Mon, 22 Jul 2024 20:51:15 GMT

House building! Bit of a thread here, seeking answers/opinions.

So Labour set the target of 1.5 million homes, which sounds great

but how will it work, all I hear is more homes, normal homes and affordable

ones. But what is affordable?

Going to give an example from where I live(will be a lot of rounding.

So the average rental price in Swindon is £1200, the UK average salary is

£35K so take home £2350. The max you can borrow to buy on that salary

is £158k. Lenders want between 5-15% deposit so lets say 10% so you

would need £15.8k. So on the salary, lets say you can pay for all your

energy, insurances, clothes and food for £500 a month, thats £1700

a month. So you could save £650 a month for a deposit. So if you lived

a life of no fun you could save a deposit in 2 years.

But... The average house price in Swindon is £230k, the affordable 1 bed

apartments on the new build in Wichelstowe is £168k. So already it is

not affordable, but in two years it will not be £168k it will be more

and I don't believe the salary will keep up with the price increase.

We purchased our house in 2011 for £228k, its now worth £450k.

Then there is the problem of people building the houses, the skilled

workforce is aging. If we pursue this obsession with immigration

in 6 years time there will be 5 million more pensioners and 5 million

less in work and our fertlity rate is 1.56.

So if this 1.5 million homes is to be achieved, 1. We need immigration,

2. We need council houses not affordable homes. Even if you could boost

the fertility to 2.1 there is an 18 year lag.

What are your thoughts?

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