Our entire home-building and selling ethos needs to change from the present system which involves “developers” (middlemen) contracting a building company to throw up random blocks of flats or to cover a field with “shoebox” houses (“housing estates”) before selling them individually to retail purchasers. The builders/developers are just in it for quick profits – they want to get the cash in order to start on another project. Enormous sums of money are made at every stage of this process, but especially when a local council awards the developer with that golden chalice known as a “building permit”. A field can overnight jump 10x in value.
I imagine the sequence of events goes something like this…
- Developer spies a likely-looking field on the edge of a town
- $£ stage 1 – Developer finds owner of the field and makes him an offer he can’t refuse (maybe twice what owner thought it was worth as a simple field)
- $£ stage 2 – Lawyers draw up sales agreement
- $£ stage 3 – Government charges stamp duty, etc, on sale of land
- $£stage 4 – Developer applies for a building permit from local authority, reminding them of the govt’s house building target.
- $£stage 5 – Council gives developer “outline planning approval” after a considerable fee is paid
- $£ stage 6 – Developer hires draughtsmen, architects, etc., to draw up building plans
- $£ stage 7 – Council gives developer final “building approval” (this usually takes time and often changes of plan)
- $£ stage 8 – Developer appoints building contractor
- $£ stage 9 – Developer appoints selling agents
- $£ stage 10 – Developer appoints lending authority
- $£ stage 11 – Buyers buy
- stage 12 – Developer looks for a new field
Renting is left to individuals – private “buy-to-let” investors – who expect to make a capital gain AND get an income stream. So what is needed is a new type of building development run by organisations who are not in it for a quick buck.
Furthermore, if the development is going to have such strong admission rules and obligations, the project needs to have some extremely desirable features that ordinary developments lack
COOPERATIVES, TRUSTS, FOUNDERS, etc.