Short self-build series on Radio 4

[DavidFrancis]

"You and Yours" are having a few items on self-building this week.  Today's item was on government supported self-build in Holland (go to one place, select a plot, select one of many designs, select a builder, select some financing etc, and all at a fixed price).  Sounds well-organised and apparently about a third of new Dutch houses are now self-build.

 

Available here, about 22 minutes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07lfkj9

Edited July 25, 2016 by DavidFrancis
Added some more detail

[Crofter]

Thanks, there was also an interesting piece on today about housing- figures showing a big drop in first time buyers. It's an interesting area as those in power try to juggle the various demands and needs of tenants, landlords, developers, existing home owners, etc. Very easy to make it unfair on some people no matter what you do, because the sums of money involved are so large, for most people.

[SteamyTea]

It is the lack of transactions at the bottom end of the market that is skewing the mean house value prices.

 

There is also the point to be made that asset value is not income, so take someone that bought a £150,000 house in 1987, it is now worth around £800,000 if you take the mean national house price inflation figures, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/housing-index

They have not earned any cash from that property, have not had any dividends etc, but have had, in most cases, a lot of outgoings i.e. maintenance, mortgage, heating, insurance etc.

So saying there is a lot of money at stake is not really correct.  We could easily halve the value of housing in the UK, so take it back to around 2000 prices (when the IMF warned the UK that property was seriously overpriced) and it would not material affect the economy of the nation, though it would cause a few personal tragedies for those that have borrowed against property and/or over borrowed.  But that group are probably in trouble anyway and they would still have halve their mortgage term to correct it.

There would be an initial shock as the big investors hunted for other markets to invest in, but that could be a good thing, investing in fixed assets that only rely on sector inflation is a high risk strategy that can go seriously wrong, when it goes wrong.  Our pension funds have still to recovered from the last two property slumps, and they still invest heavily in property.

[Crofter]

Good analysis, but the point I was making is that it's hard to fiddle with the housing market without upsetting somebody. 

As you say, some people are over-exposed to risk.

[ToughButterCup]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

[...]

So saying there is a lot of money at stake is not really correct.  We could easily halve the value of housing in the UK, so take it back to around 2000 prices (when the IMF warned the UK that property was seriously overpriced) and it would not material affect the economy of the nation, though it would cause a few personal tragedies for those that have borrowed against property and/or over borrowed.  But that group are probably in trouble anyway and they would still have halve their mortgage term to correct it.

[...]

 

@SteamyTea at his analytical best. 

Normally you'd have to pay good money to read content as  statistically literate as this. It'd be behind a pay wall.

Thanks Steamy!

Ian

[SteamyTea]

I did pay good money for it, I still owe more on my student load than I borrowed.

Oh how I wish I had been told that common sense and a bit of general reading could be converted into an Economics BSc, I would never have taken up engineering and Physics/Mathematics.