Cheapest place in the UK to buy a house?

Cacofonix

thomasross20 said:

I'm not going to comment any more on this - it does get my back up and my viewpoint will never be changed on the subject.

And thus the debate is closed.  Because you don't want to consider change.  Excellent.  Whilst this thread is a talking shop and will change nothing anyway, this kind of comment saddens me.

chrispy108

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Evilmags said:

It s really simple. Release a lot of land and let people build on it.

This is already happening. 500 houses are going up on the northeast edge of my "village", similar is happening in a lot of places. Oly makes the property developers happy, nobody else. The houses are shit-modern-ugly and the people who will live in them will not be from round here, in all probability they'll be townies with townie attitudes who will want our village to turn into a town. They'll demand more "infrastructure", shops, carparks, entertainment etc.

There's nothing wrong with NIMBYism, I'm all for it.

So in your world, what should those people do? Fuck them for wanting to live somewhere nice right?

You moved 20 miles in the last year, so you've got no right to live there either by your reasoning.

I don't really understand why you haven't just bought a log cabin in the wilderness.

Phil_aka_Pip

chrispy108 said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Evilmags said:

It s really simple. Release a lot of land and let people build on it.

This is already happening. 500 houses are going up on the northeast edge of my "village", similar is happening in a lot of places. Oly makes the property developers happy, nobody else. The houses are shit-modern-ugly and the people who will live in them will not be from round here, in all probability they'll be townies with townie attitudes who will want our village to turn into a town. They'll demand more "infrastructure", shops, carparks, entertainment etc.

There's nothing wrong with NIMBYism, I'm all for it.

So in your world, what should those people do? Fuck them for wanting to live somewhere nice right? They're turning somewhere that's not bad into a shithole

You moved 20 miles in the last year, so you've got no right to live there either by your reasoning. More right than someone who came from London! I actually moved from a place with 250 addresses into a place ten times bigger, to be nearer my job. I would have preferred to go somewhere with no close neighbours at all but on a limited budget you can't be too choosy.

I don't really understand why you haven't just bought a log cabin in the wilderness. I prefer thatch, beams, wattle&daub

ToneControl

As someone who moved out of Manchester to a village, I am aware of the increased quality of life, and would be very happy for my village where I lived, and where I live now to be expanded. However, I seem to be in the minority, most people want to keep where they live "as it is" for themselves, and this often means the less well off being forced to stay in less pleasant urban areas

Personally I think that's a far more negative outcome for the population than BTL landlords charging market rents and providing accommodation that meets legal requirements

Why do we all enter into this conspiracy to force most of us to live in shoeboxes in urban areas? Why do those who escape try to prevent others following in their footsteps?

Phil_aka_Pip

ToneControl said:

Why do we all enter into this conspiracy to force most of us to live in shoeboxes in urban areas? Why do those who escape try to prevent others following in their footsteps?

• Because the others following in their footsteps are the people they're trying to get away from.
• Because building more houses in the village will enlarge it and make it a lot more like the town they've moved out of.

Simples.

chrispy108

So once again, in your utopia, where do all these people live?

In hamster cages in city centres? In the Matrix? Solyent green?

You seem to refuse to accept that you live in a society.

Phil_aka_Pip

chrispy108 said:

So once again, in your utopia, where do all these people live?

In hamster cages in city centres?

where are they living now? In their hamster cages? You seem to think that "society" means downgrading everybody's existence just because more people want to get out of the big city than there is room for them outside the city. You don't understand that if everyone gets out of the city, the countryside gets overrun and ends up just like the city. I didn't move out of a town into some new place that was built just for me to move into, when I moved out of a town I moved into a house that was already there and had been occupied by other people before they left. It wasn't a new build. I am reminded of the "Welcome Home" adverts for new housing in Elmswell. It showed a picture of a cornfield with young children running freely though it. The advert was thoroughly disingenuous. There was NO cornfield, only some modern-fugly housing estate!

chrispy108

So they should just sit and accept a shit life, because they cannot afford to move?

In another thread you complained that you couldn't afford to live in Woking because of house prices, yet you're happy to advocate keeping house prices near where you live high by limiting supply. Surely you can see that?

People spreading out into the countryside a bit isn't going to make England into a car park from coast to coast is it.

jonnyburgo

You any good at DIY?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-42481547.html?showcase=true

Phil_aka_Pip

chrispy108 said:

So they should just sit and accept a shit life, because they cannot afford to move? I've had to, and other people would expect me to

In another thread you complained that you couldn't afford to live in Woking because of house prices, yet you're happy to advocate keeping house prices near where you live high by limiting supply. Surely you can see that? No this was not about house prices, this was about building nasty new developments on the edge of pleasant little villages. I suspect high prices may be construed by some as a consequence.

People spreading out into the countryside a bit isn't going to make England into a car park from coast to coast is it. It would if allowed to happen unconstrained, and I'm quite entitled to object to the bit where I live being spoiled.

exocet

Gainsborough 

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/32597796?search_identifier=de65cd15f37e46ff1b56b3ad9141b3dc

chrispy108

Great attitude; I'm alright now, so I want my life to stay exactly as it is, forever, despite the consequences for the rest of the world.

Cheers for your generations contributing to fucking it up for us!

Phil_aka_Pip

chrispy108 said:

Great attitude; I'm alright now, so I want my life to stay exactly as it is, forever, despite the consequences for the rest of the world.

Cheers for your generations contributing to fucking it up for us!

You're being a bit impatient. I put up with living in a single bed ground floor flat in a nasty new town for many many years before I achieved escape velocity. Wait your turn.

ToneControl

The idea that it's awful to build housing in a field next to a village is wrong, here's some reasons:

1. The UK is largely green space. We'd need about 300 million immigrants to really change that, it's a mistake to think that expanding all villages a bit will change that
2. Most UK countryside is just bland agricultural fields that are not really there for public use. A gilded version of industrialisation, which is not "spoilt" by adding a few humans in nice houses
3. Villages often die because they are so small. City folk move in, carry on working and shopping in the city. Lots of villages whine about maybe losing their pub or post office, then stop expansion of the village - which would stop the need for the pub to close
4. People moving into villages from the city drives the kids of those in the village to go and live in the city. That is not good for society 
5. In Ireland, other than Dublin, most people live in the countryside. They have a much better quality of life from it as far as I can see. People seem to spread out with civilised gaps between neighbours. New squeezed-together estates are the reward for making it hard and expensive for developers to get planning permission
6. It's not fair - why force everyone to live in estates in cities in brown-field estates? Get developers to expand a village a bit, and flatten a few houses in a city and add a park

chrispy108

It's more than waiting @Phil_aka_Pip, the demographics and economics of the country have changed.

Outright owning and living in a house in the countryside on their own isn't something that's on the trajectory for the normal 25 year single person anymore.

Great post @Tonecontrol, especially point 2. Drives me mad when people bang on about keeping our countryside natural, go on then, let it all return to forest. Do you think all grass is naturally an inch long with hedgerows neatly round the edge?

3 and 4 as well, if people like Phil just want villages to become semi-retirement villages for old people, then they'll soon be gone.

Phil_aka_Pip

1. It doesn't matter HOW much green space there is in total when the bit of green space YOU live in gets spoiled.
   
2. Agriculture, even though it is a food industry, still leaves you with open space. Building on it doesn't.
   
3. It isn't the small size of a village that kills the pub. It's the incomers using the village as a dormitory who can't be arsed with the pub that kills the pub.
   
4. If you "expand villages a bit" you end up with something that isn't a village any more.
   

littlegreenman

Phil_aka_Pip said:

1. It doesn't matter HOW much green space there is in total when the bit of green space YOU live in gets spoiled.
   
2. Agriculture, even though it is a food industry, still leaves you with open space. Building on it doesn't.
   
3. It isn't the small size of a village that kills the pub. It's the incomers using the village as a dormitory who can't be arsed with the pub that kills the pub.
   
4. If you "expand villages a bit" you end up with something that isn't a village any more.
   

So who decides which members of society are allowed to live in "England's Green and Pleasant Land"? And what exactly is the criteria for belonging to the village culture? Most village pubs die because their clientele does, and they don't have the business sense to attract the new village people!

ToneControl

littlegreenman said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

1. It doesn't matter HOW much green space there is in total when the bit of green space YOU live in gets spoiled.
   
2. Agriculture, even though it is a food industry, still leaves you with open space. Building on it doesn't.
   
3. It isn't the small size of a village that kills the pub. It's the incomers using the village as a dormitory who can't be arsed with the pub that kills the pub.
   
4. If you "expand villages a bit" you end up with something that isn't a village any more.
   

So who decides which members of society are allowed to live in "England's Green and Pleasant Land"? And what exactly is the criteria for belonging to the village culture? Most village pubs die because their clientele does, and they don't have the business sense to attract the new village people!

Most pubs are closing down because fewer people use pubs. "Incomers", including ones who use words like "incomers" can help with this, they did at my local in a village I lived in for the last 10 years. I would have no trouble seeing that village being extended. To me the limit is when a village expands by 200%; but having said that - the village I had lived in did that in the 70s, and it was a great place. We have a great school too, unlike the chocolate box village 4 miles away that did not allow expansion. They have all the classes together and can't do proper year-specific lessons since too few people live there

Most agricultural land is just endless hedges as you walk, cycle or drive past it. There could be a secret housing estate there for all you know. A farm with more buildings scattered around it is not "spoiled countryside". To be honest, any farm will have spoiled it 10 times more in the first place by making it into geometrical shapes full of monocultures.

Let's have "new villages" as well as "new towns" then, if the incomers to a village are all lined up with pitchforks when the planners arrive, then why not build a nicer new village in a field a mile away?

Phil_aka_Pip

The "new village people" are townies who like the idea of living in a village, but expect things to be delivered to them the way they were in towns. Case in point (and I know TTony has a different view on this): people expect the pub to be doled up like a town centre pub. Sorry but it won't be. It'll probably look like the decor needs renewing, or it might look neglected from the outside. The former is probably down to the people who run it as they are likely to be responsible for the insides, but the latter will be the fault of the pub chain which owns the building. Anyway instead having of the take things as you find them attitude, most incomers cherry-pick the aspects they like about a place and if the local landlord isn't the life & soul of their personal party, they'll buy cheap booze in the supermarket 15 miles away and drink it at home. 

The criteria for belonging to the village culture is to have your family in the village for at least the last 2 generations, probably more.

ATM the people who decide who can live in "England's Green and Pleasant Land" are the people whose decisions enable some to become rich. I dislike them but I am not responsible for them. BTW I didn't get here by being rich or even becoming rich. Not rich in the sense that I could buy a farmhouse anyway. 11 years ago I was kicked out of a well paid job and sold the 3-bed ex-council semi I was living in, moved from Surrey to here, and bought a modest house which didn't have any of the thatch or beams that I'd have liked given the choice. The people who live in the "desirable" houses are retired city types, they didn't drink in the pub and they were clearly "above" plebs like me who did.

The main thing that dictates where you live and what kind of house you have is what you can afford. Natch, other factors include where your job is and how close you have to be to things like schools, shops, doctors surgeries etc.

Why is it that nobody seems to understand that if you build on a "green and pleasant land"  it ceases to be that, and becomes a housing estate instead? If you move all  the people from the city to the countryside, you've taken the city and dumped it in the countryside!

thomasross20

Cacofonix said:

thomasross20 said:

I'm not going to comment any more on this - it does get my back up and my viewpoint will never be changed on the subject.

And thus the debate is closed.  Because you don't want to consider change.  Excellent.  Whilst this thread is a talking shop and will change nothing anyway, this kind of comment saddens me.

What change, what are you on about!? 

Folks say my generation have to start at the bottom like they did, they had 15% interest rates etc etc. My own taxes are put into government schemes to keep the market booming (or in my case, depressing!).. boomers all around me are buying up housing and renting them out, limiting supply and pushing prices up, I don't spend all my money on i-phones and gadgets and waste, I have a good job whereby in past I could have afforded a detached house, dual-income households (which is a near-fallacy if childcare costs are taken into account) have pushed prices artificially high, rates might not be at 15% but the capital value which has to be paid off for up to 30+ years in some cases has ballooned and is a much worse prospect than 15% on a lower capital value for a couple of years, people say if prices go up then it's great but there is no benefit if you're not downsizing and it means you end up paying more if you're up-sizing, high housing costs mean we need higher wages but that makes us less competitive in a global market, the whole thing has to come crashing down at some point (see the article on banks asked if they had enough reserves to withstand a 35% drop just a few days ago?), why do some cheer when housing COSTS go up but not when food prices or petrol goes up? Etc etc. Fact is, I've discussed this plenty of times for years with numerous people and just because you want to talk about it, doesn't mean I haven't a million times before. So sorry if it makes you sad, but I've had enough of it - I don't want to find out peoples' views on it because I don't want to fall out with people. I came here to talk guitars and I probably shouldn't have even posted on this thread. 'mags has it right - start large-scale building. Government shouldn't interfere in the market. I'm all for larger deposits and income checks. I'm for a crash in the cost of housing or a massive rise in wages, though I'm wary of either of those devaluing my savings. In truth, I'm not sure where the UK is headed and still think youngsters would have a brighter future elsewhere. I very nearly moved to Boston/Munich/Austria not long back - I still hope to in future. The UK has nothing for me - a zombie economy with some of the highest debt in the world and a property-obsession culture which I find horrid. It's funny, I was speaking to the mother of a vet (who graduated recently) the other day. She was complaining that he would find it tough to afford housing, so I asked if she'd be willing to see a reduction in the price of her house from say £200k to £150k (when she bought for under £100k) - she was vehemently against it. Go figure. Mate of mine lost £50k on his sale of a house the other month there... the market has dropped somewhat here. But he's ended up buying a 3-bed semi (just one extra room up on the last place)... for £250k. Salary something like £30k and his partner not working, two kids... 30 year mortgage (he'll be 60 when he pays it off).. something's not right. So, like I said... sorry if my post saddened you, but given I've gone over this more times than you can imagine, I've had enough. I don't need to be looked down upon for bowing out (and you should never do so without knowing the whole story - too quick to judge!). I keep out of all political, religious, you name it topics now. What's the point? I keep up to date but don't get stressed out and start falling out with people. Change? How about giving my generation a chance! It's sad that so many people I know have even decided to give up on having children as they just can't seem to afford to "live" - and high housing costs is the main factor as they have repeatedly stated - how crap is that? A 1-bed flat to cost £1m in 10-20 years' time (as stated in a news article not long back)? True or false, the reporting of such a thing disgusts me. Back to guitar chat..