Why property runs deeper than bricks and mortar: Alex Goldstein

The houses being pushed are for affordable homes, which are not for the young twenty-somethings trying to get on the housing ladder. They are for housing associations to help those on the financial fringes of society. Now that’s all well and good, however we are still building the wrong types of properties in the wrong locations, which ends up helping nobody.

A good proportion of the large developers are saying that it doesn’t make financial sense for them to now give up to 50 per cent of a site for affordable homes, which I can completely understand.

They then need to make their money back, which can only be done by building larger homes with higher prices. And the merry-go-round continues.

The lack of thinking, let alone future proofing on this issue is truly staggering. As an example, please shout if you can name a new primary or even a secondary school that is being built? What is currently happening is that our towns and villages are being quickly suffocated through an ill-thought through building programme, which doesn’t solve the problems that we are actually being faced with.

However what is more concerning, is that the property market goes even deeper than just bricks and mortar. On the one hand the Government are keen to set out their environmental credentials, yet in the next sentence they are quite happy to tarmac over our green spaces.

As a small island, I can’t understand why we are intent on removing our farmland. A reduction in the amount of homegrown produce, means that we will need to be ever more reliant on importing from other countries. This of course then has environmental impacts, plus we are at the behest of the exporting country.

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Going down another step, developers are keen to install solar panels to meet Government policy of net zero, plus large-scale solar and battery farms are increasingly commonplace. However due to China’s global dominance in the solar panel industry, it’s almost impossible to build these without their involvement or not rely partly on say the Democratic Republic of Congo to supply the heavy metals required.

We seem to have lost our way in what the country actually needs in terms of housing, but in doing so have relinquished control of the whole situation to third party countries.

One of the greatest contrasts over the last 50 years is that whilst monthly salaries have increased, this growth rate has been dwarfed by the increase in house prices. Hence affordability now being at an all time low.

Whilst we don’t seem to be able to stop the machine that has now started,

the MP’s, the large scale developers and the banks behind it all are all very happy. But are you?

Alex Goldstein is an independent property consultant in Yorkshire and London Visit: alexgoldstein.co.uk or call 01423 788377.