Correct -- Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3 Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply) 116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 145 2.0 Cloverleaf 156 V6 2.5 S2 Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see. www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk
Indeed. Sounds mad, but it makes the area look untidy IMHO as well. -- Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3 Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply) 116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 145 2.0 Cloverleaf 156 V6 2.5 S2 Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see. www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk
What actually happens is that some amateur BTL landlord buys it and fills it full of chavs. Do I sound bitter?
They're grotty townhouses. I suspect they tend to go to housing association. It's an odd one. People *seem* to like nice buildings, when shown round them and asked, as on that Alain De Botton documentary. They don't seem prepared to put their money down for one, or they don't get the chance to. I suspect with such a massive purchase as a house, people will tend towards being ultra conservative through terror of losing tens of thousands if it goes out of fashion / falls over due to non-trad construction. The other factor is definately supply - I've visited lots and lots of developments, ranging from the small to the massive, and developers simply will not build anything vaguely out of the ordinary, so the unwashed masses have no idea how nice a differently designed building can be.
A related point was raised recently during the Charlie boy vs Richard Rogers barney over the Chelsea Barracks development. While architects like Rogers are happy to design modernist buildings for other people to live him, he himself lives in a house, aiui, that wouldn't look entirely out of place in Poundbury. There's a real disconnect between the homes people could have and the homes people want. Personally, I'd happily take just about anything featured on Grand Designs.
I'd have one of these like a shot if I had the money and the land. http://www.huf-haus.com/gb/intro.html
Ah. Generally "affordable housing" gets sold to housing associations. However, more general calls for "affordable housing" generally mean someone providing houses that are affordable for people on an ordinary salary without a mortgage at a huge multiple of income. Which, IMO is never going to happen quickly - make houses people want to live in cheaply at any volume, and you'll start scaring the people who've lashed £200k on a fairly ordinary house. If you're the developer, you're going to be making less profit. It's not really in the interest of anyone who can provide affordable housing to do so - whether it's the developer (as a current example, there are many, many sites at the moment that have been procured by developers, all set to begin site investigation surveys etc. which are on hold until house prices rise again), or the Govt forcing them to, or by releasing more land for development and increasing supply that way. TBH this is one area that makes me veer horribly to the left. It doesn't seem sensible to me that something so vital to people's well being as housing should have supply manipulated in this way.
As the owner of an early 90s Bryant home I'm pretty fucking certain it wasn't built by craftsmen of any form.
Which comes down to more or less one thing. The government - firstly by restricting land supply through the planning process, and secondly by failing to either pull down sink estates or to actually enforce the law and invest in renovation and maintenance, so that people will live there again. There a vast tracts of well built housing in pretty much every major city in the UK that are mostly empty.
But not hard enough. <shrug> With the sole (small and shrinking) exception of council accomodation, it's down to basic supply and demand. If there was a profit in refurbishing and selling/letting them, it would have been done by now. It hasn't. Why not?
It's not really custom built, they have a few standard specifications per site, and build multiples of the same type, there may be a small amount of customisation with regards carpets and tiling colurs, but that's not what I'd call custom building.
For what kind of value of "some" years ago...? I s'pose there are socio-economic-geographic factors, too - but (round us, at least) there seems to be very little difference between the value of "a house" and "a building plot that happens to have a house on it already" - with the latter often fetching more.
A decade and a bit ago, before prices started going mad... I don't think the building cost would differ greatly now, but the plot certainly would. Umm, yes, exactly. A lot less. http://calculator.bcis.co.uk/
HA! I know people in the Oirish pre cast concrete industry. Well one erm has to, doesn't one.... Very nice advanced modular houses could be produced at amazingly affordable prices. Modular as in cavity insulated ready to drop in wire and pipes plus external decoration and windows. Govmint could put down large amounts of high quality spacious long lasting housing for around £25k a bedroom. But that would take knowledge, intelligence and imagination and the rejection of Vested Interests. Are we starting to understand the challenges? And you get a free Romany cast into every one.
Not sure about tiny. I sold some land around 8 years ago for building, the land cost to the developer was around 30% of the final sale price of the houses. The cost to build was again round 30% leaving the developer with a 40% profit. Of course out of that came planning costs, taxes etc.
