wobblycogs
Established Member
Got to agree with DW, buying a house was the best thing the wife and I did. We paid off the mortgage a couple of years ago and although it's still not plain sailing financially it means we can raise the kids without too much to worry about.
Gary, while I agree that the land is finite and there's growing demand I can't help feeling that house prices are being pushed up artificially. The long and the short of it is that we don't have a shortage of land, we have a shortage of land that we are allowed to build on - those two things are very different. For whatever reason there's a large group of people in this country who seem to think that almost the whole country is covered in concrete already and we must do everything possible to save the tiny amount we have left. The reality is that only 10.6% of the land is currently urban (that's in England, it's significantly less in Scotland, Wales and NI) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096. Bear in mind that 10.6% includes gardens, parks, etc which account for about 50% of the urban space so we don't actually have that much built on.
Certainly compared to many other similar sized countries we have a lot of land under concrete but we also have a bigger population than most similar sized countries so that's hardly surprising. I'm not advocating we start willy nilly building on every green space but I can't help feeling we would end up with a better living environment (one with lower crime and less antisocial behaviour, one where people actually wanted to live) if we freed up a couple of percent more land for urban development. That way people could have a house they could be proud of, kids would have somewhere other than the streets or their xbox to play, etc, etc.
Gary, while I agree that the land is finite and there's growing demand I can't help feeling that house prices are being pushed up artificially. The long and the short of it is that we don't have a shortage of land, we have a shortage of land that we are allowed to build on - those two things are very different. For whatever reason there's a large group of people in this country who seem to think that almost the whole country is covered in concrete already and we must do everything possible to save the tiny amount we have left. The reality is that only 10.6% of the land is currently urban (that's in England, it's significantly less in Scotland, Wales and NI) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096. Bear in mind that 10.6% includes gardens, parks, etc which account for about 50% of the urban space so we don't actually have that much built on.
Certainly compared to many other similar sized countries we have a lot of land under concrete but we also have a bigger population than most similar sized countries so that's hardly surprising. I'm not advocating we start willy nilly building on every green space but I can't help feeling we would end up with a better living environment (one with lower crime and less antisocial behaviour, one where people actually wanted to live) if we freed up a couple of percent more land for urban development. That way people could have a house they could be proud of, kids would have somewhere other than the streets or their xbox to play, etc, etc.
