House prices to fall 10% by 2013

Nickpike - you clearly don't understand the new-build house market. I'm a builder and developer. The reason new houses and flats can be small with tiny gardens is because the government requires it: it imposes a minimum housing density on building sites, and it burdens new houses with the following expensive policies: 1. Infrastructure - in my area the average S106 roof tax is aimed to be £25,000 per property, imposed on the builder by the local authority to spend on their pet projects all over the borough. New schools, roads, playgrounds and so on used to be funded by general taxation: now the burden all placed on new homes, and the existing inhabitants and businesses don't have to pay a penny for all their new infrastructure. And people wonder why new house prices are high! Duh, how do they think that new road or school has been paid for? 2. Social housing/Affordable homes: any developer of a site bigger than 5 properties has to give away 33-40% of the houses to a housing association, so some economically-inactive person living off our taxes can be given a free new home. That means the remaining 60-66% of the houses for private sale have to cover the cost of the land, the S106 tax, the planning costs and the builder's profit margin on the social houses. This means the extra cost of the private houses would be about 30-40% higher than it should be. The builder knows that private buyers wouldn't wear such a price hike, especially when they have the option of buying a second-hand house, so the only solution is to cram more houses onto the site, which the government has conveniently allowed (they knew what they were doing: the increased densities arrived about the same time as the affordable homes policy). In other words, modern houses are small and crammed because the government requires that one-third of them are given away to housing associations as the new council housing of our time. Council houses used to be paid for out of general taxation, which kept down the price of private housing for everyone else. Now, new private homes pay for council houses, and people wonder why they are so expensive! You are paying more so that some layabout and social nightmare gets a house, and they get to live next door to you as well. 3. Green policies: new houses are burdened with ever-increasing requirements on insulation and airtightness, culminating in "zero carbon" homes in 2016. This all costs much more money to build, and smaller rooms because walls have to be much thicker. A higher build cost means more expensive new houses, on top of S106 and social housing. Result - more cramming to try and keep the cost down. Meanwhile, existing homeowners are under no obligation at all to improve their green profile, so second-hand homes look cheaper and cheaper in comparison with new ones, and most people look at the initial capital outlay, not the running costs over 50 years. The timber-frame houses you saw being built may look flimsy to you, but it's the way things are going because of the government's green policies and to improve efficiency. Most houses in Scotland and the US are timber-frame: they are largely built off-site and trucked in, and have huge amounts of insulation. Then there's the small question of planning and the non-availability of land. Modern houses are also expensive because there's so little land available and the landowners get premium prices. In fact, the real people who make money are landowners and the Government, who get all their taxes and their free social housing and infrastructure. Developers and housebuilders don't make much money, and homeowners only make money if house prices rise long term and they benefit from personal homes being free of capital gains tax. If we imposed CGT on private houses, as we used to before1965, the British public's obsession with "owning their own home" would take a massive knock - they've got used to having this tax-free bung and come to regard it as part of the natural order of things. As a small builder, I bitterly resent having to pay for the government's planning, social housing, infrastructure and green policies, and then I get blamed for being "greedy" when the prices I have to charge on my new houses are felt to be too high! Its like blaming a petrol station owner for the high cost of petrol, when the only people making money are the oil producers and the government.

Hi CuNNaXXa "I think, if I remember correctly, that only about 2% of the UK is built on, with 98% being left as wilderness or farm land." I researched this some years ago. I can't remember precise figures, but I do remember that built-on land (or brownfield sites?) was closer to 20%. Neil

Actually, while land may be finite, our use of it is limited. I think, if I remember correctly, that only about 2% of the UK is built on, with 98% being left as wilderness or farm land. While most of us would not want to see our green lands and forests built on, there is certainly scope to expand our current brown lands. Old industrial sites could easily be developed rather than being left to rot away. Of course, immigration does need to be controlled. The last governments total recklessness in encouraging all and sundry to emigrate to this country was nothing less than a total dismantling of a system of employment that has stood the test of time. They encouraged mass immigration to destabilise the ground level workers. I have seen immigrant class I drivers working for minimum wage, when drivers should be earning more. I have seen immigrant veg pickers who work eight hours at minimum wage, then work a further two to four hours for nothing, meaning the actual hourly rate drops to below minimum wage. I have even see a national retail distributor specifically employ immigrants over indigenous employees because it is far easier to get a non English speaking foreigner to do a job that is inherently dangerous, such as climbing racking to get to stock, when they should be using a fork lift truck. (In fact, in my last job, I repeated reported incidents involving immigrants who flouted basic health and safety, including one lad who walked under a raised load being manoeuvred by a fork lift truck, one lad who climbed thirty foot up racking to fetch an outer of Walls Ice Cream, and one lad who was in charge of a fork lift truck, even though he had received no formal training, because he said he knew how to drive one). (Often, these people have a limited grasp of the English language, and respond 'Yes' to everything they are asked, whether they understand or not). (As a Union Representative, I have come to realise that most employers only implement safe working practices to comply with current legislation, and not because they have any concept of safety. Only once did I hear of a company that actually ordered a safety audit to benefit their employees). The company my mother used to work for (multinational company making contact lenses for a national spectacle company), knowingly employed about fifty foreigners who didn't have a right to work in this country. Some even had expired visas. The police were eventually tipped off, and the company was raided and the foreigners were detained by the Home Office. The fine this company was hit with was £50,000 (back during 2003), which they duly paid without so much as breaking into a sweat. For them, it was worth it as they got cheap labour, and the profit margin for selling contact lenses well outweighed the disadvantages of employing illegals. (All the local businesses on the trading estate knew about this, and it was the talk of the town for many weeks after). Simply put, where money is involved, someone, somewhere, is thinking of a way to pay less for more. Governments not withstanding. Oh, and I should point out that while the Labour government encouraged the rest of the world to settle in the UK, they failed to upgrade the Health Service and other vital services to cope with the influx of all these foreigners, meaning that people who have paid into the system all their working lives now find that they are at the back of the queue for any handouts that they are entitled to, such as medical treatment and social housing.