Greens and Shelter get it all wrong on housing in london ..

[brasicritique]

not true. Many of the properties would have been vacated in the time since purchase. Either because the tenant died without having anyone to inherit the tenancy, or by them moving somewhere else, buying a place maybe. There would still be insufficient council housing, no doubt. But the situation wouldn't be quite as bad.

no many of the properties would not have been vacated as people would have put there sons or dauthers on the rentbook so it passed to them your agument here also relies on the asumption that the pople who would have died would not have been repleced by new council tennents your point also overllok the fact that without trtb people would not have been able to to afford to buy or move end of story so in fact the houisng situation in the uk would have been exactly the same

but its nice to see that you are not disagreeing with my hypthosis re disproportionate funding in housing for relativly rich professionals

this point is aimed at marty21

 

[brasicritique]

not true. Many of the properties would have been vacated in the time since purchase. Either because the tenant died without having anyone to inherit the tenancy, or by them moving somewhere else, buying a place maybe. There would still be insufficient council housing, no doubt. But the situation wouldn't be quite as bad.

No see above post as i ahve already said you assume that the council would not have moved tennets into the new properties which to be frank is not logical notr statisically viable

what happened with the rtb is that the tories out manoverd the left and the left would still rather blame those council tennents who took adavtage of the righ to buy for the shortage of housing as opposed to the real culprits th eprofession classes who have had a new form of rtb for them only

you see the reason imo people took up trtb is that the issue is as much about freedom - freedom from council fuckwits as much as housing and as these boards demonstrate just as many liberal or left wingers do not want the former working clasess to have freedom as much as right wingers look at the facism rabbits thread and yo uwill see many of these supposedly left wing and liberlas esstianlly arguing in favour of a didatic approach which itself iroincally boarders on the facsim thes epoeple clami to oppose

no the whole culture of blame surrounding the rtb is one of the reasons why the left no longer represents old working class interest while acting as an example of how political commentators and posters on these boards overlook the mass benefits that proffessional middle classess have gained since newshamebore came to power for example no where is this more evident than in HE

 

[belboid]

your assumption is wrong tho. i explicitly mentioned 'without having anyone to inherit the tenancy', you even quoted it. so either you can't read, or you are being deliberately dishonest.

as to 'blaming' those who bought their homes, where have i (or anyone else) done that? a complete fiction.

if you can only make your case by fabricating the argument against it, then you've pretty much lost the argument, imo.

 

[marty21]

no many of the properties would not have been vacated as people would have put there sons or dauthers on the rentbook so it passed to them your agument here also relies on the asumption that the pople who would have died would not have been repleced by new council tennents your point also overllok the fact that without trtb people would not have been able to to afford to buy or move end of story so in fact the houisng situation in the uk would have been exactly the same

but its nice to see that you are not disagreeing with my hypthosis re disproportionate funding in housing for relativly rich professionals

this point is aimed at marty21

ultimately those properties would have been emptied as the right of succession to a tenancy is not eternal, so new tenants would have replaced them. Sons and daughters if they were in a position to succeed, would have been offered a tenancy, but not in the larger property, but in a smaller one more appropriate to their housing need

if there was sufficient social housing, people would not feel the need to buy, owning your own home is a fairly recent thing, people, my parents rented either privately or a council place until the mid 70s, i suspect their experience was fairly common

i didn't agree that there is disproportionate funding for housing relatively rich professionals, i said there was a need tor key worker accommodation, and i doubt that most nurses and teachers would regard themselves as relatively rich.

 

[brasicritique]

your assumption is wrong tho. i explicitly mentioned 'without having anyone to inherit the tenancy', you even quoted it. so either you can't read, or you are being deliberately dishonest...

yes you are assuming that there were millions of oaps who would die and that the property would then be forever empty

btw thanks for the cant read bit weldone very trendy remeber to use the other usual hypocritical monocliq insults which think its cool touse mental illness as an insult still you could always go for the nazi insult

as to 'blaming' those who bought their homes, where have i (or anyone else) done that? a complete fiction..

i was not talking about you ( the defnsive virus spreads onwards ) i was referin gto the recular occurence and the point that marty21 was making that rtb is in partt blame its adverse effect on council housing and the wider point which you seem to be avoiding which is the culture of blame aimed at the working class for the shortage of afforbable housing - did you see that program on channel 4? are you suggesting that on other housing threads that the working class have NVER been blame din realtion to the right to buy and the shortage of housing

if you can only make your case by fabricating the argument against it, then you've pretty much lost the argument, imo.

Sorry nothing i have said is a fabrication you have not addressed any of the points i have made which are fair and there for debate - as marty21 has done all you have done is resort to insults so guess who has pretty much lost the arguement yes thats right its YOU yet another urban hypocritc who has completey ignored my point with regards to how housing for young professionals has been the priority for newshamebore at th ecost of housing for everyone as for your tagline its probably the most insulting as your more like the fart of the class struggle

 

[belboid]

yawn.. another bunch of irrelevancies and fabrications. and sentences so badly written as to be entirely incomprehensible.

thanks for the contribution ''

 

[brasicritique]

ultimately those properties would have been emptied as the right of succession to a tenancy is not eternal, so new tenants would have replaced them. Sons and daughters if they were in a position to succeed, would have been offered a tenancy, but not in the larger property, but in a smaller one more appropriate to their housing need .

the right to succesion is not eternal when it run out othe rpeople on the waiting list would have got the property so people would still have got to live in the property the only difference is that they would have been council tenents as opposed to priavt etennets but someone woul dhave still lived there which in relation to the point about not enough housing means that the effect is negligable in a wider sense

if there was sufficient social housing, people would not feel the need to buy, owning your own home is a fairly recent thing, people, my parents rented either privately or a council place until the mid 70s, i suspect their experience was fairly common.

yes there is not sufficient housing which is a poitn i think we both agree on and newshamebore have not increased hosuing for all just for some which happens to be young professionals some of whom work in the private sector yet still get preference for such housing

i didn't agree that there is disproportionate funding for housing relatively rich professionals, i said there was a need tor key worker accommodation, and i doubt that most nurses and teachers would regard themselves as relatively rich.

i take th epoint about nurses despite the fact it overlooks that not all nurses are low paid as for teachers this is a totally different story as is the police they are professionals so th epoint i made about housinfg for key workers who are the professional classes still stand - under newshamebore there housing needs are more important than the needs of the many this is even more the case when you think about how the government are still floating the idea of puttin gpeople on short term contracts and evicting them once they casn afford to rent in the priavte sector

the questiomn is will this policy included teachers policemen or even nurses? of course it wont it will only affect the poorest and most vulnerable as it all about moving people around in keeping with the ecomoic ideals of fordism

 

[brasicritique]

yawn.. another bunch of irrelevancies and fabrications. and sentences so badly written as to be entirely incomprehensible.

thanks for the contribution ''

no thank you for sticking with the preidictble and defensive poor grammer line of attack and for not enaging with any of my points which were fair an insult free still if theres one poster who irrlevent by name its you

marty21 has manged to engage in debate we are probably are going to have to agree to differ on some aspects which is the way most adults do while you have stormed off with crap insults in a sulk

if you cannot take it my friend then dont give it theres a word for such behavior its called immature

still well done

 

[durruti02]

lol, anyone who disagrees with you is ignorant then? do fuck off. as its an area i work in, i pay attention to such matters, and not just on my own doorstep. hence mentioning the need earlier to priorities the taking over of empty properties - something you did eventually do yourself in post 23.


well, we have discussed it before, and you recognised the fact previously, but then your memory seems to be poor considering the tosh you posted up without thinking through the consequences. it is pointless to simply go 'regen is shit' (much as i might agree with that in general), our point should surely be to expose and oppose the privatising aspect of it, whilst proposing al;ternatives that would genuinely benerfit our communities - both the ones that exist now, and the ones that will come into being due to the inevitable changes in the way people live their lives (not all of which are determined by capital, as you seem to simplistically suggest). crackpot 'get rich quick schemes' are of no value in doing that.


but that's what you are doing too (or were till you twigged about the number of empty properties).

Any campaign should, i think, be focused on bringing those empty properties into social housing. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any new builds, as plenty of the existing housing stock is shitty, and not suitable for the way people want to live today (ie in smaller households than thirty or fifty years ago).

belboid sorry but i do think you are in the nicest possible way ignorent of the specific conditions in london .. i am not talking theoretically but specifically

no sorry i have have zero recall of discussing your job or that it is in regen .. when was this?

"till i twigged" .. bloody hell mate i have been on about this for fucking years! lolroaf .. it is one of my fav subjects!! (that the empty homes agency press release came up was simply lucky!).. thats the point of the bloody thread my friend! that britain is FULL of empies .. lol you are a contrary one! ( search pathfinder on urban )

so you now accept my OP? .. that there is NO need for new build, that all new build is simply the state providing free housing for finance capital, that we need to develop sustainable employment and housing?

you suggest new build though where hosuing stock is bad .. hmm ... im experiance this is down usually to managemnet and lack of investment .. hundreds of thousends of units ahve recently been demolished unneccesasary simply imho to put money in the pockets of the builders .. again it is who where location power and managment ..

you still have not shown me how i was arguing for finance capital .. very confused as to where you get that from

 

[Prince Rhyus]

I would want the structure of the "housing market" to be fully investigated and the findings made public because the situation at the moment is crap. We are told that there is huge demand for housing yet construction seems to have stopped. Why? Is it because this demand has suddenly been met or is it because building homes has to have a sufficient level of "profitability" before anyone will build anything? (Is what is being built fit for purpose for our communities?)

Who are the landlords? How many of them are there? Who are the larger ones and who are the smaller ones? What responsibilities do they have? What responsibilities should they have? What is the role of social housing? (Is it a "safety net" or is it something more?) What are the roles of housing associations? What are the rights, roles and responsibilities of local authorities? Ditto for landlords and tennants? What is the breakdown of the cost of building different sorts of housing? What sorts of actions can/should the Gov't take to knock down poor quality stock so as to replace it with something better?

Come on people. Less of the Party for Working Socialism guff and more of a focus on the real issues that affect people who really are living in poor quality accommodation. And no, "Things will be better after the revolution" is not a comprehensive answer.

 

[belboid]

no thank you for sticking with the preidictble and defensive poor grammer line of attack and for not enaging with any of my points which were fair an insult free still if theres one poster who irrlevent by name its you

marty21 has manged to engage in debate we are probably are going to have to agree to differ on some aspects which is the way most adults do while you have stormed off with crap insults in a sulk

if you cannot take it my friend then dont give it theres a word for such behavior its called immature

still well done

a - i'm not your friend

b - it's hard to 'engage' with posts that are built entirely upon straw men, and where you don't reply to anything honestly. it is also pointless

c - the point of grammar is not to show off how good one is at english, but to make sentences comprehensible. yours was so bad i couldn't understand what you were on about.

d - there are a number of words for your behaviour too, i'm sure everyone here can guess what they are

 

[belboid]

so you now accept my OP? .. that there is NO need for new build, that all new build is simply the state providing free housing for finance capital, that we need to develop sustainable employment and housing?

you suggest new build though where hosuing stock is bad .. hmm ... im experiance this is down usually to managemnet and lack of investment .. hundreds of thousends of units ahve recently been demolished unneccesasary simply imho to put money in the pockets of the builders .. again it is who where location power and managment ..

I've accepted nothing of the kind. I would be very very surprised if the takeover of all empty properties in London* would be sufficient. Some new builds will be necessary, and provide better quality housing than would otherwise be the case.

Whilst it is often true that housing stock is crap due to bad management, we can't just wish that bad management away and then the stock will all be lovely, it will still need replacing (as will the management)

*If you are referring solely to a part of london, ie around the olympic regen areas, then it would probably be for the best if you said so straight off rather than simply saying 'london', which kinda made me think you were talking about the whole of london, funnily enough.

 

[durruti02]

I've accepted nothing of the kind. I would be very very surprised if the takeover of all empty properties in London* would be sufficient. Some new builds will be necessary, and provide better quality housing than would otherwise be the case.

Whilst it is often true that housing stock is crap due to bad management, we can't just wish that bad management away and then the stock will all be lovely, it will still need replacing (as will the management)

*If you are referring solely to a part of london, ie around the olympic regen areas, then it would probably be for the best if you said so straight off rather than simply saying 'london', which kinda made me think you were talking about the whole of london, funnily enough.

sorry mate but just why can't you just accept you were wrong on this?

- yet again you accept the status qou .. " we can't wish that bad management away" .. so whats the fucking point mate! i am involved in housing politic .. that is EXACTLY what we must do .. but not wish but organise and act

- you still have given no indication at all of how in any way i am supportting finace capital .. i find that incomprehensible .. i can only think that was an empty attempt at a dig

- the EHA backs me up entirely .. while there are so many empies nationally it is insane ( economically socially ecologically ) to spend so much on new build .. the explanation is ENTIRELY political

- the situation in east london IS the critical area for housing in london but relates to the whole of london, of which until lately the engine of IS in this area, which sorry you have shown your ignorence of

you also again talk about sufficent .. sufficnet for who? capital? .. i find it absurd the left no longer think in terms of planning but simply responding to the demands that capital put on us

 

[belboid]

why can't I accept I'm wrong? Because I'm not, and you are.

You distort entirely the meaning of my words "we can't wish that bad management away" - bad management led to shitty buildings which require demolition and....rebuilding. ie new homes. By simply saying 'its bad management' doesnt make shit homes into decent ones.

then you make an incredibly simplistic mistake, confusing 'all' and 'some'. Simply because some new homes needn't be built, existing, empty stock being a more sensible alternative, doesnt mean that ALL new homes should be stopped.

There are no issue re housing in south london? or west london? Or should everyone commute from the east?? thats you you being you-centric. arrogance personified!!

your support fro finance capital - your 'solutions' would actually benefit - as said before - the rentiers, and the mortgage companies, a more central part of finance capital than the companies that actually build things.

 

[brasicritique]

a - i'm not your friend

correct you are a moron

b - it's hard to 'engage' with posts that are built entirely upon straw men, and where you don't reply to anything honestly. it is also pointless

if you cant engae with posts then ow the fuck do you engae with people ? oh i forgot you engage with your sort of people ...you really are some hypocritical idiot -as i said before i raised fair points which you did not respond to you are a complte and utter twit if your suggesting that young professionals have not been the main beneficeries of government funding for housing then your not even a straw man more like a klenex man

c - the point of grammar is not to show off how good one is at english, but to make sentences comprehensible. yours was so bad i couldn't understand what you were on about.

well you di dotherwise you would not hav ebeen able to respond to it or make this pointless point which is a bit like you

d - there are a number of words for your behaviour too, i'm sure everyone here can guess what they are

sfw as i said you are immature arrogant and ignorant and your about as marxsist as tony blair and you know it

 

[brasicritique]

I would want the structure of the "housing market" to be fully investigated and the findings made public because the situation at the moment is crap. We are told that there is huge demand for housing yet construction seems to have stopped. Why? Is it because this demand has suddenly been met or is it because building homes has to have a sufficient level of "profitability" before anyone will build anything? (Is what is being built fit for purpose for our communities?)

Who are the landlords? How many of them are there? Who are the larger ones and who are the smaller ones? What responsibilities do they have? What responsibilities should they have? What is the role of social housing? (Is it a "safety net" or is it something more?) What are the roles of housing associations? What are the rights, roles and responsibilities of local authorities? Ditto for landlords and tennants? What is the breakdown of the cost of building different sorts of housing? What sorts of actions can/should the Gov't take to knock down poor quality stock so as to replace it with something better?

Come on people. Less of the Party for Working Socialism guff and more of a focus on the real issues that affect people who really are living in poor quality accommodation. And no, "Things will be better after the revolution" is not a comprehensive answer.

good post btw belbiod is not a socialist

 

[belboid]

I am six years old and am trying to pick a fight on the internet with someone I dont know from Adam

good luck with that

 

[brasicritique]

my name is belboid i have just used the qoute brackets to try and be funny as i am not a socialist but i am a very sad bastard

you said it

 

[belboid]

hey, seeing as it's nearly christmas, i'll be nice and thank you for at least capitalising my name correctly.

 

[brasicritique]

hey as its nearly xmas why dont you have the last word in a pointlessly inanae post as thats what you type of people have been rasied to belivie

marxsist indeed

 

[marty21]

the right to succesion is not eternal when it run out othe rpeople on the waiting list would have got the property so people would still have got to live in the property the only difference is that they would have been council tenents as opposed to priavt etennets but someone woul dhave still lived there which in relation to the point about not enough housing means that the effect is negligable in a wider sense



yes there is not sufficient housing which is a poitn i think we both agree on and newshamebore have not increased hosuing for all just for some which happens to be young professionals some of whom work in the private sector yet still get preference for such housing



i take th epoint about nurses despite the fact it overlooks that not all nurses are low paid as for teachers this is a totally different story as is the police they are professionals so th epoint i made about housinfg for key workers who are the professional classes still stand - under newshamebore there housing needs are more important than the needs of the many this is even more the case when you think about how the government are still floating the idea of puttin gpeople on short term contracts and evicting them once they casn afford to rent in the priavte sector

the questiomn is will this policy included teachers policemen or even nurses? of course it wont it will only affect the poorest and most vulnerable as it all about moving people around in keeping with the ecomoic ideals of fordism

i really don't know where you have got the idea from that social housing is mostly being built for professionals, take it from someone in the business, someone who until very recently was involved in major developments in east london, the majority of the stuff that the housing association i worked for, was for rented accommodation

 

[durruti02]

why can't I accept I'm wrong? Because I'm not, and you are.

You distort entirely the meaning of my words "we can't wish that bad management away" - bad management led to shitty buildings which require demolition and....rebuilding. ie new homes. By simply saying 'its bad management' doesnt make shit homes into decent ones.

then you make an incredibly simplistic mistake, confusing 'all' and 'some'. Simply because some new homes needn't be built, existing, empty stock being a more sensible alternative, doesnt mean that ALL new homes should be stopped.

There are no issue re housing in south london? or west london? Or should everyone commute from the east?? thats you you being you-centric. arrogance personified!!

your support fro finance capital - your 'solutions' would actually benefit - as said before - the rentiers, and the mortgage companies, a more central part of finance capital than the companies that actually build things.

yes you simply are wrong and the EHA report shows it btw this was your first post .. the first half simply ignored my OP and the second half is simply childish

"it is blatantly obvious that what is required is a hell of a lot more social housing, and a hell of a lot less private housing. it's about the balance of such building, not whether it happens at all.

the only thing i can conclude from d's comments is that he wants to stop any migration into london (whether from the rest of the uk or anywhere else). which is a straightforwardly nonsensical policy that will never, and should never, happen. how would anyone propose stopping people moving? a ring of steel around the metropolis? a new border guard"

still you ignore why there is this demand in london for new homes when there are SO many empties and now you make the assertion that the solution for badly managed homes is demolition. really? why then are once derlict tower blocks top price now yuppy flats?? why are the victorian terraces and georguian town houses that were slums here 30 years ago now the miost expensive properties? why is the most in demand oap flatrs in edinburgh an ex junky haven tower block ..

you know it is interesting you say you are in regen ( as your posting on thsi thread reflects it ) .. as regen seems to be the problem over and over .. middle class professionals spending billions over the years disrupting communities over and over again

are you also aware of the years old debate on VAT on refurbishment? why is it that refurb is chaged at 17% yet new build at 0% .. why is it people who have shafted us for decades are SO keen on new housing??

for someone so political mate you are missing a whole load of signs and issues here ..

btw i have never said NO new housing EVER needs to be built .. simply that NOW, the only sane and sensible and serious and economic and ecological solution is 1) fill empties and refurb rundown and 2) develop sustainable housing as part of a sustainable economy instead of simply building housing for capital

ok i see your point about that by NOT building for finance capital this benefits the speculators?? well ok in the short term but really that is pretty irrelevent to the whole point isn't it? to develop a system in which these parasites don't exist??

btw you really do NOT understand the london economy if you think i was doing some arrogent east side thing ( shakes head)

 

[belboid]

if i thought that, its because of what you wrote, not cos of my understanding, or lack of, the london economy. yes, its obvious that at the moment, for many reasons, the east end is the single most important part regarding housing, but there is a lot going on in the rest of the city as well that is also important, and that has somewhat different circumstances tp the ee. if everything is seen through the prism of the ee redevelopments, it gives a distorted view.

on new housing and refurbs...Did you ever say 'no new housing ever, well no, bu this:

battles over %'s instead of actually asking why we need ANY new housing in the first place .. and the answer to that is that the market is demanding new housing to house it's docklands clerks

gives a strong impression that you are against pretty much and new build at the moment.

of course it is true that the vat on refurbs is shameful, and yes it is one of the factors as to why refurbs dont happen when they could. but sometimes, even if there were no VAT on refurbs, those places shouldn't be simply done up. often they were badly planned in the first place, and/or have just got too run down for it ever to be economical to refurbish them. and then there is the fact that many were built for a time when people wanted larger dwellings, for bigger families. people today - working-class people as well as yuppies, want smaller accommodation (okay, 'want' is not quite the right word ther, most of us would like somewhere i bit bigger with more room, but i'm talking about the decrease in size of average household here).

and on 'bad management' - no, of course simply having been badly run for a while doesnt mean a place should be pulled down, but, like above, sometimes they have got just too fucked up to save.

the question in those circumstances then becomes 'how can we make sure that the replacements are not just for yuppies, or are a way of pushing working-class tenants out of the area?' If you don't base the argument about what replaces the crap, then you're effectively saying it's better to live in such places. That is not always the case, and there are undoubtedly many occasions when outright opposition to redevelopments is the right way to go. But your op seemed to be far to biased in the opposite direction.

Sorry if I have been a tad narky, but I'm sure you do remember from previous threads that I'm a right grumpy, narky bugger, and I only get so exasperated with you because you're obviously 95% spot on, but then...you have your moments...in my ever so humble, of course

 

[durruti02]

sorry belboid not been on here much lately so belated thanks for your comments

the EHA stuff is imho really really interesting .. i really do pretty much believe ALL the east london and i suspect most other, major social housing projects are more about privatisation and land grabs than providing improved housing

 

[brasicritique]

i really don't know where you have got the idea from that social housing is mostly being built for professionals, take it from someone in the business, someone who until very recently was involved in major developments in east london, the majority of the stuff that the housing association i worked for, was for rented accommodation

yes the ONE you worked for part buy part rent is just that

key workers are professionals professionals are mostly middleclass hence the gentfrtcation of a lot of urban areas across the uks citys while the housign shortage increases these professionals under part rent part buy can buy there flats

if the right to buy for concil tennets most who cannot afford to buy anyway is wrong then why is part rent part buy not wrong as well

this whole idea that the rtb is responsible for the lack of housing like below is nonsesne

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7748660.stm

is just another example of how those at the bottom of society are being scapegoeted for the economic down turn AND shortage of housing why and how some so called left wing posters on this thred cannot see how they are doing the work of the mail by attacking council tennents which they are doing by attacking the right to buy is beyond me

good to see that the double standards of middle britan are alive and well on urban

 

[marty21]

i've been against rtb since the mid 70s tbf, nothing to do with the current economic situation, my mum wanted to buy out council house and I didn't think it was fair (I was 10) with millions on the waiting list, there shouldn't be rtb imo, if someone can afford to buy their council place, they can afford to buy privately...

 

[vonHayek]

I am getting more and more sick of reading Anthony Sampson from Shelter and now apparrently the London Greens, arguing that building social housing is the answer to the lack of social housing in london

.. are they really that blind / stupid that they don't realise that hundreds of thousends of housing units, both private and social housing ( RSL/HA) ) have been added to london over the last 10-15 years, and that at the same time tens of thousends of council units have been sold

.. and that fundamentally housing is about demand NOT supply and fundamentally that is about society and the economy.

At times i think Sampson is simply a spokesman for the House Builders Fed or at least new labour .. but surely the greens should be a bit more savvy??

at least the lib dems seem to be saying some interesting stuff including demanding empty property is socialised ..

It is fundamentally about supply I think. The centralized planning procedures which restrict land use decrease the available land supply thus raising the price of housing.

The decision to build houses on land or to sell land for housing should be up to the seller of the land not some committee. Contract negotiations and compensation should be used to get the local communities to agree if the development puts anyone out (I doubt that it really would but just in case).

I'm sure unnecessary building regulations put a bit on the bill for a house as well.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It is fundamentally about supply I think. The centralized planning procedures which restrict land use decrease the available land supply thus raising the price of housing.

"Centralised planning procedures" scarcely exist anymore, except insofar as developers can appeal to central government if turned down by local planning authorities.

The decision to build houses on land or to sell land for housing should be up to the seller of the land not some committee. Contract negotiations and compensation should be used to get the local communities to agree if the development puts anyone out (I doubt that it really would but just in case).

This has to depend on the type of land, it's location and geology. Committees often have this knowledge to hand, whereas the seller may not.

I'm sure unnecessary building regulations put a bit on the bill for a house as well.

You obviously haven't compared modern building regulations with those of the 1970s, or even the 1940s, if you believe that. Our building industry constructs properties to a minimum standard. There are very few (if any) "unnecessary" building regs anymore. We've been experiencing a "build it cheap, sell it as high as possible" surge of jerry-building for about a quarter of a century now, with no "unneccessary" regulation getting in the way.

 

[vonHayek]

Local planning authorities are what i would call 'central planning' as it involves more than the buyer and seller and they also implement regional plans.

Committees only get their knowledge from the owners of the land (at least at one stage). The idea that a centralised body can have more knowledge than the owner about the land the owner has is ludicrous.

yes, building regs enforce a minimum. This is why they raise the cost of buildings and not set a maximum cost.

 

[belboid]

do you also call black white, and just make things up as you go along, perchance?