The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

In the first Labour budget for years, nothing seems to have been included to deal with the burgeoning house price crisis which is hurting the nation’s economy by becoming an inflationary drag on society.

The following remedies are designed to correct the housing markets by enabling sufficient affordability to be maintained for those working locally.

Did you know that a substantial part of the price of a house today is based on the value of the land beneath it!

What if, instead of property developers having to pay inordinate sums of money to acquire land for residential development, a new Bill could be introduced in Parliament such that any land gaining planning consent for residential use would become rated as having a nil or nominal value. This would break the continual upwards trajectory of the price of housing. This is the first or (No1) proposal.

You may well ask, how have ‘I’ (one person or individual), come to know exactly what to do and which way to turn in order to resolve matters of this degree of specialisation? The answer is that I chose surveying and valuation as my career in my 20’s and commenced in a training job back in the 60’s, working amongst qualified surveyors already knowing all of these things. I chose this as my career, in challenging times, taking five or so years to qualify as a surveyor myself and be able to put such knowledge into use advising the public throughout the rest of my life. As I’m now retired, I can give commentary to what I have come to know over my career resulting in being able to diagnose and cure the present and housing crisis issues relating to various aspects of land, buildings, law, planning and economics and crucially, I understand how to use valuation as being the overriding tool required for resolving the housing price issues which are becoming a problem to society at large these days.
To continue …

The second or (No2) proposal that requires debate and action is a change in The Town and Country Planning rules so that all local town and parish planning committees are involved in actively deciding where residential development should be allowed in order to satisfy local demand for housing in their respective areas. They should not only compile these, in consultation with their regional planning authority (as they currently do), and consistently refer to their updated Neighbourhood Development Plans (NDPs) when considering validated planning applications but local town and parish planning should be fully empowered to decide all applications for residential development, or for a change to residential use. This would save a great deal of time and wasted effort.

A Neighbourhood Development Plan is a document generated in a consultation between the regional planning authority and each local Town and Parish council. It would be designed to show, among other things, which land should have a particular residential user consent attached to it. The primary purpose of having (NDPs) is to augment and sustain economic growth in the local area concerned.

The change proposed would empower all town and parish councils to decide all residential planning applications relating to their areas.

Bringing in this change would save the need, and the cost and usefulness, of using the planning inspectorate to hear appeals against locally determined planning refusals, as currently happens.

It is suggested however that the Secretary of State should still retain the right to call individual planning applications in, whenever doing so is deemed essential but the primary responsibility for making each residential planning decision in the first place would be fully in  the hands of the relevant Town and Parish Council which would use their local knowledge to the full.

It is suggested that to resolve disputes arising between a Town or Parish Council and any opposition over its decision to approve or reject any particular planning application, there ought to be provision for formal arbitration to take place, upon application by the parties instead of these matters going before The Planning Inspectorate.

The effect of simultaneously removing the cost of land from the equation and giving Town and Parish Councils the responsibility to decide all residential planning applications in their area, would be to increase the supply of developable land for housing in a controlled way, by stopping land-hoarding for this purpose. It would break the incentive for owners and/or developers to hoard land for residential development. 

The benefit would be to reduce the overall cost of new housing and therefore help to lower the price of existing residential property also. Doing that would allow more potential home owners to become able to purchase housing and become owner occupiers. In this way more people could be housed and also the nation’s homelessness could be reduced.

As a retired property valuer and surveyor, qualified to be formulating this petition, I’m doing this because I understand that the increasing price of housing across many parts of the country is ‘a negative cost’ as far as the national economy is concerned which means that as house prices increase, less of the present demand for housing will be satisfied in the marketplace because more and more people will be simply unable to afford to purchase suitable housing for themselves. That’s what is happening at present, resulting in many families and individuals having to rent the housing needed from private landlords to maintain roofs over their heads. This has of course resulted in an extreme shortage of council and of housing association property for rent in Britain. Yet it is equally significant that there are large numbers of empty and unused properties which are privately owned. It is these under-used resources that the proposals in this petition are designed to get utilised. 

An important aspect of this is that where there is very high demand for housing and an inadequate level of supply in the market, extreme price hikes generally result. This justifies an argument in favour of taking the price of the land upon which housing is built, out of the equation and down to a nominal value. Doing this would help to lower house prices where the conditions of high and unsatisfied demand exists alongside inadequate supply of homes, both for sale and to let. It would be a real game changer.

In addition there would be a significant saving both in the time taken to determine such planning applications and the financial cost of The Planning Inspectorate having to deciding these on appeal, as these would be dealt with more quickly by the relevant local Town and Parish Councils, thus speeding up the whole planning process for residential planning consents.

To explain the technical aspect of this in brief; all land would still be owned freehold or leasehold but any change of user would be treated as development under the planning rules and such development of land would require planning permission This is not however much different from what should already be happening under the existing planning rules, one should venture to say!

NOTICE TO OUR GOVERNMENT:
Doing this would be a way to avoid the apparent need for the government to change the fiscal rules, so that they are no longer warned when extra borrowing would have shown up under the earlier fiscal rules.

The third or (No3) proposal in this petition would also be an improvement for reducing the cost of housing. It hinges on shortening the time it takes for sales and purchases to result in successful completions.

To achieve this, instead of having estate agents advising sellers, there should be newly formed businesses advising buyers on the house buying or renting process and finding them the most suitable houses they might want to move into. This would bring far greater interest in the agent helping the buyer or renter regarding such an important transaction. This would much improve the relationship between those moving in to their next homes and the agent whom will have done the work of finding the house and advising them right through to the actual completion of the transaction.

It would help reduce the stress of moving, by changing the methods currently used when vendors market residential property and in doing so would make property marketing considerably more efficient. The precise way this could be achieved is set out on my web site which fully explains the finer details of all of that.

The effect of these three proposals combined would be that the prices of new housing would be brought to within reach of many more families and individuals wishing to become owners in their own right.

I would describe this as being the golden-nugget solution for resolving the existing housing crisis which has, to date, been an insuperable problem resulting in a lack of housing affordability. This has blocked whole generations of our young from becoming home owners certainly in England and Wales for as long as I can remember.

The complete remedy for this does require bold changes to bring in a combination of these three new and economically competitive policies. Doing so would remove the inertia in both the existing planning and the existing marketing processes in residential development which are gripping housing markets across large parts of Britain at present.

Under these proposals new housing units could be built in the right locations through more efficient planning as well as improved house marketing precesses resulting in more competitive house pricing becoming a reality.

Much unsatisfied demand for more housing could become satisfied in this way.

An extra and additional advantage of adopting these three policies would be to help the regional local authorities to obtain greater contributions from developers by way of S106 agreements, therefore increasing contributions towards the cost of much needed new infrastructure.

If you agree that these proposals should be debated in Parliament please sign this petition and also if possible please write to your elected MP, to ask them to raise the matter in The House. This is the best way of getting a debate on this long overdue issue and to get the necessary changes properly and fully considered.

As explained above, these proposals would bring the necessary efficiency improvements to both the Town and Country Planning rules and in the way housing is marketed, whether for sale or for rent. Both of these shortcomings are in desperate need of change, in order to enable more housing to be provided in the correct locations and in the most timely and appropriate way.

As a plus, I am confident that if these changes were brought in, people moving between houses at the higher end of the market, should not be out of pocket as a result.

Secondly, those at the lower end would see considerably lower prices, helping them to climb onto the property-owning ladder. Lower rental values would also be a spin-off effect from this.

Thirdly, the overall cost of building new houses would be noticeably reduced as a result of these proposals.

Fourthly, sales throughput of all forms of residential property would increase as its affordability itself themselves increase.

This stimulus is the very thing needed to get housing sales flourishing and new house building increasing once again.

This site proposes changes to the whole way in which houses are marketed as well as bringing in more effective planning controls.

For more information on the necessary house marketing changes, go to:

The House Price Solution

How to Improve all local housing markets in England and Wales

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution

Your comments on this subject would be appreciated.

Unless things change significantly and along the lines explained here, countless people will experience unnecessary pain and trauma so please sign our petition under the link:

Petition on:

The cost-effective way to stabilise housing affordability across the whole of Britain

This would help bring about this much needed change.

A one-page synopsis of ‘The House Price Solution’, especially for newcomers

Welcome to The House Price Solution. This web site is campaigning for a change to the new government’s policy on having Top Down housing targets.

The purpose of this website is to stimulate debate and help find collectively, the best way to bring house prices back to within reach of a majority of those wishing and needing to buy (or indeed rent) housing for themselves and their families.

This is the alternative to simply trying to out-build housing demand, until prices reduce to lower levels; for that will never work!

I have a new and comprehensive planning and marketing solution which can resolve this problem. I merely ask that this is given due consideration by our new government.

The object of these proposals is to replace existing flawed sales and planning methods with new ones, designed to avoid the effects of unwanted future price escalation within all British housing markets. This would be the advantage of deploying The House Price Solution.

Having been in contact with my own MP about it, I am hoping for a referral of my alternative proposal to The Secretary of State at The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I would like to generate some in-depth discourse on this, important and earnest submission, before very long.

I am also hoping that the Civil Service responsible for advising government on housing policy, together with this considerate Labour government, which has just been elected, will consider and fully examine these special new policy proposals for remedying the present housing crisis.

The first question to ask is, how can my solution help?

There are two aspects. The first is about how to make all local housing markets across Britain work like free-market economic models.

This would involve replacing estate agency as we know it with a new, better and properly licensed service which I am calling Residential House Agents or (RHAs). This is the first radical change. These buyer and renter-advising agents would primarily work for buyers and renters instead of for sellers, as happens at present.

The job of these new Residential House Agents (RHAs) would be not only to sell or indeed let individual owner’s houses but more importantly would find and secure the houses which their contracted client(s) are seeking both for themselves and their families – whether such clients are wishing to buy or to rent.

Individual RHAs working with clients would need to have gained an approved new qualification showing their level of competence. The reason for this is that the existing estate agency service breaks the economic market rules and generally talks prices up. This skews all residential property marketplaces by over-valuing most of the individual houses and flats. This is a fundamental misrepresentation and is damaging all the housing marketplaces across Britain.

What is needed instead is a service that records all genuine offers (whether to buy or to rent), and immediately submits these to the relevant vendor (or the landlord if for rentals), for consideration. After the decision is made and one of the offers is accepted by the vendor or the landlord, the RHA handling this will arrange for a pre-worded lock-out agreement or contract with that vendor as well as with their legal adviser such that they all agree not to accept any other offer for the agreed period of time that it should take for the conveyancing to be concluded (or the tenancy agreement if its a letting). In essence a newly prescribed lock-out agreement.

Once the sale or letting is completed in this way, the RHA would collect their fee from the satisfied buyer or renter, via the solicitor dealing with completing the transaction (or from the landlord if appropriate). See the other articles on the website explaining this in more detail.

One other key advantage of introducing these proposals would be that there would no longer be a need for a Council Tax Revaluation, as this method of valuation would be superseded by the market valuation procedures set down in these new proposals. This, in itself, would save the government a great deal of money as well as civil servant time.

The second radical change, deals with the town and country planning rules relating to residential property. What it proposes is the substantial change necessary to make the best and most efficient use of all housing units, whether already built, or yet to be constructed.

A main reason for this is that housing is in great demand as well as in unprecedentedly short supply. As a result, each viable existing housing unit should be zoned within the local Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP), such that whenever that property becomes vacant (and/or changes hands), the appropriate NDP zoning for that house or flat must take effect. For example, if the house was previously used as a second home, but it has subsequently become zoned on the NDP for local housing use, then after the vacation of the property, the new use must comply with the current NDP zoning. Enforcement action could follow wherever this is not the case.

Clearly, because it is the local town or parish council that draws up local NDPs, the best organisation to administer this would be that same one. I therefore propose that all residential planning decisions should be devolved to each local town or parish council to have them determined exclusively and in accord with their adopted NDP.

This would mean the existing arrangements for regional councils to decide such planning applications would no longer be needed, which is a third radical change, one designed to speed up planning decisions a great deal.

As a result, there would no longer be a need for government planning inspectors to deal with residential planning appeals centrally. In other words there would be no need for an appeal process for individual residential planning matters anymore. This would save inordinate amounts of time as well as great expense and bring much needed clarity, as to exactly which use designation each residential property should have, for the vital benefit of the town or parishes’ local housing economy, primarily of course.

For more on this please follow the link below:

The house price affordability crisis

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Housing Valuation Consultant

Author of:– The House Price Solution, otherwise known as The Hendry Solution.