Available land for starter homes.

Anything is possible with governments,, but they have their own agendas and motives dont they?

The supermarkets will probably sell the land to developers. But the housing built will be anything but affordable. This has happened with land a Tesco near us sat on for a long time. They built swanky flats.

The problem is that the major part (60% or more in the south east) of the cost of a house is the cost of the land. Increasing the number of houses being built means more competition between builders for available building land. That pushes up the cost of each building plot so that although more houses are built they cannot be sold any more cheaply because of the cost of the land is so high. This keeps the price of all houses high.

The only way for house prices to fall long term is for supply of houses to outstrip demand. This would mean building several million houses, mostly in the south east over a very short time span, (2 - 3 years) but with an ever growing population even if you did that you would need to build even more houses to cater for all the new households created in the meanwhile.

Time for houses to go upwards again?
I dont like to see blocks of flats, but perhaps needs must?

I do hope not Soon, not high rise ones anyway, it's no way for people to live.

I am not sure that would solve the problem, the value of land is affected by the number of properties that can be built on them. One of the many reasons land in urban area is so much more expensive than land on the periphery of urban areas.

High density does seem to be the obvious result of building high, but in fact the amount of open space needed to be left around high rise blocks has meant that when in recent years some high rise blocks have been demolished and replaced with low rise properties, density has actually increased.

The adverse social effects of high rise building are well documented and it is not coincidental that many of the inner city council estates with the worst social problems are those where most of the housing is high rise.

In many countries, most people live in high rise blocks and it is simply accepted.
We lived in one in Hongkong - and before anyone assumes it was a swanky place for expatriates, it wasn't. Most of the other occupants were Chinese.
There were about seven blocks if flats in the complex, each flat had its own balcony, but there were communal gardens and a children's playground and tennis courts & pool, so it was very pleasant.
The communal facilities meant that it was easy to get to know people and for the children to make friends perhaps more easily than say on an estate of houses in Britain.
Another advantage of living in a flat is that you aren't constantly running up and downstairs for things and it's easy to keep an eye on small children.
So I don't agree Rosesarered that it's 'no way for people to live'.

High rise living has been unpopular in this country because of poor design and construction in the sixties, but it does not have to be like that.
Byker Wall which was built in Newcastle in the 70s is listed and has won many awards for Architecture and Design.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byker_Wall

I think that it can be fine for single people. My son currently lives on the 20th floor of one in a nice city.
As ja says, they can have lots of facilities.

I wouldn't want to keep my eye on a three year old, playing in a play area if my flat was on the 20th floor. As much as a parent may want to always be able to take a child outside and stay with them while they play, we know that is not always possible. A child is safer left momentarily unsupervised in a garden or back yard then supervised from a distance. Nowadays many high rise toddlers get little or no time outside for just that reason.

In other countries people do live successfully in high rise flats, but the success is based partly on the cultural norms of that Society, part of which is a more 'robust' attitude to the safety of the child. Many societies accept, as was common in Britain when I was a child, that tragedy though it be, accidents happen and children will drown, fall out of trees and get killed, run under cars etc etc. We now find this unacceptable and a family that allows a child outside below a societally approved age or lets them do anything that society does not approve of is pilloried. Look at the way Madeleine McCann's family have been attacked for visiting a restaurant within sight of their holiday flat and where they physically checked on the children at regular intervals instead of staying in and being in the next room to the children all evening.

In this country by far the majority of high rise residents are social housing residents. A microscopically small proportion of middle income families live in high rise blocks. In countries like Hong Kong families across the social spectrum all live in similar blocks of flats. This makes a difference

My son doesnt have a child.
Good quality blacks of flats can be fine for people without children. No problem at all.

Not sure how the Shard is doing nowadays.

Flickety we never let 3 year olds play in the playground downstairs by themselves while we remained on the 20th floor but I'm not sure that many 3 year olds in Britain play outside in the garden by themselves for long anyway. In the flat, we had the balcony (suitably caged in with wire netting) where they could play momentarily unsupervised, as you put it.
We would take the children to the playground every afternoon when it was a bit cooler which was nice for the mothers to get together and have a chat too.

I agree with you that it is different in other countries, but I don't think that high rise living necessarily has adverse social consequences.
I think it's the other way round here - that people who were put in high rise accommodation in the sixties were socially disadvantaged before they went there.

But it is becoming more acceptable to live in a high rise flat - I know several young professional people who have chosen this sort of accommodation, both privately developed and ex-local authority. I know that selling off local authority housing is contentious, but it's a separate issue.

As FlicketyB has said, there is proof that high rise flats in the UK causes adverse social effects. You may not agree with this Jane, but it is what a lot of people think, with the result that thankfully we are not building them any more.Terraced housing with small gardens has become the norm for first time buyers and for social housing too, or flats that only go up about four floors.It may, or may not, work well in other countries.

I would think that many three year old do play outside in small fenced in back gardens, my own DGS being one of them.

Cause and effect is not the same as an association, Rosesared.

We must agree to disagree on this one I think.

The majority of people placed in high rise flats are still the socially disadvantaged. I might suggest, more socially disadvantages than those in the 60s, who were generally families with at least one bread winner earning an acceptable wage and with fewer of the social problems that beset such families nowadays.

Young professionals may well be happy to live in high rise flats but Young professionals with families? I doubt it.

In this country the inhabitants of high rise flats will, for the foreseeable future, predominantly be the disadvantaged.

Different countries and different cultures will always have differing housing needs and different attitudes to different types of property.

Things change. Young single professionals are a lucrative market.

I noticed your comment soontobe on the thread about Tesco Losses that the land which they currently have in reserve would most likely have decreased in value since it was purchased and that Tesco's would be unhappy to sell this at a loss. As they are now no longer in need of it and are suffering big losses, one would think they should be prepared to offload it.
Currently, the housing need is greater than the need for anymore large supermarkets.

The social housing high rise flats began to suffer when financial restrictions meant resident caretakers/concierges were no longer employed and the excellent community spaces were neglected. Then maintenance was also neglected so lifts stopped working efficiently and the outside spaces became a dumping ground covered in graffiti and litter. Imagine living on the tenth floor, even without a small child, with erratic lifts and stairwells smelling of urine and worse. There is nothing wrong with flats as such!

I wonder how long developers are allowed to hang on to land before a council can buy it through compulsory purchase?

Lilygran there was much wrong with the flats as such. Many of these flats were system built using systems developed in countries where the weather was warm all year round and windows and doors left open for ventilation. They were not designed for British weather conditions and with next to no insulation - even by 1960s standards, heating them in winter together with the water vapour coming from baths, kitchens and washing machines caused constant condensation problems leading to mould growing on walls in the flats leading to respiratory problems for the residents.

In addition, in order to build these flats as cheaply as possible electric heating systems were installed. Not night storage radiators but underfloor or ceiling heating systems without controls. Many families ran in to debt because of the high electricity bills they ended up with trying to keep their homes warm and many switched the electric heating off and bought paraffin heaters, which only exacerbated the condensation problems.

The construction standards of many of these blocks was very poor and many have been demolished in recent years, not because it was not possible to renovate them to modern standards but because when surveyors and engineers investigated them in detail the standard of construction and misuse of materials was so extreme they were structurally unsafe and had to be demolished.

Flickety I don't disagree with what you are saying about flats that were built in the 60's - but the people who lived in them were certainly disadvantaged in that they were allocated to them following slum clearance without any consideration of preserving the communities in which they had lived previously.
All I'm saying is that high rise living doesn't have to be like that in the 21st century - with good design, good facilities and security, it can be just as pleasant as living in a house, with the exception of a garden, but that isn't a priority for everyone.

We have discussed it on GN (can't remember which thread) and imo it is a very good idea.
I think Tesco were intending to build houses themselves on some of their land, but let's hope this is now released as soon as possible for other developers.

Many people do like living in high rise flats, although I don't think they are suitable for people with children. It has always puzzled me why so many skyscrapers are built in countries where there is plenty of land available and perhaps it is because it seems quite prestigious to live in one of these flats. As long as they are as janea describes above and not thrown up without thought for the people who are going to live in them.