On 09/11/2016 17:49, tim... wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 09/11/16 12:10, tim... wrote:

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
I've just watched John Snow's report from the US. Utter total
one-sided bias against Trump. Staggeringly one-sided.
Now Dispatches are on about the housing shortage. They mention that
it's partly due to the 'massive population increase' but they don't
say why the population has increased.

well you *can* see why they did that

they were making a specific point about how the house builders
artificially increase the price of housing by restricting supply

If they got bogged down in political claims about whether immigration is
a good thing or not, their main point would become a secondary gripe and
been complete missed

IF population was stable we would only be building new houses by
tearing down old ones.

There's a greater demand because more and more people aspire to an own
house

It's not that long ago that 4 families would share a tenement block with
2 rooms each (if they could afford 2 rooms!)

Quite hard to restrict stocks to elevate prices.

It's what they do

They have PP for an Estate for 500 houses and you think "that will help
with the local demand"

25+ years ago they would have built all 500 in one go and moved onto the
next estate.

now they build them out at 50 per year

That's because you can't get enough manpower to build 500 houses at once
and nobody will buy them if they did.

They build them at the rate they think they can sell them as having
built houses in stock costs them money. Selling houses makes them money,
sometimes just holding onto the land makes them money, but its risky as
PP only lasts for a couple of years IIRC.

Demand dropped quite suddenly about 25 years ago and a few builders
around here were left with built houses they couldn't sell and they
ended up selling them to housing associations/councils on the cheap. The
private buyers weren't very happy.

The builders aren't going to get caught doing that again.

If you want to get all 500 built quickly you are going to need more
poles and a lot of cash to burn.