On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 15:35:42 -0000, "Owain"
wrote:

"Mike Mitchell" wrote
| The only thing that will bring the price of houses down is to
| increase the supply of dwellings (not necessarily houses alone;
| flats both to buy and rent are a huge source of supply
| across mainland Europe).

The real thing to bring the price of houses down is to deflate the economy
in London and the South-East and rejuvenate depressed areas. There are
streets and streets of perfectly good houses being demolished in parts of
the North-East of England, plenty of rural areas suffering depopulation, and
other rural areas where a huge proprtion of houses are second homes.

That is indeed very true and it's a crying shame that so much good
property is being scrapped. However, it still fits in with the supply
and demand equation, as down south there is the demand but reduced
supply, whereas oop north there are no jobs to pay for mortgages.

The problem is not dwellings, it's land (as IMM would say) and the answer is
not (as IMM would say) to abolish planning controls, it's to even out the
population and the economy across the country. A better and cheaper mass
transport infrastructure would help by rducing businesses' "need" to be in
London and the SE and other city centres and increasing the magic "1 hour
commute" area for housing.

I agree that an evening out would be a good thing (mine's a pint!).
But it's a lot quicker, certainly in the interim, to build more
housing wherever possible. You can have new housing available within a
few months of planning decisions having been made. But it's much more
difficult to persuade thousands of families to move, with all the
concommitant issues of work, relatives, roots, schooling, friends to
take account of.

MM