38 degreees petition to introduce rent cap in London

Caporegime
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Considering some property agents first go to China before putting buildings on the market is a disgrace, there was an article a couple years/year ago
 
Soldato
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I have zero sympathy for people living in London.

Don't like it? Don't live there, it's too many people trying to live on too small a piece of land.

It's not as if wages don't reflect the higher cost of living, most people would live a better life earning less outside of London, it's their choice to go live there.
 
Soldato
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I have zero sympathy for people living in London.

Don't like it? Don't live there, it's too many people trying to live on too small a piece of land.

It's not as if wages don't reflect the higher cost of living, most people would live a better life earning less outside of London, it's their choice to go live there.
I get so bored of this argument as it's so easy to rip apart.. London prices aren't always the fastest rising in the country, how about Manchester and Brighton?

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/03/manchester-house-prices-nationwide

The housing market isn't just an issue in London. There are plenty of places around the country where bricks and mortar are 'earning' more than the average salaries for that area. If that goes on, all these places will be exactly like London in a few years time:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-property-prices-outstripped-local-wages.html (yes it's a daily fail article, but the point is there)

But it's ok. You go and stick your head in the sand. If people do decide to give up on London en masse like you suggest -- the same thing will only happen to another city. People are already talking about a mass exodus to Birmingham so let's wait until it's 500k for a flat there and then say 'oh stop whinging and move somewhere else'.. Sigh.
 
Soldato
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London is one of the few places in the UK where there's more jobs than people.
It's also full of industries that really don't exist anywhere else in the UK.

Telling people to move somewhere else really isn't an option for a lot of people. It's often a choice between paying an incredible amount in rent (or mortgage payments) and having a mammoth commute.
 
Associate
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Presumably, people are aware the almost the first response to this would be the withdrawal of the private landlord sector almost entirely from London? These assets are fundamentally investments - at any capped rent level, they'd no longer make sense as such and the landlord would stop renting and either occupy, allow a family member to occupy or sell. Any which way, that property will disappear from the letting market.
 
Caporegime
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Presumably, people are aware the almost the first response to this would be the withdrawal of the private landlord sector almost entirely from London? These assets are fundamentally investments - at any capped rent level, they'd no longer make sense as such and the landlord would stop renting and either occupy, allow a family member to occupy or sell. Any which way, that property will disappear from the letting market.

So in other words you'd increase the supply of housing onto the market and at the same time reduce demand for it, which should result in lower prices enabling more people to buy and live in their own homes. How would that be a bad thing?

As almost everyone has pointed out, the cap suggested in the OP is far too low, however I suggest there'd still be a strong rental market in London, it'd just be smaller.
 
Man of Honour
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Seriously though, why live in London?? It stinks.

Because it is one of the best job markets in the UK and people often like to live reasonably close to where they work. It also has an incredibly good (IMO) public transport system compared to many towns, and is a cultural centre (music, art, sport, cuisine, theatre etc etc there is a huge array of activities).

Personally I don't consider those benefits to be worth the price premium and other downsides, but it is not without merits. My suspicion is that I will never live in London because even if the prices were to fall, chances are commuter belt prices would fall also.
 
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Caporegime
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Does the 38 degrees petitions hold any water? The government surveys on .gov.uk *must* be discussed in the commons once a threshold is met, so why waste effort on a petition they can ignore?

Also, lol at the very idea of this petition.

edit: Lol, **** this site. Clicking "about" brings up a pop-in with overlay that has two options - setup a direct debit or make a one time payment. No ta, you can do one.
 
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Caporegime
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I think you're blinkered about foreign investment. Take this example.

Project I was just on 1000 apartments riverside London prime real estate now, was a delapidated industrial estate.

800 for sale
200 apartments went to a local authority
£50m went to the local authority under s106 which is spent on roads and schools etc
£300m was the build cost so £300m went to UK business and manufacturing.
An enormous amount of profit was made = tax revenue.

They can have the rabbit hutches for all I care, seems like a good deal for the UK.

don't try and add actual facts and a reasonable argument here, the OP is more interested in an idea that will kill the rental market in London and stagnate development of new homes
 
Caporegime
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Or you know, change the construction method. Current brick, is just a silly concept that needs to die out. It's expensive, performs badly, man hour incentive(it's biggest issue with uk wages being so high) etc. Industry and the laws need a total overhaul.

It sounds good, but would cheaper construction costs really drive prices down? I was watching a documentary last year where they built some really, really cheap Ikea style pre-fabbed cardboard-like houses as an experiment. They were much cheaper to build than a normal house, and the idea was they would be sold for less.

After they were built, they interviewed some of the residents and asked them how much they were had paid. The answer was just as much as a normal house. They then asked the developer for comment as to why they weren't any cheaper, and they simply replied "We asked the standard market price for them and they sold." (I'm paraphrasing, can't remember the exact words).

So would cheaper construction actually translate to cheaper house prices, or simply more profit? After all, only the big developers can afford the price of land, so it's not like some small startup can start making cheap houses.
 
Man of Honour
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Well there's thighs you can do for that, you can enforce through law affordable housing, so they simply can't just add on profit.
You can make it easier for self builder to buy small land and get planning permission if it's for you living in it etc.
One thing I would like to see especially on big estates, is for a certain percentage to be for self build plots with conditions in sale to you have to live there.

So there are ways to force it.
 
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Caporegime
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Indeed, free market and all that.

It's a free market until prices start to fall, then the government steps in to make sure the bubble doesn't burst.

I'm not sure what you call that, but it isn't Free Market economics :p The government will never allow house prices to fall drastically.
 
Caporegime
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Well there's thighs you can do for that, you can enforce through law affordable housing, so they simply can't just add on profit.
You can make it easier for self builder to buy small land and get planning permission if it's for you living in it etc.
One thing I would like to see especially on big estates, is for a certain percentage to be for self build plots with conditions in sale to you have to live there.

So there are ways to force it.

there is actually some movement towards encouraging self build at the moment, I'd quite like to see greater availability of self build plots in future too:

https://www.gov.uk/government/polic...vailable-homes/supporting-pages/self-builders

The Right to Build

At Budget 2014, the government announced that it will consult on creating a new ‘Right to Build’, giving custom builders a right to a plot from councils.

The Right to Build is an extension of the government’s planning reforms. However, given the difficulty custom builders often have finding suitable land, we want to go further by giving prospective local custom builders the right to a suitable plot of land to build a new home with the help of their local planning authority.

In September 2014 the government announced that 11 local authorities would become Right to Build ‘vanguards’. This will involve local planning authorities operating the Right to Build model on a voluntary basis to test how it will work in practice.

The government’s consultation on the Right to Build closed on 18 December 2014. A response will be published shortly.
 
Man of Honour
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So would cheaper construction actually translate to cheaper house prices, or simply more profit? After all, only the big developers can afford the price of land, so it's not like some small startup can start making cheap houses.

One isolated example doesn't necessarily prove it either way - it could have been that the development in question was in demand and they may have been able to sell brick houses for more than the 'market rate'.

I'd imagine that over the longer term / wider scale, cheaper build costs would have some influence, if nothing else because there would be more scope to cut prices in cases where demand is low e.g. during recession. The more competitive areas (i.e. locations where there are multiple competing developers) would also now have more scope for competitive pricing.
 
Man of Honour
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there is actually some movement towards encouraging self build at the moment, I'd quite like to see greater availability of self build plots in future too:

https://www.gov.uk/government/polic...vailable-homes/supporting-pages/self-builders

Yay
Read the detail it's meaningless

Boo.

Where can I find such details?

Seems it's more focused on 5+ homes, how is that self build.
Although I suppose, using social media, trying to find a group of you.
But unless the planning permission changes still a. bit useless, self build plots shouldn't be constrained to the in keeping with local architecture.

The 11 areas
•Cherwell District Council, who will receive £90,000 and are committed to deliver 2,000 custom-build homes over the next 10 years
•South Cambridgeshire District Council, who will receive £50,000 and will bring forward at least 100 plots of land for custom builders and to begin selling land from January 2015
•Teignbridge District Council, who will receive £100,000 and will be implementing a ground breaking ‘5% self-build’ policy in their newly adopted Local Plan so 5% of all new homes in the area are delivered by custom and self-builders
•Shropshire Council, who will receive £10,200 to bring forward 6 hectares of land for self-builders by linking with Stoke Council and local social landlords to find suitable plots
•Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, who will receive £15,000 to begin bringing land forward for sale in autumn 2014 by using formerly-developed council-owned land to support aspiring self-builders in the area
•West Lindsey District Council, who will receive £5,000 to make self-build plots available on previously-developed public sector land in the area
•Exmoor and Dartmoor National Park Authorities, who will receive £28,000 to explore how local self-builders can be helped while protecting important countryside
•Pendle Borough Council, who will receive £46,000 to deliver self-build plots in the area and explore how this could be used to further deliver affordable homes
•Sheffield City Council, who will receive just under £100,000 to further deliver over 800 self-build sites, and look to support groups planning their own custom builds
•South Norfolk District Council, who will receive £25,000 to work with Saffron Housing Association in the area to deliver 40-60 custom build plots
•Stoke-on-Trent City Council, who will bring forward 72 hectares of land for local self-builders in the area
Shame no Bristol or north Somerset.

Would love to build a small 2bed bungalow, probably straw bail, that would cost next to nothing to build.
 
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Soldato
OP
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don't try and add actual facts and a reasonable argument here, the OP is more interested in an idea that will kill the rental market in London and stagnate development of new homes
Hardly. Maccapacca hasn't even responded to my questions on that example. All he's said is that a bunch of apartments were built and a bunch of people made a chunk of profit on it. Nothing we don't know there, but it hardly helps solve the problem if those flats are 600k+ and all got sold for BTL for some rich types from the far East.
 
Tea Drinker
Don
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Where can I find such details?

http://www.self-build.co.uk/right-build-vanguard-councils-chosen

Cherwell District Council, who will receive £90,000 and are committed to deliver 2,000 custom-build homes over the next 10 years
South Cambridgeshire District Council, who will receive £50,000 and will bring forward at least 100 plots of land for custom builders and to begin selling land from January 2015
Teignbridge District Council, who will receive £100,000 and will be implementing a ground breaking ‘5% self-build’ policy in their newly adopted Local Plan so 5% of all new homes in the area are delivered by custom and self-builders
Shropshire Council, who will receive £10,200 to bring forward 6 hectares of land for self-builders by linking with Stoke Council and local social landlords to find suitable plots
Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, who will receive £15,000 to begin bringing land forward for sale in autumn 2014 by using formerly-developed council-owned land to support aspiring self-builders in the area
West Lindsey District Council, who will receive £5,000 to make self-build plots available on previously-developed public sector land in the area
Exmoor and Dartmoor National Park Authorities, who will receive £28,000 to explore how local self-builders can be helped while protecting important countryside
Pendle Borough Council, who will receive £46,000 to deliver self-build plots in the area and explore how this could be used to further deliver affordable homes
Sheffield City Council, who will receive just under £100,000 to further deliver over 800 self-build sites, and look to support groups planning their own custom builds
South Norfolk District Council, who will receive £25,000 to work with Saffron Housing Association in the area to deliver 40-60 custom build plots
Stoke-on-Trent City Council, who will bring forward 72 hectares of land for local self-builders in the area
 
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