Yeah, I think for a great number of people those dreams had been smashed long before Sunak slithered into power.
>Today – in a further sign of the party building a more substantial policy programme for an expected general election next year – Starmer vows to reverse recent Tory changes on planning and re-introduce targets to ensure the private sector builds at least 300,000 new homes a year.
Good. I’m always a bit cynical when parties start trumpeting about hot-button issues, as it’s so easy to whip up emotions without saying anything substantial, but here we have some actual policy suggestions.
>Starmer said this could be achieved by giving local councils greater powers to answer local housing needs.
Hmmm. The power to allow is also the power to block, need safeguards to stop the NIMBYs from objecting to everything.
>He also said first-time buyers would be given “first dibs” on buying new local houses, with overseas buyers being blocked from purchasing them, as part of a drive to address issues of intergenerational unfairness.
I’m curious how this would actually work. If a FTB offers £200k and then someone else comes in at £215k, does the builder have to accept the first offer?
>Lisa Nandy, the shadow housing secretary, promised help for first-time buyers, saying: “Labour will also support first-time buyers with a comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme
Oh dear. Their plan is…inflate the housing market even further. Might help some buyers but will screw renters.
cant wait to see Labour fail on this as well.
​
No one really believes the system will change, Labour is only the “slow the rot” party.
Getting far too personal. Fight the policies. It’s an open goal. And don’t just assume everybody will run to labour. And if they don’t no need to get angry or ‘disappointed’.
so he’s actually going to do little about it then. Reintroducing ‘targets’ – so he’s already passing the buck to councils who presumably will be allowed to fail to hit targets if there are too many NIMBY’s, awkward planners/developers. Starmer can’t sack councils, only local voters can really.
Saying he will sub first time buyers. How much by? That may not produce any new properties, so there will just be more pressure on those that there are, further stoking the house price inflation.
I don’t really see how Sunak is particularly to blame, the problems been worsening for decades, including the previous Labour govenrment – so how about he actually tells us a plan?
Interesting how property has become unaffordable across the anglosphere at pretty much the same time.
Whilst homebuilding targets are a good step introducing yet more support for FTBs will just inflate the market further; especially if it’s only for new builds. You can’t solve a supply issue by increasing demand.
Seems rather vapid as per usual under Keir.
Honestly something drastic is needed at this point, like property developers being exempt from corporate income tax for 5 years as distasteful as that is.
They need to flood the market with new homes.
Labour, Lid Dems, Greens and a lot of Conservative backbenchers all opposed the creation of areas where councils could build homes free from local planning objections. They termed it a developers charter. The Lib Dem’s won a by election by opposing it and Labour put it on all their leaflets.
Local councils and voters are often strongly against building and this is not even taking into account the massive labour shortage within the construction industry. We need more homes but it is a pipe dream to think you can do this without being unpopular in a lot of the areas you need to win seats and without reform of migration rules.
It’s not even a dream of home ownership. It’s a dream of “having somewhere secure and decent to live”.
Labour should make access to housing, not having a mortgage, their goal.
House prices started to rocket in the late 90s through the 2000s. Prices tracked wages fairly consistently as an average through the 70s, 80s and early 90s. The point at which house prices started to outstrip wages at an increasing rate was around 2002 until the market crash of 2008 and it took until 2015 for house prices to return to that peak.
This is not a defence of the Tories, they have done nothing but exacerbate that trend and the chaos of the covid price boom and interest rate spike has sent the housing/wage ratio to the moon. They’ve been all too happy to sit back and let it happen because it benefits them and their mates/donors.
However, lets not pretend that Labour governments are responsible custodians of the economy. This situation was started due to the policies tabled by the Blair government in the early 2000s which led them to run the country into the dirt.
Blair put the dream of homeowner ship on life support. The Tories were more than happy to pull the plug.
I’m no fan of Sunak, and I don’t think he cares *at all* about tackling this issue…
but it’s a far deeper and long running issue than just the current government and Conservative Party. And I haven’t seen a solution (if there is one) from Labour either.
The solution.
Ban right to buy.
Bring in rent controls in city centres.
Allow people (who can afford to pay rent for years at much higher levels than mortgage) to get a mortgage with good rent payment history.
Do real “levelling up” not the empty words the Tories use so not everyone is trying to live in the SE.
Labour didn’t help this situation back in the 90s either.
They knew they had to build more social housing after Thatcher allowed people to buy their council house but they did bugger all.
Probs because they couldn’t work out a way to link it into PFIs.
Cool. So is Starmer going to commit to building back the social housing stock that was decimated under Thatcher, and subsequent PMs have ignored the obvious problem this creates. I won’t hold my breath.
The problem with all the home building targets is that you’re dooming too many people to be stuck in new builds. I’m sure they’re out there, but I’ve never seen a new build that wasn’t thrown up by the laziest, corner-cutters I’ve ever seen. The state of some is downright embarrassing.
Until quality and building regs are better enforced, people will be stuck in 250k flat-pack houses that constantly need major repairs and work done as you slowly discover leaks, gaps, poor plumbing, poor ventilation, structural issues, safety issues left behind by developers whose staff cut corners or just fucked up their task and got it signed off anyway.
Also we need to limit landlords buying everything up. No one can buy if a cash investor is swooping in every time.
It’s been dead for years. Since the early 2000s at least.
The average salary in the 80s was 15k a year. The average salary today is 28k a year.
The average 2 bed house in the 80s was 50k. The average 2 bed house today is 250k-300k.
My dad bought our home in 86 for 55k. He sold it in 2004 for 280k.
The housing market has been fucked for a loooong time.
The solution is to repeal the Town and County Planning Act.
The only reason NIMBYs have power is because it was given to them.
Sadly Labour weren’t much better, I remember (2005ish) Gordon Brown boasting about house prices going up.
What we need is a massive house building programme in the country and not where commuters want to live, but where the jobs are. For rural/coastal areas, a council house building (with no right to buy) is needed with only workers in local industries (whether it’s farming, tourism or just running the corner shop) allowed to have them.
I still can’t get a mortgage because of defaults on my credit file from that time a few years ago where I wasn’t allowed to work or earn an income even though I was employed
Keir Starmer and previous Labour governments have “killed dream of social housing for all” and replaced it with a reality of expensive, badly built houses mostly owned by finance corporations as assets (or liabilities) for inconsistent so-called socialists to pass on as inherited wealth.
Not a fan of Richi but to say this is his fault is uninformed.
Tons of factors to the current housing issue.
And when all these young people vote labour and realise the socialist utopia is a crock of shit….they’ll vote tory
I don’t trust labour as well. I don’t want Help to Buy V2 which will cause a house price inflation again.
This is what’s needed in my opinion
1. Control immigration
2. Landlord registry and HMO Registry so rogue landlords can be clamped down to avoid tax avoiding landlords.
3. Ban foreign investment, and x5 council tax for current foreign investors.
4. Allow banks to only lend max 3.5x salary for a single person, and 5x salary for a couple (joint mortgages)
5. Regulate estate agents where a house being bought for residential purposes over BTL landlords takes priority
6. Clamp down on Air BNB and any other short term let’s, massive tax and limits to how many allowed depending on the area.
7. Get rid of stamp duty for people moving but keep stamp duty for landlords
8. Increase tax for landlords owning more than 3 properties
9. Build more houses, less restrictions for building.
This would resolve the situation in the long-term, in the short term for those who purchased high or for people who need to rent will obviously be squeezed but this is the only way so these people need to be sacrificed for the greater good. If not then the only place we are heading is more feudalism similar to most other countries like India, Bangladesh, Japan etc where there is massive disparity of rich and poor. To have a solution we need to accept there will be short term pain
The ‘dream’ started to die long before Rishi Sunak. Think Tony Blair.
25 comments
Yeah, I think for a great number of people those dreams had been smashed long before Sunak slithered into power.
>Today – in a further sign of the party building a more substantial policy programme for an expected general election next year – Starmer vows to reverse recent Tory changes on planning and re-introduce targets to ensure the private sector builds at least 300,000 new homes a year.
Good. I’m always a bit cynical when parties start trumpeting about hot-button issues, as it’s so easy to whip up emotions without saying anything substantial, but here we have some actual policy suggestions.
>Starmer said this could be achieved by giving local councils greater powers to answer local housing needs.
Hmmm. The power to allow is also the power to block, need safeguards to stop the NIMBYs from objecting to everything.
>He also said first-time buyers would be given “first dibs” on buying new local houses, with overseas buyers being blocked from purchasing them, as part of a drive to address issues of intergenerational unfairness.
I’m curious how this would actually work. If a FTB offers £200k and then someone else comes in at £215k, does the builder have to accept the first offer?
>Lisa Nandy, the shadow housing secretary, promised help for first-time buyers, saying: “Labour will also support first-time buyers with a comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme
Oh dear. Their plan is…inflate the housing market even further. Might help some buyers but will screw renters.
cant wait to see Labour fail on this as well.
​
No one really believes the system will change, Labour is only the “slow the rot” party.
Getting far too personal. Fight the policies. It’s an open goal. And don’t just assume everybody will run to labour. And if they don’t no need to get angry or ‘disappointed’.
so he’s actually going to do little about it then. Reintroducing ‘targets’ – so he’s already passing the buck to councils who presumably will be allowed to fail to hit targets if there are too many NIMBY’s, awkward planners/developers. Starmer can’t sack councils, only local voters can really.
Saying he will sub first time buyers. How much by? That may not produce any new properties, so there will just be more pressure on those that there are, further stoking the house price inflation.
I don’t really see how Sunak is particularly to blame, the problems been worsening for decades, including the previous Labour govenrment – so how about he actually tells us a plan?
Interesting how property has become unaffordable across the anglosphere at pretty much the same time.
Whilst homebuilding targets are a good step introducing yet more support for FTBs will just inflate the market further; especially if it’s only for new builds. You can’t solve a supply issue by increasing demand.
Seems rather vapid as per usual under Keir.
Honestly something drastic is needed at this point, like property developers being exempt from corporate income tax for 5 years as distasteful as that is.
They need to flood the market with new homes.
Labour, Lid Dems, Greens and a lot of Conservative backbenchers all opposed the creation of areas where councils could build homes free from local planning objections. They termed it a developers charter. The Lib Dem’s won a by election by opposing it and Labour put it on all their leaflets.
Local councils and voters are often strongly against building and this is not even taking into account the massive labour shortage within the construction industry. We need more homes but it is a pipe dream to think you can do this without being unpopular in a lot of the areas you need to win seats and without reform of migration rules.
It’s not even a dream of home ownership. It’s a dream of “having somewhere secure and decent to live”.
Labour should make access to housing, not having a mortgage, their goal.
House prices started to rocket in the late 90s through the 2000s. Prices tracked wages fairly consistently as an average through the 70s, 80s and early 90s. The point at which house prices started to outstrip wages at an increasing rate was around 2002 until the market crash of 2008 and it took until 2015 for house prices to return to that peak.
This is not a defence of the Tories, they have done nothing but exacerbate that trend and the chaos of the covid price boom and interest rate spike has sent the housing/wage ratio to the moon. They’ve been all too happy to sit back and let it happen because it benefits them and their mates/donors.
However, lets not pretend that Labour governments are responsible custodians of the economy. This situation was started due to the policies tabled by the Blair government in the early 2000s which led them to run the country into the dirt.
Blair put the dream of homeowner ship on life support. The Tories were more than happy to pull the plug.
I’m no fan of Sunak, and I don’t think he cares *at all* about tackling this issue…
but it’s a far deeper and long running issue than just the current government and Conservative Party. And I haven’t seen a solution (if there is one) from Labour either.
The solution.
Ban right to buy.
Bring in rent controls in city centres.
Allow people (who can afford to pay rent for years at much higher levels than mortgage) to get a mortgage with good rent payment history.
Do real “levelling up” not the empty words the Tories use so not everyone is trying to live in the SE.
Labour didn’t help this situation back in the 90s either.
They knew they had to build more social housing after Thatcher allowed people to buy their council house but they did bugger all.
Probs because they couldn’t work out a way to link it into PFIs.
Cool. So is Starmer going to commit to building back the social housing stock that was decimated under Thatcher, and subsequent PMs have ignored the obvious problem this creates. I won’t hold my breath.
The problem with all the home building targets is that you’re dooming too many people to be stuck in new builds. I’m sure they’re out there, but I’ve never seen a new build that wasn’t thrown up by the laziest, corner-cutters I’ve ever seen. The state of some is downright embarrassing.
Until quality and building regs are better enforced, people will be stuck in 250k flat-pack houses that constantly need major repairs and work done as you slowly discover leaks, gaps, poor plumbing, poor ventilation, structural issues, safety issues left behind by developers whose staff cut corners or just fucked up their task and got it signed off anyway.
Also we need to limit landlords buying everything up. No one can buy if a cash investor is swooping in every time.
It’s been dead for years. Since the early 2000s at least.
The average salary in the 80s was 15k a year. The average salary today is 28k a year.
The average 2 bed house in the 80s was 50k. The average 2 bed house today is 250k-300k.
My dad bought our home in 86 for 55k. He sold it in 2004 for 280k.
The housing market has been fucked for a loooong time.
The solution is to repeal the Town and County Planning Act.
The only reason NIMBYs have power is because it was given to them.
Sadly Labour weren’t much better, I remember (2005ish) Gordon Brown boasting about house prices going up.
What we need is a massive house building programme in the country and not where commuters want to live, but where the jobs are. For rural/coastal areas, a council house building (with no right to buy) is needed with only workers in local industries (whether it’s farming, tourism or just running the corner shop) allowed to have them.
I still can’t get a mortgage because of defaults on my credit file from that time a few years ago where I wasn’t allowed to work or earn an income even though I was employed
Keir Starmer and previous Labour governments have “killed dream of social housing for all” and replaced it with a reality of expensive, badly built houses mostly owned by finance corporations as assets (or liabilities) for inconsistent so-called socialists to pass on as inherited wealth.
Not a fan of Richi but to say this is his fault is uninformed.
Tons of factors to the current housing issue.
And when all these young people vote labour and realise the socialist utopia is a crock of shit….they’ll vote tory
I don’t trust labour as well. I don’t want Help to Buy V2 which will cause a house price inflation again.
This is what’s needed in my opinion
1. Control immigration
2. Landlord registry and HMO Registry so rogue landlords can be clamped down to avoid tax avoiding landlords.
3. Ban foreign investment, and x5 council tax for current foreign investors.
4. Allow banks to only lend max 3.5x salary for a single person, and 5x salary for a couple (joint mortgages)
5. Regulate estate agents where a house being bought for residential purposes over BTL landlords takes priority
6. Clamp down on Air BNB and any other short term let’s, massive tax and limits to how many allowed depending on the area.
7. Get rid of stamp duty for people moving but keep stamp duty for landlords
8. Increase tax for landlords owning more than 3 properties
9. Build more houses, less restrictions for building.
This would resolve the situation in the long-term, in the short term for those who purchased high or for people who need to rent will obviously be squeezed but this is the only way so these people need to be sacrificed for the greater good. If not then the only place we are heading is more feudalism similar to most other countries like India, Bangladesh, Japan etc where there is massive disparity of rich and poor. To have a solution we need to accept there will be short term pain
The ‘dream’ started to die long before Rishi Sunak. Think Tony Blair.