Nimrod103 wrote:It would help housing supply if the costs of moving were reduced. Stamp duty is a big disincentive to move - it reduces the attraction of buying medium to large houses, and in my area is encouraging a huge increase in house extension (up, down and sideways).
My impression travelling around is that we currently have high rates of new house building, and house enlargement throughout the country. In my own county of Kent, there are large new housing estates currently being added to my town and several others. I have just come down from Norfolk where the market towns I drove through are all being expanded, Last summer I was in the Cotswolds, and almost every village had new building in evidence. Given this, there is absolutely no reason for high prices, unless demand is still outstripping supply.
However, in all the areas of these new builds, there is no expenditure on infrastructure. Almost no new roads. No new railways. No new bus routes. Only more cars and congestion. No new schools with playing fields - the single new primary school built in my town just as a little yard, and people seem to think that is OK!!.
Completions are still low and well below pre 2008 levels, the smaller builders/developers (who built 30% of completions) got squeezed out of the market as they could not readily access debt funding and relied on banks and specialist property development funders- a lot of sites have lain moribund since (I directly have had dealings with two former ones we owned and now carry overages on and two a work colleague has an interest in, a total of over 100 houses)
However I did get some good news on one last week, a 35 unit site where we are no longer the developer but which we sold with a trailing overage has just, per the new developer, received agreement to fund from a bank- there are stirrings and maybe someone will now start actually completing the planned 24,000 North Edinburgh/Waterfront development which currently has a smattering of completed developments, now ageing, and a smattering of brownfield vacant sites.