Interesting piece and it seems to have worked out well for Preston and all the new homeowners. But I'm not sure about the original residents. The part of Preston where I live, was a quiet, semi-rural parish until recently. The fringes of the parish have now been urbanised with thousands of new homes, huge new roads, care homes etc. and development is continuing apace. While I don’t consider myself a NIMBY, I don’t see any benefits for the residents that were already here. We still don’t have a shop nearby or any community facilities. We now must join a traffic jam to get to the shops due to the thousands of additional vehicles in the area. Mature trees and ancient hedgerows have gone forever. New planting is no substitute for this loss, and it is substandard often with a more than 50% failure rate. Litter, fly-tipping, speeding drivers and anti-social behaviour have all risen due to the increase in population. And the old country lanes are wrecked due to the HGV’s travelling to the building sites. The area was by no means paradise before, but it is now ugly. It could have been done so much better.
Preston has always befitted from its location. It was the site of the U.K’s first motorway (the Preston by pass opened in 1958) and more recently, in addition to being located in both the M6 and WCML, is on the intersection of the motorways to Blackpool and East Lancashire. It is also the site of one of the biggest universities in the U.K. as well as a key location for the aerospace (BAE systems has two of its biggest sites on either side of the city) and nuclear industries . So it’s relatively good economic performance isn’t all that hard to explain. Nor is its house building record given that the Central Lancashire New Town was one of the last designated and land is relatively simple to acquire (the same is true for Warrington further down the M6 and WCML).
«Living next to a building site is annoying. More people might mean more traffic. The area will look different to the one they moved to. So the reasonable question is: what is in it for me? Most of the time the answer of the British planning system is: not much.»
“a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall, who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher,” he said.”
“Certainly, we overstretched ourselves when we bought our lovely period home for £419,000 in 2002. But with mortgage companies practically throwing loans at us in a rising property market, we slept soundly at night, smug in the knowledge the house was making us money. [...] The valuer had barely been in the house for five minutes yet we were able to borrow a further £80,000. [...] Whenever we overspent we just remortgaged without comprehending the consequences of taking yet more equity out of the property. [...] In our defence, we weren’t spending the money on expensive designer clothes, luxurious holidays or flash cars. Much of it was going on school fees and upkeep of the house. By the beginning of 2008 we had remortgaged three times”
«What makes building so hard? The median voter is mildly NIMBY.»
So my impression is that the median property owning "Middle England" voter is rabidly NIABY (Not In Any Backyard) that is against increasing housing or infrastructure supply anywhere.
«There are a decent number of hardcore NIMBYs everywhere [...] a vocal minority.»
The vocal minority surely exists but that does not mean that the rest are just "slightly skeptical":
«The median person in most places is neither a committed NIMBY nor a passionate YIMBY. They are slightly sceptical.»
Because to me this is a really huge misunderstanding of the politics reaching the level of ridiculous not merely disagreeable:
«Living next to a building site is annoying. More people might mean more traffic. The area will look different to the one they moved to. So the reasonable question is: what is in it for me? Most of the time the answer of the British planning system is: not much.»
My impression is that for a large majority of NIABYs opposition to any new building of housing anywhere (or infrastructure anywhere else) is based on something pretty much stronger than the "not much" of mild incoveniences:
* The median "Middle England" property owner depends on property gains for half or nearly half of their after-tax income (which have often been £30,000-£60,000 per year for the past 40 years, tax-free and work-free) in "Middle England" areas.
* As demonstrated by a skip through "The Telegraph", the "Daily Mail", "This is Money" etc. as a result the median "Middle England" property owner (whether occupier or landlord) therefore is utterly obsessed with the rate of growth of house prices and feels threatened by anything that might remotely deprive them of big capital gains and big rent increases.
* Any increase in housing (or infrastructure elsewhere) supply within areas with "good jobs" threatens the rate of increase of the prices and rents of their property by attracting buyers and renters to those areas and thus depressing the rate of growth of prices in their area too.
What is at stake is the very living standards of median "Middle England" property owning voters which is a lot more than the "not much" of "a building site is annoying. More people might mean more traffic. The area will look different".
«the median property owning "Middle England" voter is rabidly NIABY (Not In Any Backyard) that is against increasing housing or infrastructure supply anywhere.»
How rabidly? For the past several decades a governing have continued having a majority if property prices went up, regardless of anything else, and lost their majority if property prices were flat or falling, again regardless of everything else. In the mid-1990s and in the late 2000s median "Middle England" property owners would have voted for Pol-Pot and the Khmer Rouges if that were the only way to punish a gocerning party that had betrayed them and it may yet happen in 2029 with Farage and Reform UK (since 2022 property prices have been flat in many areas and so many median "Middle England" voters are quite angry with both Conservatives and New Labour as a result even if not quite as angry as being in negative equity).
All the red tape and go-slow excuses in creating new housing or infrastructure supply are directly a political consequence of that: no government relying on the swing voters of thatcherite voters would do anything substantive to make housing costs lower because housing costs are housing income to those voters.
«Any increase in housing or infrastructure supply anywhere within areas with "good jobs" threatens the rate of increase of the prices and rents of their property by attracting buyers and renters to those areas and thus depressing the rate of growth of prices in their area too.»
This is way "leveling up" was "rather unlikely" to happen: if some areas in the "pushed behind" areas started to have a significant supply of "good jobs" then first locals would stop moving to the Home Counties and London and this would reduce the supply of new tenants and buyers in the target areas, and even worse it would mean that many workers from London and the Home Counties would move to those areas attracted by lower housing costs, and therefore house prices in London and the Home Counties would first go flat and then collapse.
Since median "Middle England" property owners (that is thatcherites) in the Home Counties and London are the single largest "transactional" voter block and are the core target constituency of all (once) major parties (Conservatives, New Labour, LibDems) any increase in the supply of housing anywhere or infrastructure or jobs anywhere else threatens the property gains of incumbent property owners in the Home Counties and London, and incumbency and in particular incumbency in property in London and the Home Counties has been for many centuries the highest english virtue.
«Preston is doing reasonably well for a northern former industrial town. Productivity is below the UK average but above nearby towns such as Blackburn and Blackpool. Preston’s wider region has higher productivity than anywhere else in Lancashire, Merseyside or Cumbria.»
Using "productivity" as a synonym of "income" is typical of a certain type of politics: the politics where a landlord who rents a bedroom for £800/month puts a bunk-bed in it and rents each bed for £600/month has increased their "productivity" by 50%. Rah! Rah!
BTW there are also some other attitudes to that situation for example: since now there are two beds in the bedroom the landlord's "productivity" has increased by 100% not just 50%, and that the landlord's "productivity" has actually decreased by 25% because the rent per bed per month has shrunk from £800 to £600. :-)
«There are some who claim (not me) that building more properties doesn't increase affordability»
Housing costs are (as a rule which has only one major exception) a private tax on wages so the cost of housing depends on the ratio between jobs supply and house supply. Therefore property "wealth creators" therefore "invest" in areas where the the rate of increase in housing supply is lower then the rate of increase in jobs, plus another little rule or two (some property "wealth creators" look also the rate of growth of fish shops and kebab shops versus the rate of growth of wine bars and coffee shops and "invest" where the latter is higher as the wages to tax will be growing higher).
But housing costs are not the same thing as *house prices* because the flexible link between the two is occupation density: housing costs can well go down but that may simply enable people to buy larger houses which means average house prices falling more slowly than housing costs at least for a while. Vice-versa doubling up can for a while moderate the translation of higher housing costs into higher house prices.
These effects are easier to notice in other countries where the interests of property "wealth creators" are less dominant and property prices are expressed in per-sqm (what is a sqm is still controversial in those markets) rather than per-house or per-bedroom prices.
Tom Forth has some blogs on how consistent building supply in Leeds has kept house prices stable, so they've not seen the level of increases elsewhere has seen. I live in Nottingham and we've also had pretty stable house prices - though we're one of the cheapest counties in the country buy housing so, again it feels noticably easier to get on the ladder here.
«housing is unaffordable for purchasers and unprofitable for builders»
To me it seems quite different: there have been many purchasers in London as they count on prices going up and therefore "creating wealth" with no effort and builders are not supposed to make any money building they are just a front, it is land banks that are supposed to make money and their executives can make money just by booking capital gains.
what's the specific example here? Happy to take a look into it. My guess would be they have building safety regulator or protracted negotiations over the affordable housing % but many other possibilities.
"The retailer said other housebuilders were in a similar position, and added that housing development had "collapsed" in London.
Experts have pinned this on a combination of rising construction costs, lower demand for London flats, more regulation post-Grenfell, difficulty getting planning permission, and higher interest rates making it harder to build using debt and harder for people to buy."
Obviously I don't know how true it is - but lots of media have aid things like that.
I know people who rent flats in London and the rents are not that cheap.
Interesting piece and it seems to have worked out well for Preston and all the new homeowners. But I'm not sure about the original residents. The part of Preston where I live, was a quiet, semi-rural parish until recently. The fringes of the parish have now been urbanised with thousands of new homes, huge new roads, care homes etc. and development is continuing apace. While I don’t consider myself a NIMBY, I don’t see any benefits for the residents that were already here. We still don’t have a shop nearby or any community facilities. We now must join a traffic jam to get to the shops due to the thousands of additional vehicles in the area. Mature trees and ancient hedgerows have gone forever. New planting is no substitute for this loss, and it is substandard often with a more than 50% failure rate. Litter, fly-tipping, speeding drivers and anti-social behaviour have all risen due to the increase in population. And the old country lanes are wrecked due to the HGV’s travelling to the building sites. The area was by no means paradise before, but it is now ugly. It could have been done so much better.
Preston has always befitted from its location. It was the site of the U.K’s first motorway (the Preston by pass opened in 1958) and more recently, in addition to being located in both the M6 and WCML, is on the intersection of the motorways to Blackpool and East Lancashire. It is also the site of one of the biggest universities in the U.K. as well as a key location for the aerospace (BAE systems has two of its biggest sites on either side of the city) and nuclear industries . So it’s relatively good economic performance isn’t all that hard to explain. Nor is its house building record given that the Central Lancashire New Town was one of the last designated and land is relatively simple to acquire (the same is true for Warrington further down the M6 and WCML).
«Living next to a building site is annoying. More people might mean more traffic. The area will look different to the one they moved to. So the reasonable question is: what is in it for me? Most of the time the answer of the British planning system is: not much.»
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-22/opendoor-open-faces-an-expensive-path-to-profitability-in-real-estate
“From the minute the average couple busy a home they're constantly calculating how much they'll make when they sell it”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing
“a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall, who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher,” he said.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2105240/Stuck-rent-trap-How-middle-class-family-kept-remortgaging-home-pay-bills-longer-afford-repayments.html
“Certainly, we overstretched ourselves when we bought our lovely period home for £419,000 in 2002. But with mortgage companies practically throwing loans at us in a rising property market, we slept soundly at night, smug in the knowledge the house was making us money. [...] The valuer had barely been in the house for five minutes yet we were able to borrow a further £80,000. [...] Whenever we overspent we just remortgaged without comprehending the consequences of taking yet more equity out of the property. [...] In our defence, we weren’t spending the money on expensive designer clothes, luxurious holidays or flash cars. Much of it was going on school fees and upkeep of the house. By the beginning of 2008 we had remortgaged three times”
«What makes building so hard? The median voter is mildly NIMBY.»
So my impression is that the median property owning "Middle England" voter is rabidly NIABY (Not In Any Backyard) that is against increasing housing or infrastructure supply anywhere.
«There are a decent number of hardcore NIMBYs everywhere [...] a vocal minority.»
The vocal minority surely exists but that does not mean that the rest are just "slightly skeptical":
«The median person in most places is neither a committed NIMBY nor a passionate YIMBY. They are slightly sceptical.»
Because to me this is a really huge misunderstanding of the politics reaching the level of ridiculous not merely disagreeable:
«Living next to a building site is annoying. More people might mean more traffic. The area will look different to the one they moved to. So the reasonable question is: what is in it for me? Most of the time the answer of the British planning system is: not much.»
My impression is that for a large majority of NIABYs opposition to any new building of housing anywhere (or infrastructure anywhere else) is based on something pretty much stronger than the "not much" of mild incoveniences:
* The median "Middle England" property owner depends on property gains for half or nearly half of their after-tax income (which have often been £30,000-£60,000 per year for the past 40 years, tax-free and work-free) in "Middle England" areas.
* As demonstrated by a skip through "The Telegraph", the "Daily Mail", "This is Money" etc. as a result the median "Middle England" property owner (whether occupier or landlord) therefore is utterly obsessed with the rate of growth of house prices and feels threatened by anything that might remotely deprive them of big capital gains and big rent increases.
* Any increase in housing (or infrastructure elsewhere) supply within areas with "good jobs" threatens the rate of increase of the prices and rents of their property by attracting buyers and renters to those areas and thus depressing the rate of growth of prices in their area too.
What is at stake is the very living standards of median "Middle England" property owning voters which is a lot more than the "not much" of "a building site is annoying. More people might mean more traffic. The area will look different".
«the median property owning "Middle England" voter is rabidly NIABY (Not In Any Backyard) that is against increasing housing or infrastructure supply anywhere.»
How rabidly? For the past several decades a governing have continued having a majority if property prices went up, regardless of anything else, and lost their majority if property prices were flat or falling, again regardless of everything else. In the mid-1990s and in the late 2000s median "Middle England" property owners would have voted for Pol-Pot and the Khmer Rouges if that were the only way to punish a gocerning party that had betrayed them and it may yet happen in 2029 with Farage and Reform UK (since 2022 property prices have been flat in many areas and so many median "Middle England" voters are quite angry with both Conservatives and New Labour as a result even if not quite as angry as being in negative equity).
All the red tape and go-slow excuses in creating new housing or infrastructure supply are directly a political consequence of that: no government relying on the swing voters of thatcherite voters would do anything substantive to make housing costs lower because housing costs are housing income to those voters.
«Any increase in housing or infrastructure supply anywhere within areas with "good jobs" threatens the rate of increase of the prices and rents of their property by attracting buyers and renters to those areas and thus depressing the rate of growth of prices in their area too.»
This is way "leveling up" was "rather unlikely" to happen: if some areas in the "pushed behind" areas started to have a significant supply of "good jobs" then first locals would stop moving to the Home Counties and London and this would reduce the supply of new tenants and buyers in the target areas, and even worse it would mean that many workers from London and the Home Counties would move to those areas attracted by lower housing costs, and therefore house prices in London and the Home Counties would first go flat and then collapse.
Since median "Middle England" property owners (that is thatcherites) in the Home Counties and London are the single largest "transactional" voter block and are the core target constituency of all (once) major parties (Conservatives, New Labour, LibDems) any increase in the supply of housing anywhere or infrastructure or jobs anywhere else threatens the property gains of incumbent property owners in the Home Counties and London, and incumbency and in particular incumbency in property in London and the Home Counties has been for many centuries the highest english virtue.
«Preston is doing reasonably well for a northern former industrial town. Productivity is below the UK average but above nearby towns such as Blackburn and Blackpool. Preston’s wider region has higher productivity than anywhere else in Lancashire, Merseyside or Cumbria.»
Using "productivity" as a synonym of "income" is typical of a certain type of politics: the politics where a landlord who rents a bedroom for £800/month puts a bunk-bed in it and rents each bed for £600/month has increased their "productivity" by 50%. Rah! Rah!
BTW there are also some other attitudes to that situation for example: since now there are two beds in the bedroom the landlord's "productivity" has increased by 100% not just 50%, and that the landlord's "productivity" has actually decreased by 25% because the rent per bed per month has shrunk from £800 to £600. :-)
There are some who claim (not me) that building more properties doesn't increase affordability. Have the increased homes in Preston improved things?
`
«There are some who claim (not me) that building more properties doesn't increase affordability»
Housing costs are (as a rule which has only one major exception) a private tax on wages so the cost of housing depends on the ratio between jobs supply and house supply. Therefore property "wealth creators" therefore "invest" in areas where the the rate of increase in housing supply is lower then the rate of increase in jobs, plus another little rule or two (some property "wealth creators" look also the rate of growth of fish shops and kebab shops versus the rate of growth of wine bars and coffee shops and "invest" where the latter is higher as the wages to tax will be growing higher).
But housing costs are not the same thing as *house prices* because the flexible link between the two is occupation density: housing costs can well go down but that may simply enable people to buy larger houses which means average house prices falling more slowly than housing costs at least for a while. Vice-versa doubling up can for a while moderate the translation of higher housing costs into higher house prices.
These effects are easier to notice in other countries where the interests of property "wealth creators" are less dominant and property prices are expressed in per-sqm (what is a sqm is still controversial in those markets) rather than per-house or per-bedroom prices.
«Housing costs are (as a rule which has only one major exception)»
The only major exception is housing costs in areas of natural beauty where they are a private tax on *other rents*.
«a private tax on wages»
BTW this is called "von Thünen's law of rents"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bid_rent_theory
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/economics-of-agglomeration/von-thunen-model-and-land-rent-formation/037E0E84F23C9F86BAAFC80ECF59DC2D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_von_Th%C3%BCnen
Tom Forth has some blogs on how consistent building supply in Leeds has kept house prices stable, so they've not seen the level of increases elsewhere has seen. I live in Nottingham and we've also had pretty stable house prices - though we're one of the cheapest counties in the country buy housing so, again it feels noticably easier to get on the ladder here.
That's good in London we have achieved a miracle - housing is unaffordable for purchasers and unprofitable for builders
«housing is unaffordable for purchasers and unprofitable for builders»
To me it seems quite different: there have been many purchasers in London as they count on prices going up and therefore "creating wealth" with no effort and builders are not supposed to make any money building they are just a front, it is land banks that are supposed to make money and their executives can make money just by booking capital gains.
John Lewis seems to think it can't make money building flats where it already owns the land - basically on empty space - that seems very strange.
what's the specific example here? Happy to take a look into it. My guess would be they have building safety regulator or protracted negotiations over the affordable housing % but many other possibilities.
See here
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crl45dp1gg5o
"The retailer said other housebuilders were in a similar position, and added that housing development had "collapsed" in London.
Experts have pinned this on a combination of rising construction costs, lower demand for London flats, more regulation post-Grenfell, difficulty getting planning permission, and higher interest rates making it harder to build using debt and harder for people to buy."
Obviously I don't know how true it is - but lots of media have aid things like that.
I know people who rent flats in London and the rents are not that cheap.