Marky-San

Been out viewing for a few weeks round all the new estates. The thing that strikes me is that the builders web sites show nice 'doctored' pictures of their house range with things like trees, a yard, an area where you could swing a cat. However going out an about and I find that virtually all of them are crammed into a small space, no room for driveways to the rear either.

They look nice, but the space bit just puts me off a new one.

fatherpierre

One word:

Cost

RON

Space = Money, the more houses they chuck up, the more cash they make, although I'm a firm believer that sooner or later, people just won't buy the houses, they'll be just too small to live in!!!! some people can't even get their furniture upstairs for gods sake!!!!!

mattstant

2 words actually ------ land costs

oh and 7 more--------- no fecking land released by planning authorities

LG John

LOL, I suppose you want acres and acres of substandard housing that all looks the same stretching for miles into our countryside Besides, there is always a 5 year supply of housing land allocated in the Structure Plan

goodnight

Saxo boy I would rather that enough housing was being built than the way it is at the moment. Sod what they look like for now. I would of thought that the local planners could release land for new builds and just turn down the houses that all look the same? Or is that to hard to do?

NACRO

They are truly awful. I visited a friend last week who had paid £300,000 for hers. I had to literally bite my tongue to not tell her what I thought of it. I kept banging my head on all the light fitting the ceiling was so low. She shared a drive with her neighbour, future legal problems anyone? The garden was tiny and all the houses looked the same. 300K for that? No thanks.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

£300k and still sharing a driveway? Blimey.

Mrs C and I just moved to a house on a new development and it's great. OK, so the garden isn't huge (but I hate gardening anyway) and the house looks just like the others (but so what?)

I'd much rather spend the money on the house itself than on buying lots of useless land just so I can be a bit further away from my neighbours.

MarkO

It is astonishing how many houses they can cram into a small space. There's a 'new village' a couple of miles from us - about 220 houses built in one lump, next to a new championship golf course and a large new hotel. We went to have a look round the show-houses ('cos we're nosey, not cos we were interested in buying) and it's quite astonishing; the top-of-the-range ones cost £750,000 and yet had gardens about the size of a tennis court, and the space in between them was about 8ft.

Now stop me if I'm being snobby, but if I had the wherewithall to buy a house costing three-quarters of a million squids, in Scotland, I'd want a bloody large garden (i.e., acres, and more than one) and I would certainly want to have more than 8 foot between my house and the next-door-neighbours.

LG John

The problem is when you allocate a relatively large piece of land for housing the only people the can feasibly develop it are the big house builders, wimpy, calla, millers, etc. Each of these companies tend to have a house style of their own and accordingly will put forward proposals for houses built around their own theme. Furthermore, its somebody's job at these companies to figure out the way to squeeze the most houses onto a site and still get past planning. Planning fights to try and reduce the numbers, get more open space, have changes in design and finish to try and break up the monotony but it seldom works. I often wonder how well it would work if planning allocated an area for say 100 houses and created 100 differently size parcels of plots in that land. Thereafter you or I could get our own bespoke design and propose out own personal house. If planning capped it in some way, i.e. can only be X stories high, etc then you could have lots of varied houses but still well laid out and similar in some respects.

Personally I'd rather buy on old stone built house

MarkO

Me too, but the prices are bloody ludicrous. We're waiting for the results of our bid on one (closing date tomorrow) but it's looking 99.99% certain we won't get it because it's probably going to sell for about £50k over the valuation, which itself was £40k over the advertised 'offers-over' price.

jazwils

I live on one of these new sites and agree with the fact that they get as many on as they can,but they must have done something right as there is a waiting list on all the estate agents of people wanting to move on here,we get letters all the time asking if we were to move we have buyers ready!

imlach

Welcome to the Scottish system MarkO! :-)

It's good for selling, but not for buying - makes things tense, although at least once they say it's yours, it IS yours, unlike England :-)

Last year in Edinburgh, we paid 100k over asking price, but only 14k over valuation so we were lucky. It did need gutting though as was basically a shell. Trend in Edinburgh and Borders is now to make offers over price ridiculously low.

Worst one we went for was o/o 185k, valued at 240k, and sold for 330k. I didn't have the £90k to throw at it OVER the valuation sadly as it was a nice house.

[Edited by imlach - 5/15/2003 9:48:37 AM]

imlach

Never seen the attraction of new-builds - bland, look the same, paper-thin walls, pokey rooms, look crap after 10-20 years...

Look at all the victorian stone built houses - still standing and look fantastic. Show me any post 60's house that still looks nice and is timeless - and looks as solid as a victorian villa!! I've yet to see one!!

As for architect designed houses - they are the WORST for looking dated.....the Victorians got it so right - what has gone wrong since?!

Marky-San

Yeah, its all down to money at the end of the day I suppose. Shame as the house themselve look nice and I'd be up for getting one - but the land aspect is a pisser big time. I like views and space to be able to move around.

Guess its an old sandstone and decent size garden then.

TIFF-C20WTH

PROFIT

Dave P

I'm in a 1930's bay fronted semi in East Sussex. Just short of 100 foot of garden out the back and about 30 foot out the front. Drive big enough to stick 7 or 8 cars on....

The only way to get a decent sized plot is to go pre 60's 70's.

Dave

LG John

This is 100% right, there is no other motivation for house builders!

Diablo

And why should there be any other motivation

Whats wrong with working for profit?

D

Diablo

Stop blaiming the builders and start blaiming the planning departments (no offence Kenny )

Planning depts are the only ones who can really make a difference.

But then, the problem is, they may put less houses on a plot, but then they have to charge more......

D

GU5

It's not the planners There's obviously a demand for new housing, this is huge, just look at the ammount of twenty and thirty somethings still living with their parents

It would be nice to all have 4 or 5 bed room houses, but in reality there is not the space, added to this the demand from people wanting to get the place of their own so that they can come rolling home drunk at 3 without waking their parents. This results in anything being bought by people, which gives the developers green light to build anything because it will sell

So if the buyers got more choosy and didn't put up with tiny houses with tiny gardens the developers would be stuck with loads of houses they couldn't sell and have to change their way of thinking in the future.

Just not going to happen though is it?

RON

New estate near me, with thirty odd houses, one of them is 4 bed semi, with only a garage, NO off raod parking at-all, except the garage, which is used as a shed due to a covenant on the site not allowing sheds!! and this house was for sale recently for 290k, and they have to park on the road!!!!!!!!!

MarkO

Have to say, I agree with Diablo here. The fact of the matter is that builders aren't philanthropists - they're in it for profit, just like the rest of us. So if the planners are stupid enough to let them build 50 noddy-houses in a 2-acre plot, and people are stupid enough to buy them (at over-inflated prices) then who can blame them?

There are plenty of people willing to buy these sorts of houses, either because they like them, or because there's nothing else available. Until that changes, we'll continue to see them crammed in.

It's the planners who should pull their fingers out - enforcing some architectural style (nothing flash, just make the houses sit in their surroundings).

LG John

Nothing, I didn't say there was, I simply stated a fact

Being a planner you'll obviously expect this response but I can assure you I hate my job and want to move into property development so I'm not biased: But, its not really the planners fault. The way the Planning system is set up legistlatively is that developers are effectively 'entitled' to their planning permission unless contrary to the development plan or if material considerations indicate otherwise. Therefore, the power is immediately with the developer. Moreover, the Development Plan (comprising Local Plan and Structure Plan (usually)) whilst written by planners is approved through the Scottish Executive (in Scotland only - obviously). Each Plan usually winds up in a public hearing with the big house builder challenging pretty much everything in it. The final decisions on these big matters to a large degree reside with the Government. Therefore, to cut a long story short if you want to effect any real change to the houses that are being built you need to chap on Tony Blair's door as that change must come from the top and filter all the way down to us lowly planners. I suppose I got into this profession as a young lad choosing his uni courses thinking I could affect some change in the world, yadda, yadda, yadda. B0llocks, I'm just a red tape monkey like every other Local Government employee. Also don't forget that National Planning Policy Guidlines and Planning Advice Notes are writting by central government and are a big material consideration in planning determination and contribute heavily to the development of the development plans.


Phew

MarkO

BTW, when I say I blame the planners, I don't mean the planning officers. I really mean the councillors who vote on planning decisions.

Having been involved in a case where a village green was to have been sold and built on (4 acres, 74 houses ), it was very depressing that given the proper consultation the planning officers for both the borough and county councils all recommended refusal for the plan, and yet the dumb-*** councillors over-rode this and let it go through anyway.

Councillors are the worst kind of animals - power-crazed NIMBYs who don't even bother to read the details of the plans before voting on them. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

LG John

The problem there is Planners offer a professional opinion whereas the Councillors often crumble under political pressure! Fortunately at my authority most of our councillors are really good and tend not to go against our recommendations that often.

moses

marky san couldnt have put it better, new houses are b-o-l-l-o-c-k-s

Neil Smalley

IMHO until the supply of houses meets demand(unlikely in the next 10 years or so) then prices will go up. What I think will happen is like what happens in Germany where more people rent than buy.

The growth in prices will probably drop from the 15-20% Per year it is now, down to the more normal 10% per year trend we've seen for the last 30 odd years.

So long as people need places to live and there's not enough of them, then I can't see how prices can (long term) go down.

NACRO

I'm sure this has been covered before but in many areas prices are actually falling already.

There has been a 5% adjustment across many areas of the south already.