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Houses are back as the buyers shun new flats
9 Dec 2009Houses are making a comeback as buyers turn their backs on "little box" apartments.
The National House-Building Council today said family houses accounted for nearly a quarter of all residential properties started in England in the first nine months of the year, the highest level since 1992.
Demand for flats is heading in the other direction with apartments making up about 40% of properties started, the lowest level for six years.
However, flats still play a significant role in London due to a lack of space although increasing numbers commute into the capital from "leafy" suburbs or beyond.
Alistair Leitch, finance director at housebuilder Bellway, told Bloomberg: "Most people dream of having a front garden and a back garden with a little bit of security around them. They don't want to have to park their car 50 yards from home."
Builders rushed to build flats as the Government encouraged high-density developments on disused sites in towns and cities across the country.
They are returning to building private family homes as living habits change and banks restrict lending to buy-to-let investors who snapped up new apartments before the housing crash.
Richard Donnell, at property website Hometrack, said demand for flats among buy-to-let investors has "largely gone".
Reader views (4)
Mags, young couples who cannot afford a bigger flat, certainly can't afford one or two children! What comes first, the home or the kids (chronologically)?
Decades ago, people had the children they could afford, not the kids the state (tax payers) can subsidise.
- William B, London, 10/12/2009 01:11
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Perhaps the builders could buy back the cardboard rabbit hutch ghettos that they and the govt are forcing people to live in. After all builders must be flush with cash having fleeced local authorities for years by "rigging" contracts and also their massive land banks. Witness Manchester city centre "regeneration" with thousands of flats....
- Nelly, The Wild East, 09/12/2009 16:18
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What most of the population don't realise is that there are only restrictions on the "subsidised" housing social/council flats.
So if you are a private buyer you get less space, than someone who has had their home subsidised, in this case the social/council tenants.
Private buyers are the ones losing out, you buy your own home, only to have tenants next door, paying less, for more space, subsidised by the private buyer.
Socialism stinks.
- P Staker, london, W8, 09/12/2009 16:03
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John Prescott issued strict guidelines on the amount of floorspace to be allowed for new build apartments. Couldn't see how he/government could impose these smaller room and smaller flat restrictions on private developers. But squeeze people into these small boxes at very high prices, he did.
Those flats seemed designed to suit one or two people absent from them most of the day. Now that mortgages are hard to come by, people are stuck in them. God help the young couples stranded in them with one or two children. They're smaller than the artisans and workmens cottages of decades ago. Some things we don't move forward on.
- Mags, St Albans, 09/12/2009 15:24
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