The downsides of the Government’s 1.5m New Build Homes

Please say the last time you went past a new secondary school, primary school, doctors surgery or hospital being built? The deafening silence concurs with myself – me neither.

So putting our political differences aside, building some more homes I dare say may be needed, however why are the Government embarking on the largest house building scheme since The War with their wish to build 1.5m homes, when I feel we haven’t got some basic core foundations resolved?

What about infrastructure?

Firstly we’re not putting in the infrastructure. Depending on what side of the fence you are sat on, it may sound impressive that the Government are embarking on this epic build-out, however is building onto the fringes of existing towns and villages really the way to go? As I see it, these towns already have the infrastructure in place to supply their existing populations. Why then would we expand these locations and spread the infrastructure in place even more thinly, so everyone loses out?

As an example, in Harrogate there are already signs of a two-tier housing market. As infrastructure has made no advances, if you want your children to go to one of the state secondary schools in town, you need to buy into catchment. These town centre properties come with a premium for this factor alone, with those in fringe locations going for less. So whilst one may be able to buy a cheaper property on the outskirts, does this actually solve anything?

Current empty properties?

It has always frustrated me that we have nearly 700,000 empty properties in the country currently, with over 260,000 of these classed as long term empty. In addition, there are about 165,000 empty commercial units. One can clearly see that the spaces already exist, but why are we not incentivising these property owners and developers to make good what we already have, rather than build on green/grey belt?

What is ‘affordable housing’?

Often there is a blurring of the lines on what ‘affordable housing’ really is. These are homes that are built for housing associations to help those struggling financially. They are not for those in say their early 20’s, trying to get onto the housing ladder at a level they can afford. We often see developments advertising 3, 4 or 5 bedroom homes, but do the youngsters want these type of properties in out of town locations? We are not building the right types of property for the right types of people.

Quality of New Builds?

Of more concern is that The New Homes Ombudsman reported the other week that its voluntary scheme only covers 55% of homes currently being built and it needs more powers to protect buyers from poor quality housing. One then overlays that an increasing number of conveyancing solicitors will not act for buyers of new build homes due to the liabilities involved. If The Ombudsman and solicitors are saying this before we’ve put more spades in the ground, we should all be worried.

Do the Government have enough experience in this area?

Whilst there are numerous other points I could comment on, I feel we are sleepwalking past the point of no return. Our politicians who rarely have any property experience, are making monumental decisions that will not only affect us all now, but impact future generations too. Once our farmers’ fields are built on, there is no going back. Political posturing in any free market always has unintended consequences and housing is no exception.

Maybe…

Rather than building onto existing towns or creating isolated developments with no infrastructure – why don’t we look to build some new towns? Let our best architects and developers go wild and create self-contained conurbations with all the schools, medical facilities and shops they could want. Now that would be exciting and something to be proud of!