8 hours ago, markc said:

I remember a conversation I had in Florida in early 90’s the guy I was chatting with said a rule of thumb is your house is one years salary and a car is 6 months

This surely has to be completely out of date by now. What I've heard anecdotally is 4 x annual salary for house and 1 x annual salary for a car.

 

The house one sort of makes sense though you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere in the SE that metric really applies to, unless you're on a super high wage. 

 

And there is is no way I would spend a years salary on a car. Depreciating asset, used to be dirt cheap to lease it in the last few years though those deals are now long gone 😕

The average house price to income ratio is just under 8x in the US and 9x in the U.K.

 

Many years ago when I had a paper round I reckoned that on average people’s cars were worth about 10% of the value of their house. I would notice people who had massively expensive cars relative to the value of their house which I always thought was an odd way to spend your money. The ratio would depend a lot on local house prices though. In the same area today it would probably be around 5% which would make sense as the house price to income ratio has almost doubled. That’s probably consistent with around 6 months wages. The ratio of new cars prices to wages is much higher but the average car value is a lot lower once you consider second hand purchasers.

Actually I found the number. The average person spends £1100 a year in car purchase m/depreciation costs in the U.K. I’d have guessed more like 2k.

 

The average cost of a used car is 17k. It was less than 13k in 2019. Used car sales are almost 4x new car sales.

Interesting stuff.

 

For a foil from a less expensive area, see the below for a newbuild estate house in an attractive setting - estate backs onto a country park.

 

This is 3 bed, 2 bath with a single garage, and at 75sqm ignoring garage / 200k it comes out at £2666 per sqm purchase price. The garage could be converted into living space later.

 

That is towards the high end, but not beyond, the price range per sqm for already built houses in the area of similar size - which range between about £2000 per sqm and £2800 per sqm.

 

That may be an old  price, as the similar house is now on at £236k, which comes to £3125 per sqm. 

 

The develop is famously proud of how cheaply they buy their plots.

 

https://gleesonhomes.co.uk/developments/sutton-heights/033/

My friend bought a house priced at £2500 a square metre a couple of years ago in Edinburgh. The same houses are around £3000 a square metre now.

 

What I noticed though is the specs have been reduced to the bones, it looks like those Gleason houses are the same. No wardrobes. No fridge or freezer. No tiles at all in the WC. I reckon it would cost my friend the best part of 50k to get the spec up to the level in my parents’ build.

35 minutes ago, AliG said:

No wardrobes. No fridge or freezer. No tiles at all in the WC

I thought that was normal.

I have never bought a new house, but none of the ones I have bought had the above.

You get doors between rooms, maybe a tatty kitchen but that will come back into style.

About 25 years ago, Wimpey and Barratt started to strip the wardrobes out of their houses.

 

It was kind of ridiculous, you could see the shape of the bedroom and where the wardrobe had been originally which was now an alcove. They would also display the size of the rooms now measured into this alcove to make them seem larger than they actually were.

 

They now charge roughly £1000 per wardrobe to put doors across these alcoves and a shelf.

 

I think this became the norm in the lower end of the market, say £200k two bed terrace type houses, but has been gradually spreading up market. So the house I am talking about that my friend ought is 200sq metres and 5 bedrooms. The specification of the kitchen and bathrooms is considerably lower than a similar sized house would have had 20 years ago. Then integrated kitchen equipment, half tiling to bathrooms and wardrobes in three or four bedrooms would have been expected. Now you have to pay to upgrade the kitchen equipment and to get tiles anywhere other than wet areas and for wardrobes other than in the main bedroom. These things have moved from being standard in the mid market to the premium end.

 

The other thing they do is build houses with integral garages but no door into them. Again this would have been standard 20 years ago, but is now a £1500 optional extra.

 

On top of this when comparing costs to a self build you need to add landscaping costs which can be quite substantial. A lot of developer built houses are built 6m from the pavement so you can barely fit one car into the driveway. This massively reduces the cost of landscaping the front garden whilst the rear is left just as dirt. It also makes for streets that seem quite unpleasantly tight.

 

On the other hand regulations have increased the spec with solar panels now being standard and ASHPs likely to soon be standard with better insulation. I am yet to see a volume developer using triple glazing, however.

38 minutes ago, AliG said:

On top of this when comparing costs to a self build you need to add landscaping costs which can be quite substantial

I don't think you can really compare developer and self build prices.

Hard enough to compare similar houses in different streets, let alone different towns.

Earning potential seems to be the biggest driver of house prices rather than utility value.

53 minutes ago, AliG said:

About 25 years ago, Wimpey and Barratt started to strip the wardrobes out of their houses.

 

 

Totally agree with your comments

Wimpey and Barratt don't build homes, they build houses to make money for their shareholders. They should be forced to use Modern Method of Construction (MMC) and build at least to the AECB Standard.

7 hours ago, AliG said:

I am yet to see a volume developer using triple glazing, however.

Daughters house in Elgin, large development, MVHR and triple glazed gas boiler.  Don't think there were many built to that spec, as was soon dropped, cost too much, not enough people willing to pay over the top. The latest phase are double glazed with dMEV and some with ASHP.

29 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Daughters house in Elgin, large development, MVHR and triple glazed gas boiler.  Don't think there were many built to that spec, as was soon dropped, cost too much, not enough people willing to pay over the top. The latest phase are double glazed with dMEV and some with ASHP.

What EPC rating did it get?  I have yet to see a developer built house achieve an A.

Just looked online -

Energy B82,

CO2 - C80

 

8 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Just looked online -

Energy B82,

CO2 - C80

 

Nobody will buy a B rated fridge.  So why are the builders not striving to sell houses with an EPC A?  Surely with the rising fuel cost, buyers would regard that as something worth choosing?

1 minute ago, ProDave said:

Nobody will buy a B rated fridge.  So why are the builders not striving to sell houses with an EPC A?  Surely with the rising fuel cost, buyers would regard that as something worth choosing?

 

Because its just not a consideration when choosing where to live. Or if it is, its way down the list. I think most people buy a house based on location, then size and suitability.

 

Ive looked online at a awful lot of houses over the last 5 years. Plus a few in real life. Not once have i ever concerned myself with what the EPC says. (trying) to buy one now. To be honest, i dont know what its EPC rating is. Dont care. I know it wont be good. I'll deal with that later.

I must be unusual then.  I am starting to think of where my daughter might live when she leaves home possibly in a few years and looking at what is on the market does not inspire me, I don't want her to be battling with an ald leaky rubbish house like most of them seem to be.

18 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I must be unusual then.  I am starting to think of where my daughter might live when she leaves home possibly in a few years and looking at what is on the market does not inspire me, I don't want her to be battling with an ald leaky rubbish house like most of them seem to be.

Build her one then.

It'll be fun!

45 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Nobody will buy a B rated fridge.  So why are the builders not striving to sell houses with an EPC A?  Surely with the rising fuel cost, buyers would regard that as something worth choosing?

Because people have been too used to cheap energy. The house construction market is different in the UK compared to many other countries. The proportion of self built houses is much higher in many other European countries. Look how the big builders game the system when it comes to air tightness testing. Build one house well grt it tested and don’t bother so much about the others or even just frig the test. 

1 hour ago, Kelvin said:

Because people have been too used to cheap energy. The house construction market is different in the UK compared to many other countries. The proportion of self built houses is much higher in many other European countries. Look how the big builders game the system when it comes to air tightness testing. Build one house well grt it tested and don’t bother so much about the others or even just frig the test. 

 

I think that last bit is dont bother at all.

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

I must be unusual then.  

 

Clearly. Otherwise you wouldnt be here.

 

What percentage of the population builds there own home? Its surely fraction of one percent?

And what percentage of those actually go further than building regs?

Most self-builds should be better not least of all because building regs aren’t that hard a target to hit. New build estate houses could be much better for not a huge amount of extra cost.  

A lot of people find a build site, the architect designs it, they go to builder to build it, move in.  No clue about airtightness, why would you want to pay for even more insulation. The client doesn't know or doesn't realise they should know, it's a nice house it doesn't cost much to heat (compared to the 70s house they just moved from).  For most builders it's in the difficult box, so don't mention it.

 

When I was getting window quotes and mentioned triple glazed, the salesman first looked at me as if I two heads, then told me I was wasting my money.  That happened at 2 suppliers. I went to a third.

 

Contractors I had on site, just hadn't been involved in an airtight construction and just wanted to drill holes everywhere and anywhere.

 

The guys I had doing blockwork in the foundation saw my huge piles of insulation (164 sheets of 100mm PIR) and asked what's all that for and I said to go in the floor, he said why are you wasting your money - heat rises, it doesn't go down!

 

This site is a bit like Facebook - in that you are surrounded with people with a similar view on things, it's not reality to most people.  How many times do you see a topic where people wanting to install UFH for all good reasons, but don't realise without the insulation it's going to cost a fortune to run and not be very effective.

 

Airtightness and good insulation is great, it's not been over 10 degrees here for two days and I'm sat in a tee shirt, the rooms at 20 degrees. I may need to put the heating on next month, maybe I won't?

7 hours ago, JohnMo said:

it's not been over 10 degrees here for two days and I'm sat in a tee shirt, the rooms at 20 degrees

Glad I am not up your way, yesterday got to a low of 13°C, which is way above the temperature I need to turn my heating on.  How was at 22°C.

 

I do agree that if people do not know, what they do not know, they cannot do anything about it.

Having said that, there has been, over the last decade or more, enough talk on the mainstream media about our poorly insulated housing stock.  And younger people will have learnt about insulation at GCSE level science.  By younger I mean anyone under 50.

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Glad I am not up your way, yesterday got to a low of 13°C, which is way above the temperature I need to turn my heating on.  How was at 22°C.

Daytime high here yesterday 13 degrees and down to 7 degrees last night.  the next few days are going to remain cold, wind is from the north at the moment.

 

Yesterday evening, it was down to 19.5 in the living room.  I was instructed to light the stove.

We have a high of 11 today, dropping to 8 tonight.  Out with dog, cold wind from north.