive, it is the other way round. And in other countries, land is cheaper because housing is cheaper.

Dinero said...

If the demand for the lowest value dwellings in a range is really high making the lowest in the range smaller would not make it cheaper anyway.

James Higham said...

Why not go the whole hog, like Hong Kong.