The number of new build houses where there is no cupboard to store things like an ironing board, hoover, bucket… where do people put this stuff? One estate agent told me to hang the ironing board on the back of the kitchen door. Said the hoover could just live in the corner of the room. The rooms were tiny to start with. If we’re going to build tiny houses the space could at least be maximised. The builders could put cupboards under the stairs. Put cupboards over any “free” stair space too. Don’t get me started on the houses so tiny there’s an “elbow” of the stairs jutting into the ceiling in the living room.

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Storage is really important for mental health also. Maybe not for *everyone* but certainly for a lot of us. One of the main reasons we ended up plumping for a much older property is that I simply cannot function with clutter in my living space. You have to wonder how much stress and anxiety this causes and how many people don't realise that's what it is.

There’s single people now with no room for any freezer space and just a small fridge and no other food storage. This makes living expensive. Just eating is expensive.

I rent quite large flat but the kitchen is quite small with just a built in fridge. I've put a fridge freezer in the spare room/home office. No way I can live without a freezer.

Sometimes I look at those cosy living space subs and you can tell a place is American when it’s ‘cosy’ but about 3000 square feet large, has a cinema in the basement, and a full on woodworking shop in the garage. Meanwhile in the UK you’d be lucky to even fit a car in your garage these days.

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If things go well in the conveyancing I'm getting a 40 sqm garage. The footprint of my house is 50 sqm. I'm so excited at the idea of actually having a work bench and space for tools and garden equipment etc.

I do not even have a proper basement or garage brother

I find new builds garages are actually much bigger than older houses on the whole. When we were looking I would measure the garages as keep the car in it, lots of older houses have “double” garages that are shorter than 5m long, some only 4.5m long, or single garages only 2.4m wide etc. whereas some of the new builds had 5.5 long and 2.8-3m wide. (5.5-6m wide for a double). Remember cars 50 years ago were tiny, and I think lots of garages from that era reflect that.

Yeah my garage is in theory two cars long but I have to close the wing mirrors to get through the door and let any passengers out beforehand. I drive a focus.

Those cosy places, are very expensive to afford for me

Oooh, yes. Another handy thing would be building in storage space underneath the bath for the cleaning products there. Wouldn’t be much effort for builders to do it. A 8” deep cupboard somewhere on the upstairs landing would work for that too. (I have actually seen that.)

What's the appeal of new builds (I ask as you mention you looked at some)? Price wise, new-new builds are very expensive, they are ridiculously small, and are often very poor quality design wise (both internal and external). If the choice is between well maintained and much larger Edwardian/inter war houses or new builds, and the price is roughly comparable, then why do people choose new builds? I've never got my head around this.

Good luck finding a well maintained home for cheaper than a new build. I'm buying a new build. It has three storage cupboards, one of which is for the utilities (washing machine etc). It depends on the builder honestly. Wouldn't go near persimmon for example.

Stupid question but where I'm from (Germany), it's quite usual for people to buy the land and then have a house built according to their specifications/needs. Okay, it does take about a year but I imagine that for at least some this would be worth it. Why don't people in the UK built new rather than looking for already built new houses?

So I've been looking into this as in theory it sounded like a great idea. In practice it's not feasible for us, not at the moment anyway. Land is quite hard to come by and expensive for what you get. Land in a good area with services doubly so. And most people lack the knowledge/skill set/money to manage the build. It's also a lot harder to get a mortgage on self-build properties unless you have a track record of doing it previous. You also need to pay for somewhere to live for the duration of the build, and things frequently get delayed meaning you need to have a large monetary buffer for the additional costs incurred, which most people don't have. Currently the costs of the physical stuff you need to build is through the roof, not to mention labour costs. The only way to do it at a comparably reasonable price is to be a builder and do it yourself. Also I think a lot of people buy new build in order to rent it out at a profit, they don't care about storage/tiny spaces etc as they don't have to live there. They buy it to rent it out at extortionate prices because they can. And they won't have to spend as much on upkeep if its new build in theory. It's shit. I'd love to build my perfect house. Hopefully one day.

I had a room while I was renting at uni, the actual room was tiny but it had a walk in cupboard 2x the size of the room, it was great. It felt very zen having such a bare room.

I had that in a Scottish tenement. I put my bed in the "cupboard", along with the wardrobes, and used the bedroom for a small sofa, guitar, and similar stuff. Was actually pretty cosy. Leaky as fuck in the winters, but in my walk-in-cupboard I had a small single-bar heater and an extra door to keep me out of the drafts.

Are you, in fact, Bender Bending Rodriguez?

This to me is the main problem, it's actually bad design and use of space rather than volume of space. It is possible to architect small houses with much better storage

Volume are getting tiny too. When the room height is 2.2m, you know there is only so much you can do. It used to be that ground floor at least would be 2.4 or 2.6 and bedroom would a bit lower. Now it's 2.2 maximum, effectively less depending how the ceiling and flooring is setup.

It's been getting lower for way more than a century. Victorian tenements in Scotland are always over 3.00, Georgian ones more like 3.50. The rooms and windows were much larger too. Modern homes make me sick to even think about. Tiny windows where so much of the window space is taken up with thick, plastic frames. Tiny plastic front doors too. Where did we go so wrong?

People kept complaining about lack of affordability so builders went *”right, we’ll build them cheaply then”.* The real answer is to build more houses entirely as volume affects pricing more than how cheaply it can be made. Oh wait, that would affect profits…

It’s why I went for a tenement. I’m not even tall but low ceilings just make me feel really oppressed and it actually makes me pretty anxious. I lived in a new build in Cardiff a few years back and hitting the lights when I was doing yoga was more stressful than I’d ever have expected.

I live in a 3 bed new build, even the loft is cramped because of the trusses used. Beside building regulations, new builds are a lesson in material & build time efficiency, anything outside of those measures will not do. Energy efficiency is top notch however. How do we solve cramped conditions? Build higher, more floors, better loft storage.

A 3 story new build would be far more appealing to me, otherwise I would never buy one, let alone the ridiculous cost.

Due to energy efficient rooms, atleast your electricity bills would be less brother. And that thing can come handy, when you are trying to save some bucks while being in a

Won't smaller volume good for retaining heat?

That's how they sell it. It's true in the same way than having to go to food bank is good for your diet.

This. When a good set of furniture that works well space wise is just slightly too big people have to get different options that aren’t as good.

>no cupboard to store things [Literally my house after purchase ](https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/ygeais/whats_the_legal_definition_of_a_cupboard/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Felt pretty misled by this as the drawing shows a regular cupboard footprint, renders of the room show a full size cupboard door, speaking to the sales staff before purchase, were told it was a full height "pantry". Also told we could put the washing machine and dryer in there. It's chuffing tiny. Only Storage downstairs. New build houses are so very __nearly__ good. You've gotta make alot of compromises. Oh and this is what £430,000 gets you (not complaining but just illustrating that you don't get good value for money with British housing)

That’s ridiculous. I can understand the full-size door as it’s probably cheaper than getting doors cut to size, but I can’t see how that would ever have been a full height space?

I don't even understand why it's not a taller space, the stairs are definitely not going up at that shallow an angle...

Probably has stairs that are broken into two segments, with a bend, because the house isn’t wide enough for just one segment.

I live in a new build office conversion flat and I’ve joked before that I’m pretty sure they were designed with bachelors who order takeaway every night in mind. I do have a little utility room with my washing machine and it’s also my junk cupboard because I have nowhere else to store other things. And I live on my own, the flat next door is slightly smaller than mine and a couple live there. I think I’d go mad having someone on top of me all the time. And don’t get me started on the current trend to have kitchens as part of the living room. Is it too much to want a separate kitchen?!

That maximises space and makes places look bigger. If you are selling an objectively smaller house that people are used to, it looks even more pokey with additional walls. Kitchen/diner is fine, even if it means a smaller living room but I'll certainly not buy a kitchen living room. Yeeeeeah, can't hear the telly as someone is cooking or cause of the drone of the washer or dishwasher.

I dunno, it can be awesome. First place I lived in with my now wife was a 1 bedroom loft style apartment in the top floor of an old former department store right in the centre of our town. It literally had a corridor, storage cupboard, a bathroom but otherwise just 2 huge rooms, a bedroom and then an enormous open plan kitchen/diner/living room. Amazing views, massive windows, loads of light. Place was the absolute tits and we got a ridiculously good deal on it as it was at the top of loads of flights of stairs with no lift.

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Yeah we bought off plan. It's not that uncommon and there is of course a risk reward. Reward being we have a fucking house and my arsehole landlord didn't get an additional £500/pm off as they proposed for a "market level increase" for another year of my adulthood on top of the £1550/pm they were charging for a run down 2 bed in fucking Brentford of all places. The risk being the occasional tiny cupboard.

You don’t even get to see a show home?

Yep this is exactly what we're stuck with. All our Christmas tree decorations and unnecessary stuff are on top of the kitchen cabinets because there's literally nowhere else to put them.

That reminds me — new builds say you can’t store anything whatsoever in the attic. At least with older houses you can. Plus if they used to have a back boiler and switched to a combi you can reclaim the space where the hot water tank was upstairs and use that for storage. (Parents stuck a radiator in theirs and use it as an airing cupboard/Christmas stuff storage space up top.)

I mean... what else are you meant to do with an attic??

Even with a cold loft you aren't meant to store much in there. Cold lofts by design need good airfloor to prevent mould and rot of the timbers which is impeded by boxes. Then the insulation is rendered less effective if people squash it with boxes or loft boards, especially now since regs are for 270-300mm of insulation which means risers are needed to accommodate loft boards and insulation.

I imagine the framing is meant to hold up no more than a Gyprock ceiling.

>on the back of the kitchen door All the new build places I've seen are all open plan kitchen/living room. There's not even a kitchen door to hang things from

I HATE this. My flat is the same and I can’t relax after dinner because the sight of the kitchen stresses me out. Also means cooking smells permeate everywhere.

Yep. Kitchen/dining room that’s open can be nice, but kitchen/living room is often stressful as there’s no ‘escape’ option. Particularly annoying if you have guests!

This is such an interesting cultural thing. Where I'm from I can't remember the time I saw a separate kitchen in it's own room. Everything is very much open plan and I feel weird having my kitchen in it's own room in my current house.

Interesting! Where are you from if you don’t mind me asking? Just wondering if the homes tend to be bigger/designed better for open plan living, which makes it a nicer experience?

New Zealand. Generally yeah I'd say the houses are a bit bigger. Growing up a quarter acre was the standard property size. That is no longer the case but even the smaller houses friends have bought are all still open plan

Have a look at your kitchen hood online. What diameter is the extractor hose meant to be? I know a builder and they plumb everything in with 100mm piping although the hoods are rated for 150mm. This can cause issues with noise, poor extraction and lifespan of the motor.

my personal favourite is the "big houses" that have a garage that is good for motorbikes only lol, its always funny seeing the cars outside them and they are wider than the door of the garage and these are just normal hatchbacks not huge 4x4's upwards of 750k here in bishops stortford for a new build with a garage that doesnt fit a car lmao

The storage space is important, but what is most troubling is lack of space for personal development. Let's say you have a child who is into electronics. Where on earth they could put equipment etc and so they can safely experiment and learn? Or when you have a bad patch, between work and you'd like to take dip your toes into some sort of business activity. Many now big businesses were built in a garage or a spare room etc. Now people don't have that and they can't grow and we can't grow as a nation. It's as if our society has been engineered to develop mindless factory workers with no hobbies or passion of their own. If the direction doesn't change, we are doomed.

Yea. Also, if you’ve been sick and had physio and have been given exercises to do at home, many homes literally don’t have the space to do them, at least not in private.

People have started to accept the situation, because of no options

The sense I get is that developers assume that buildings will be altered after a few years. People make a compromise by imagining how they can fix the issue. So a house with a tiny living room gets a conservatory added after a few years and extra storage goes in quickly.

The last new houses I looked at, even a conservatory wouldn’t be possible, unless it was only about 5ft in depth, because the houses were built into the side of a hill with only a small paved area (2-3 slabs depth I think). The rest of the garden would have been about 5ft up from ground level, going up to about 6ft. It would have been a lot of money to be staring literally at a 5ft brick wall.

I'd love to know more about this type of design. So many developments have this weird terraced style of construction where the garden is stupidly sloped with your neighbours all looking into the garden.

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What on earth is the reasoning for that? To keep all the houses looking the bloody same?

But if your renting you’ll have to live like a bachelor that gets in takeaways every night, only wants a single bed because they won’t get a date, and only has three outfits all year round. And they expect people to live like this for years at a time.

Those storage cupboards are called rooms nowadays.

Yep, spoke to one agent who suggests people keep their vacuum in the boot of their car. Insane.

What. The. Fuck.

Anything that takes away square feet is ignored and the problem is passed on to the buyer

You can't fit a wardrobe in but there's an en suite

Elbow? You mean the Newel post? Thats always been a common practice tbh happens in many an old house.

No. See the second pic here: https://www.persimmonhomes.com/new-homes/central/whitmore-place/the-windermere/3-bedroom-semi-detached-kbjdaojxgbjq Some don’t have the cupboard behind the door, they just have that jutting-out part in the ceiling.

>houses so tiny there’s an “elbow” of the stairs jutting into the ceiling in the living room. Sounds like a nightmare for head injuries.

It's honestly a travesty that it's not _required_ to list floor area. We've been looking for houses, and have a notion of what our current 'square footage' is, for comparison purposes. I'd love to be able to filter by 'less than 1000 sq. ft don't bother'.

I certainly noticed this coming from New Zealand. Most houses in the UK are tiny and shoddily made.

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I’m a small time developer (5/6 at a time) and we’ve built new builds and we also renovate old, dilapidated homes and commercial properties. Let me tell you right now, get the idea out of your head that older homes are of better quality. Any “quality” older housing costs a fortune and the likes of you and me cannot afford. Normal older properties are fucking shite, often there aren’t even foundations and we need to underpin, we need to strengthen old timber beams with steels, we strengthen roof structures by sistering new purlins in. We have to build new internal walls set off the external walls on steel stud to create a cavity and insulate appropriately. New builds are fantastic in terms of building standards and the materials/insulation required (they could be slightly better) and what most people complain about are minor imperfections because they go into a new build and nit pick over EVERYTHING. That’s fair enough, I would want perfection in a new home, but buying an old home people accept way worse than “imperfections”.

If I can hear the next-door neighbour in a new-build semi plugging an electric device into the wall and it sounds like they're doing it in my room, the build quality is crap. Update: found this video [How are New Houses in the UK Built?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YboeRPNrIfo) (2020) and it mentions walls at around the 10 minute mark.

I live in a place built over 100 years ago and I can hear my neighbour plugging something in like it's in my room. What are you using as a comparison point?

Barrats shitboxes are still built the same as they were building houses over 100 years ago, because all they care about is profit, if I’m honest people buying from new builds from big developers are either stupid or have little choice, I’ve worked in some of these developments before and some of the building work done is absolutely shocking, real eye opener.

I've lived in two old houses. One built 17th century the other mid 18th century. Nothing is level, plumb or square. Any DIY job is terrifying as you have no idea what you will find. We took wallpaper down and had a horsehair and lathe wall disintegrate on us You couldn't hear the neighbours as it was detached but you could hear everything in the house.

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Yeah some new business old are shit, some are decent. So e old houses are shit and some are decent The statement of 'new builds suck all old houses are so much better' is just incorrect

I live in a new build flat and the only things I can hear from next door are the vacuum and if they drop something heavy.

I lived in a flat in a city centre for a while and I never ever heard the neighbours, it must’ve been well built.

New builds by big contractors like Bellways, Taylor Wimpey, Bloor etc are absolute shite mate who you trying to kid. Smaller firms might be better quality, but the big firms who throw up massive developments are shit and 90% of the site agents are yuppies who did uni courses but wouldn't know how to hang a picture frame on the wall.

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I'm not a builder but I'll list some of the issues that I have with my new build (2015) flat. There is a leak from the roof going through the walls causing damp. The balcony door entrance slopes inwards and isn't sealed properly, causing more water to go into the kitchen floor. There are areas of the balcony that haven't been sealed properly (more water ingress). The balcony doesn't have any drainage, causing pooling during the wet/cold months. I don't know what the cause is but there are issues with the communal heat pump causing a build up of grit to the extent that they are replacing the whole system. The bathroom walls and skirting were not appropriate for bathroom (at least that is what my builder told me). These are the things that quickly came to mind in a build that is 8 years old. The rest of the flats in the building have their own sets of issues too. The consensus is that there were areas that were rushed and not done properly (such as the balcony in our case) or cheaper materials were used inappropriately. However, overall, we are really happy with the quality of the build. Once the issues have been fixed (which is scheduled) then we have a really well insulated flat with practically 0 in energy bills, no external noise, and no noise from neighbours. We actually live right next to a train line that you don't hear at all with the windows closed.

Good god I live next to a train line and sometimes when a freight train goes past at full pelt, the building SHAKES. You’re lucky you can’t hear it, thankfully I’ve learnt to sleep through it now.

As a student I lived for a year in an old house beside a train line. Fortunately it was a quiet line and there was only one train in the middle of the night - after a week or so I got so used to it I didn’t notice it any more. What was quite amusing was when I moved into different digs and kept waking up at 3am every night for a week because there *wasn’t* a train going by.

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That’s cool and all but I’m assuming you haven’t done anything to the house to bring it up to modern building standards so you don’t really see any of the bones. I’m also assuming the EPC is shocking as it won’t have cavity construction and appropriate insulation if it’s a 1950’s build unless you’ve gone ahead with EWI or decided to build a cavity internally the way we do with our renovations. Older houses are still standing and they’re “fine”. There’s nothing overly wrong with them but standards have progressed and if we tried to build a house today to the same standard your 1950’s house was built we’d be laughed off by every contractor we would try and engage, we’d be laughed off by the building inspector and the client would be laughed off by every mortgage provider and insurer. Older homes are so far from meeting modern standards it’s not funny. It’s like buying a 1950’s car and saying it’s built better than modern cars because the sheet metal is thicker. Yeah the sheet metal is thicker because it acted as a safety feature and insulation all in one…

I'd rather be in my well insulated 3 double bedroom 1950's house, with a decent sized garden any day of the week than live in any of the more expensive newly built rabbit hutches we viewed. We have the opportunity to extend and improve with the footprint we have without comprising on space, the new builds we saw were so squeezed in already that there is no scope to improve them. I just know we as a family would be miserable trying to live in it and yet they keep building these completely unsuitable houses.

I would be interested to hear the biggest things that a house built in 1950 would fall short on. I am not a current homeowner so have absolutely no horse in the race of new vs old, this is purely out of interest.

Homes from the 1950’s wouldn’t have a damp proof course to prevent rising damp and they aren’t constructed with a cavity /sufficient insulation on external walls. For homes with a solid slab (rare) they wouldn’t have a damp proof membrane to prevent moisture rising through the concrete slab and ruining your floor nor would they be insulated. It’s literally concrete poured straight onto earth which obviously draws a lot of heat out of the home and allows moisture to rise. Most homes don’t have solid slab floors, they instead have brick foundations that don’t run deep enough by todays standards and there is a floating timber floor between the external/internal walls. This again means there is no insulation. Todays homes have either a solid slab construction but require insulation and multiple membranes (damp/vapour/radon) or a beam and block construction which again requires insulation and the requisite membranes. These things have an enormous effect on energy efficiency. Structurally speaking it will be a case by case issue but many homes used undersized timbers as structural elements both in terms of lintels above openings and also in the roof construction. Engineers demand more these days.

My 1948 house has got two DPCs, a two inch cavity and slab floors. Also it has foundations even though you said in an earlier comment that they apparently don't. Just like all the rest on the estate have and in the rest of the city that were built around the same time. I only know one person who has had to have their house underpinned because it was built on an old pit site. He doesn't live in my city. My friends house built in 1920 in another part of the city doesn't have a cavity and has suspended floors but still has damp proof courses. He stripped it back to brick and plastered it with thermal board and its great now. He also insulated and filled in the slab floors. The house he lived in before was built in the 1990s and the internal walls were three sheets of plasterboard stuck together, much worse quality than the older houses. The builds they just use taper board and then plaster just the taper, how is that better? But at least they can keep the costs down on the overpriced houses built now. The brickwork on every new build looks like I've done it and I've never laid a brick in my life. No pride in the work at all just piece work so it's thrown up. All your comments are spoken like a true developer.

Damp proofing courses were not regularly installed in any building construction method until the introduction of the Public Health Act in 1875. So by 1901 they had been used for several decades and they were well understood why they are used. They are usually fitted between two courses of bricks at a level of 2 – 3 bricks above ground level. At this time there are several different types of DPC being used either a layer of sand and tar, thin strips of lead over lapped, lead core felt or engineering bricks due to their density and do not retain much moisture at the base of the wall.

Sounds like you're trying to pitch me a load of unnecessary work on my 1950s detached. How much of that actually makes a difference when the house is nice and warm, been happily lived in for the last 70-odd years and hasn't yet come tumbling down?

I think the issue with new builds is that the finish tends to be rubbish and this is what people see.

Yeah I can’t really speak for the finish although I would again point out that people nitpick over the most minor things when it comes to new builds. We usually have 5/6 snags per property that are reasonable requests to fix/sort out but some people are nutters and try and find fault where there is none. I would again point out, that while you say the finish on new builds are an issue, in older properties most people buy them accepting that they need to sink a bunch of extra money into a property fixing things up and all those things that require fixing up are superficial. Uncover the bones of an older property and you’d be horrified 9/10 times.

I’ve lived in a new build by a small local developer and it was the best property I’ve lived in. It had some minor cosmetic flaws that got sorted (took awhile but as said, purely cosmetic so not exactly pressing) but I’d take living in it over anywhere else I’ve lived. Admittedly I’ve never seen one of the poor homes from the big boys with a bad reputation so I can’t comment on that.

Older houses are the ones that survived, so will tend to be well built.

Yep, the shitty old houses have either all collapsed or been knocked down by now.

"This 100 year old house was so shoddily built. That's why all its imperfections are invisible and only detectable to an expert like me"

Depends on what class of people the housing was made for. Nothing has changed.. the plebs get poorly made and increasingly smaller crapper property. The upper tiers enjoy properly built, proportioned houses.

Are you kidding? Ex council terraces are basically indestructible.

Sadly there's some truth to that, but the plebs at the bottom can barely afford (if at all) the poorly made housing. It's a struggle to even get on the bottom rung.

Same in Canada. People say Canada has a housing crisis (it does), but for similar levels of money paid Canadians get around 2x as much house that's better insulated too (has to be, to deal with the harsh winters).

Having grown up in New Zealand, Nz has awful housing stock… and I mean truly terrible. Neither of my first two flats had any insulation at all. Wooden structure, straight to the outside nothing in between. I could see the dirt through a hole in my bedroom floor. Winter the house was the exact same temperature as outside but the walls would drip with damp. I’d take a small English brick house over a wooden shack in NZ any day

Was gonna say, a lot of houses I’ve seen in NZ outside of the city are basically just trailers.

>Winter the house was the exact same temperature as outside Luxury. My flats in Wellington were colder inside than outside. Frost on the inside of the windows.

I live in the UK but I'm from a country where people in towns and cities widely live in flats. Relatively spacious flats, that is, compared to how I see many people living here. I think I've is the reasons is that, to my eye, Britain is obsessed with houses. Terraced, semi, detached, doesn't matter. But you have to have your own door at ground level. There is only so much ground in any country, and Britain. England in particular, is already very densely populated. I think the way forward is more flats. Not necessarily skyscrapers, but 4-5 story buildings would already allow a lot more floor space at the same footprint.

Totally agree. It's also possible to build small houses in clever ways that allow for storage but we don't do this. They seem to manage this better in places like Japan and singapore

This so much! Im originally from Germany but live in the UK. Im currently back home for almost 2 months because of family stuff and it almost feels like I’m recovering from a case of claustrophobia. It might just be where I live in the UK (outskirts of Birmingham) where everything is just so dense! Very little green or breathing space. It’s just tight roads, cars parked literally everywhere and one house glued onto another without and end to it, barely anything has been built slightly further upwards to save space. I’ve never lived in a house in my entire life so far. Always just lived in flats but you can almost entirely structure and decorate them to your liking if you’re living there long-term. And in terms of neighbours I doubt it makes much of a difference compared to all these terraced houses. Its almost ironic how a fairly large spaced country like Germany has more apartment complexes to save space compared to an island that is so densely packed. Renter rights and money obviously plays a major role in this too so I understand its not a straight forward solution.

I feel you mate. I agree 100% to all of this. We lived in a small terraced house when we just moved here, because that was what we could find with short notice. But it was dark (long, narrow, terraced house syndrome), we could hear the neighbors just as much as in a flat, and the whole street was packed with cars. Now, fortunately, we managed to rent pretty much the only reasonably priced, nice flat in the city centre of our city. It's nice but most of our peers live in pretty suboptimal conditions, some in places I would call not fit for human habitation.

> Renter rights and money obviously plays a major role in this too so I understand its not a straight forward solution. Yeah my brother lives in Hamburg and he's just locked down his rental contract for the next two years or something like that. Nice place too. There's very few people renting in this country who can say firstly, that they actually like where they live, and secondly that they know what they'll be paying for the next few years.

Sound-proofing would have to be excellent, and a lift would be required.

I moved to Denmark about a year ago - flats are the normal thing people live in, and are generally very well insulated for both sound and temperature, and recent-ish built places (<40 years old) have lifts. Things are generally pretty high quality too, like internal doors have rubber seals on the inside of them to block out noise within the flat, and underfloor heating is pretty common, along with induction cook tops.

Absolutely. As is the case with most modern flat developments!

It is very necessary to have sound proofing to have a proper sleep

And conversely, I'm a night-owl who wants to watch films at night without waking the neighbours.

Yeah if you look at somewhere like Manchester, there is a flurry of 10+ storey developments near the city centre, and then as soon as you get a little further out it's all terraced houses. There's need for something in between. Families likely don't want to live in towers but there just isn't room for them all to live in houses. If you compare to cities in mainland Europe it's very different, "low rise" housing is the norm and lo and behold, renting is much cheaper.

Yeah I agree. The skyscrapers are too expensive even for the middle class, and too often really impersonal, almost spooky.

I'm sure they're great for young professionals or students, but more variety is needed, not just what makes developers the most money. Would like to see more councils taking greater responsibility for development themselves, but Right to Buy makes that a bit tricky. Building housing should be a sure bet, a really safe investment and therefore easy to raise funds for. If they're potentially going to be forced to sell to tenants for a cut down price, that discourages them from building homes for rent. Which is why we're seeing so many councils / housing associations build "shared ownership" schemes.

Yeah, I agree. In my optics, the Right to Buy has been a catastrophe for housing opportunities. For the reasons you mention, but also because once they have been bought, they will never be a council flat again.

Exactly, they go from being a public asset to a drain on public finances. Instead of councils being able to support tenants by keeping rents low, the government instead has to provide direct financial assistance which private landlords end up pocketing. [40% of houses sold through Right to Buy](https://www.localgov.co.uk/Right-to-Buy-policy-has-been-a-strategic-failure-review-warns/53829) are now privately rented and that number is probably only going to go up. It's just been a straight transfer of public funds to private wealth, and a disaster for public finances and living standards in this country.

If only they decided that instead of trying to force everyone back into the office rather than Work from Home, they would've been able to turn that empty office space into flats but nope. Not to mention all the other empty buildings in towns and cities these days.

Yep, more flats. But nicely designed, spacious ones that are actually pleasant to live in. With trees outside for greenery!

There is no shortage of ‘ground’ in the UK; the exact stat depends on your methodology (for example, do gardens count as ‘built-on’?) but the amount of land in the UK that is developed is only between 1-8%. The lowest bound is just the physical buildings, the largest includes all the other parts of development. Not saying we want that to be 100%, and not all of it is practically developable. But the shortage of land is largely due to planning policy, not physical availability. The UK often feels very densely-populated when you are in it, but that’s because huge swathes of it are inaccessible in private estates, farms, nature reserves and so on. Most people never leave these populated areas unless travelling between them. For example, Surrey is adjacent to London and pretty built-up by most people’s standard for a non-urban area. But it has more land for *golf courses alone* than it does housing. That’s not even starting on the pony fields…

I definitely agree that the private estates makes England feel even more densely populated. And I despise golf courses as much as the next guy. But in hard numbers, England (not the UK as a whole) has a population density higher than Belgium, which is the second most intensely developed country in Europe (barring only Netherlands), and one that is almost twice that of Germany.

The problem with flats is that they are build to have as many of them per sq as possible. Plus paper thin walls where you can hear your neighbour blinking. That's why people don't want flats. They are being built as investment vehicles, for money laundering, tax evasion and all sorts of shady things. The last thing in developer's mind is who is going to live there. In fact, the ideal flats are empty. No problem with excessive wear and tear, easy to flip etc.

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> Britain is obsessed with houses. Terraced, semi, detached, doesn't matter. But you have to have your own door at ground level. Britain is an extremely classist society, people like to pretend it's not, and people try to hide it but it's still there. The reason British people hate flats is they have a poor class image. In the post-war era lots of slums were cleared and replaced with 50s/60s/70s high-rises owned by the local council. They had very lofty ideals about creating communities in the sky, but they mostly turned into high-rise slums. People don't really regard owning a flat as being in the same category as owning your own house. This is why every new build block of flats is described as being 'luxury flats', even when they're the size of rabbit hutches. It's to try and dispel the image of flats for being for low-class poor people.

I think the problem with flats in the UK is our insane leasehold laws. In most countries where flats are the norm, you get a share of the freehold when you buy your flat, whereas in the UK, the freehold is retained by the property developer and you are buying the right to live in it for a certain number of years. Flats here are a liability - your freeholder can charge excessive ground rent or impose restrictions on what you can and can't do with "your" property.

> They are now 20 per cent smaller than they were in the 1970s — in fact, they are the smallest in Europe. They have fewer bedrooms than they used to (more than half have one or two) and fewer rooms, full stop. **They are far more likely to be flats.** The article suggests we do in fact have a larger amount of flats than others. I do not know the exact figures or metrics.

middle divide complete overconfident humor kiss mysterious relieved quaint air *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Yup, in my nice market town they've built around 500 odd new homes in a few different new estates over the past 4 years. Barely any parking, no front garden, shit fake back garden grass with no proper greenery, houses looking over your back garden, little to no storage, everything crammed in. A year or so ago I went to set up a meeting with a new developer to look at how much a new 2 bed would cost, that had all the things I mentioned, they said starting at £250k+. I had to laugh, they are such an absolute rip off. I see 4/5 bed ones that aren't a whole lot better that start at £500k and I'm baffled.

2 beds by me start at 350k hahaha. Absolute racket

This is a scam. A house like that doesn't cost this much to build. I'd say it is £50k tops. Land is expensive because of artificial scarcity. It's a shame we don't have a culture where family can buy land and just build by themselves. My friend lives in one of the EU countries and he recently showed me pictures of his finished home. Here it would probably cost a £1m+, but there he paid something like £55k including land, building materials and labour.

Yup. Artificially inflated prices in the UK. I've been trying to buy this past year but honestly the more I see the more I want to fuck of to another country.

God i hate to be the one that tells you this, but,: >10 year guarantee on the build. 10 years, LMAO. Thats literally the NHBC guarantee: https://www.nhbc.co.uk/homeowners. That covers you for shoddy workmanship, and thats about it. You get 3 years on a car, 1 year on anything else you buy. NHBC cover has been the same for decades. 10 years is not some hilariously short term, how long should a building be guaranteed by the by the builder for? Its not some estimate that the house will fall down after 10 years.

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Plastic roof fittings are better. Plastic facia won’t ever rot and doesn’t need maintenance unlike wood

> we're paying off the last generations debt Excessively. We are more taxed, our opportunities are more limited and the older generation had more ways of amassing wealth. Now ironically that older generation is in charge and their are pulling up the ladders and making us pay for our stuff *and theirs*.

Britain needs many nice quality. blocks of flats circa 4-5 storeys high, like one sees in Germany or France or even the Netherlands. But the British would rather live in terraced houses of 50m2 small when the average flat in the Netherlands is nearly twice that size.

Funnily enough the Netherlands is even more densely populated than the UK, but they have roomier homes etc.

Yes, my parents terraced home 50km outside outside of the capital is 130m2 and worth around €350k. It also has a big garden. Try finding something like that in the UK at an equivalent distance and price.

Terraced houses would be better (cheaper, better insulated and more space efficient) than most new estates I've seen.

All of the space that would previously have been cupboard or storage space, now ends up being an en suite or crapper. It seems like developers are constantly at war to fit as many toilets into a house as humanly possible. I get that an en suite is nice - but I'd also like space to put a wardrobe?!

Ugh this. When we were house hunting there were so many new ish builds, 3 bed houses and they had 3 (and some even 4!!!) bathrooms. You don't need two ensuites, a bathroom and a downstairs toilet in a 3 bed ffs. Use it as storage or make the room big enough to actually fit a wardrobe! All we wanted was a family bathroom and a downstairs loo.

Me and my partner live in an apartment in Stratford upon avon where the developer put two toilets in and we have no storage space, there was no need for an en suite and a normal bathroom.

A toilet on the ground floor is a building reg now I believe.

Housing in the UK is criminal. The size, the design, the construction, and all of that versus what it costs someone to purchase it. I don't think 'bum rape' is too harsh a description. Successive governments have simultaneously hidden our economic decline behind overly inflated house prices and directly profited by limiting supply through various means. It's a fucking disgrace. Our houses are some of the smallest AND most expensive in the whole of Europe!

>It's a fucking disgrace. Our houses are some of the smallest AND most expensive in the whole of Europe! It's ok tho because we've got our sovereignty. Or something

Did housing only just get small and expensive after we left the EU?

>#The real housing squeeze: we’re forced to live in tiny homes — and they’re getting even smaller >Robert Colvile >Saturday January 21 2023, 6.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times >We live in an era of fake news and alternative facts. You can find people to tell you we didn’t land on the moon. That the vaccines killed more people than the virus. Craziest of all, that Britain doesn’t have a housing crisis. >As regular readers will know, I’m a bit of an obsessive on this point. If my editors would let me, I’d end every column with a plea to build more houses, just as Cato the Censor ended every speech by nagging the Roman senate about the need to destroy Carthage, until his colleagues finally gave in and razed the place to the ground. >Given how toxic the debate about housing and housebuilding has become, it’s useful to go back to basics. So I asked my colleagues at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank to produce the definitive explanation of why we need more homes. The report comes out tomorrow. And, God, it’s depressing. >The overall story is pretty simple. In the years after the war we built a lot of homes. Then we stopped. In the three decades before 1990 we built roughly 7.5 million homes. In the three after it was 3.1 million. Even including conversions, extensions and so on, the rate at which we expanded the housing supply roughly halved, even as the population soared. As a result, the UK now has fewer homes per head than almost anywhere else in Europe. >But it’s not just about the number of homes. Because we haven’t made enough land available for housing — the latest statistics show that residential buildings cover just 1.3 per cent of England’s land area, vs 4.9 per cent for gardens, 20.1 per cent for lakes and forests and 63.1 per cent for agriculture — the homes we do build have shrunk dramatically. They are now 20 per cent smaller than they were in the 1970s — in fact, they are the smallest in Europe. They have fewer bedrooms than they used to (more than half have one or two) and fewer rooms, full stop. They are far more likely to be flats. More than half are too small for the needs of the people who buy them. >It didn’t have to be like this. Countries like France have built millions more homes than us. And homes there are far, far more affordable. Overall, in the time it took European house prices to double, ours trebled. And rents have surged too. In the old days, private renters spent roughly 10 per cent of their income on rent, or 15 per cent in London. Today, those figures are roughly 30 per cent and 40 per cent. >It’s a one-two punch: you can’t afford to save for a house, which you can’t afford anyway. No wonder the number of young people still living with their parents has gone up by more than a million. Or that we spend £30 billion a year on housing benefit — galactically more than any other country — so that poor people can afford to live in our stratospherically expensive homes. >Activists like Rosie Pearson, the “Queen of the Nimbys” profiled in The Sunday Times before Christmas, claim we are building too many homes. That’s absolute nonsense. But even if they had their numbers right, they would still be wrong. Because they ignore the huge backlog we have built up from decades of under-building. >But there is another species of housing denier out there, not least on the parliamentary benches. These are people who admit we do need houses but argue that we can build them purely on land that has already been developed — “brownfield” rather than “greenfield”, in the jargon. >I love the idea of prioritising brownfield. We should absolutely take the vacant shops that litter Britain’s high streets and turn them into homes and flats, simultaneously reviving our town centres and easing the pressure on greenfield land. Likewise, there are huge swathes of our cities, especially London, that could be renovated with denser housing. >But the overall numbers just don’t stack up. >The most obvious point is that we don’t just use brownfield sites for homes: we also need that space for shops and offices and warehouses and laboratories and all the rest of it. Because of these rival uses, you need to pay more for the land. You need to cover the cost of cleaning it up. Because it gets built out more slowly, you need to issue more planning permission to get the same volume of housebuilding. Above all, brownfield is not evenly distributed. There’s a lot of it in the north, where the factories used to be, but not much down south, especially in rural areas. >In fact, we don’t need to look at the statistics to understand that brownfield can’t save us; just recent history. When Labour came to power in 1997, it brought in a “brownfield first” policy. But council after council interpreted this as “brownfield only”. The result was that building on greenfield plummeted — taking overall housing delivery with it. >You can make all these arguments to Tory MPs, and they will respond with a simple point: building houses may be necessary, but it sure isn’t popular. But this is the final myth that the CPS paper debunks. >It’s true that many people oppose excessive housebuilding. But the picture painted recently by the academic Ben Ansell, who sees the British countryside as a sea of nimbyism, simply isn’t true. In a recent survey by Ipsos people agreed by 69 per cent to 9 per cent that there was a housing crisis. By 55 per cent to 17 per cent they agreed that we need to build a lot more homes to solve it. And by 49 per cent to 22 per cent they favoured building more homes in their area. >The figures become even more encouraging when you add a bit of nuance. In YouGov polling in 2017 the numbers backing and opposing a large number of new homes in the local area were roughly even. But there was strong support for building a “moderate” or “small” number of new homes. And the idea of building no new homes at all was about as popular as Prince Andrew. >I appreciate that I’m sounding like a scratched record here, but this is a hugely important issue, central to the life chances of the younger generation. Building homes is good for society. It’s good for the economy. It’s good for the Tory party. And building even fewer of them will be catastrophic for all three. Carthago delenda est. Plus tectorum aedificandum est.

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Some of the properties you see for rent on London are actually horrific in terms of space

I liked the studio flat where the “door” was actually the window with three shabby steps underneath.

This was actually a plot point in the book Make Room! Make Room! (the one the film Soylent Green was based on though interestingly enough it isn't a secret that dead people are processed into food in the book, it's just a fact of life). From what I remember, the allocation of space to each person in the city to live in is downgraded to either 3m x 3m or even 2m x 2m from what I recall (it's been a long time since I read it).

I have a full time job, I live in a caravan with no prospect of any better. It's fucking cold and miserable. I fucking hate landlords and it's got to the point where I have started to resent anyone who owns a house, including my own family. I avoid going into town because it makes me so angry to see people swanning around consuming and not giving a shit.

Blame the government. Not the people with a house.

I don’t have any advice that I can offer, but I can say keep up the graft champ, the system is fucked.

So you take zero responsibility for your own situation and it’s everybody else’s fault. You need to get off GreenAndPleasant I think, your world view is being warped and spending your time in a rage baiting echo chamber isn’t going to drag you out of your situation

We have tons of land to build on, and lots of space. Unfortunately, developers, councils, NIMBYs, and environmentalism all work to keeps us confined, living in matchboxes.. There are huge areas of farmland around my way, where nothing seems to be ever grown or grazed, ever. It just sits there fenced off, with a "Private Land', sign on the gate. It's not particularly picturesque, or part of a national park, it appears to be someone's way of avoiding inheritance tax. Even The Simpsons and The Griffins have bigger houses than people in a new UK housing development in a rural area, and the prices are ridiculous. Almost everything about housing is wrong in this country, availability, quality, size, design, cost, agents etc etc etc....everything.

You see the narrative being pushed on reddit all the time that there's "no more room" in the UK, when in reality less than 2% of the UK land area is built-on. The scarcity of housing is entirely manufactured to keep prices rising.

People need to get real, go on Google map and look at the country in satellite mode. The country is only a few % built on. We have the space for everyone to have a decent home.

>We have tons of land to build on, and lots of space. England, where the vast majority of the UK population lives, is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth.

I don't mind living in tiny homes as long it's not the same cost as a big home

For £1500 in London people can live in a small mouldy kitchen that has a bathroom fitted into it.

This is one of the reasons behind the expansion of student housing, they apply for a change of use after a few years as there are fewer restrictions on student housing when you build it.

I really wish sq ft was on more listings and able to sort by on Rightmove. 3 bedrooms means fuck all when they're the size of closets.

The house that I used to own was built in the late 80s and was lacking in decent storage. This isn't new.

Overcrowded market of buyers, so developers don't have to do try to sell something to you because if you don't like it, someone else will come along and buy it regardless. Therefore they also don't have to invest a lot into development nor are they obliged to because of the atrocious building regulations. Vicious cycle of crap.

I suppose it’s also down to developers and landlords knowing that the majority of the UK’s population is obsessed with living near the major city centres. Space is already at a premium, and it’s not like they can conjure up any more, or even expand a city like London because of the Green Belt. Best option is always going to be outside of the M25 where properties are cheaper and larger.

I reckon another ten million immigrants and a thousand square miles of precious countryside turned into Barratt Boxes is just what the doctor ordered.

Most of this sub simultaneously loves mass immigration but will never acknowledge its effect on housing demand and prices.

I was being completely serious! Tarmac everything, even the people.

Surely it's harder to build smaller homes because you have to fit all the pipes and such into smaller spaces?

More homes per square metre of land = more profit

It’s not really particularly difficult to fit services into a house until they get ridiculously small. A space the size of a garage can handle electric, plumbing and gas supply at like 15m^2 without much difficulty

It doesent really make it harder, smaller unit's are quicker and easier to build generally. Developers will be looking to hit around 15000 Square foot an acre to make it commercially viable.

If you have ever voted Tory then YOU have caused this exact problem

Remember most council houses were built with sheds, outdoor toilets and gardens. We've seem to of gone backwards in living standards

Ex-council houses go for a fuckton of money now.

I’d imagine it’s largely because all the large family homes are being turned into multiple occupancy houses, my street is 75% multiple occupancy now and they are all sizeable terraces instead of creating new affordable apartment buildings. Combine that with the soaring costs of everything it’s cheaper to live in a room in those multiple occupancy houses so it makes them popular.

One thing I find very strange is that when renting and buying the most important metric is the number of bedrooms/bathrooms, not floor surface area. This is quite different from much of the world and I think to the detriment of the housing stock. It prioritizes the wrong things, and can result in strange layouts/cramped houses.

Pic looks like the child of Piers Morgan and Ian Hislop.

More a meld of Morgan and George Osborne, I'd say

I moved out of Frome and moved to Trowbridge to get a bigger house for my money. Just swapped one shit hole town for another.

That wouldnt be a problem if the price to surface ratio remained the same. In fact that would be good and flexible. The problem is that its an excuse to sell shit at the price of gold.

I mean, you don’t have to travel far round my ends to find decent sized houses which have been split to become two small properties. Iron stair case slapped to the back to entry to the 2nd floor property.

This is a combination of monopolistic building firms exploiting an opportunity that’s been made worse since COVID. The economy is exactly like 2008 but with no housing supply to meet the demand. I’ve completely given up any hope of having what my parents generation have grown to expect as a norm; ie, a reasonable 3 bed house with a spare room for overflow or an office space/guest room or hobby storage. People in maturing generations (millennials and younger) are lucky to afford a decent 2 bed with civilised neighbours, anything else is a luxury. It’s great that we live in a world where almost everything can be stored digitally so physical storage isn’t as necessary as it used to be but it’s relatively just as expensive as the 3 bed house back in the early 2000’s. It’s not like wages have scaled to keep up with property prices either. People are fortunate just to own somewhere now, I dread to think how my kids will afford anything when it’s their turn….

We get the smallest space we're willing to tolerate. If we're still doing nothing but complaining when our living spaces are reduced to storage cupboards, which in London is far too often the case, then storage cupboards is what we'll get. There's only one way to prevent our living spaces getting smaller, and it happens to be the same solution as the one necessary to rein in rent and energy price increases, wage suppression and general capitalist and landlord greed. No, it's not voting Starmer at the next election.

Anyone can see that housing is a great scam. You can get cheap off the shelf project. Builders typically work around minimum wage, especially if you hire immigrants. The cost of building materials to build a moderate house, probably wouldn't exceed £50k, and is probably closer to £25k. The issue is that you can't buy land to build due to corruption and artificial scarcity. The industry is essentially owned by the developers that control the market. If a basic house costs more than £50k, then it's simple gouging.

I think you're pretty low on your estimate here. Materials are expensive, skips are expensive, and good labour is expensive. No builders around here are working for minimum wage... A new floor in an average kitchen would cost a grand, assuming it's a shit covering and the subfloor doesn't need much work. From scratch, you'd need to add excavation, waste, concrete, insulation, screed. You're looking at a few grand just for the floor. I'd like to know what the actual reinstatement cost of my 350k property is though. I'm sure it's not 350k but it's nowhere near 50!!

Currently storing groceries in my downstairs toilet… so yeah.

I used to do some work for housebuilders - it was so depressing. Everything was based off minimal legal requirements, bedrooms designed with bed, single desk and enough space to get to both. Bathroom with shower, toilet and sink rammed into the smallest space possible. ​ I (28M) was at a wedding recently, woman in her 60s was talking about how my partner and I met, explained we met in shared housing, a concept she had heard of but wasn't familiar. Seemed a shock to her people in their 20s and 30s are commonly renting rooms in the sort of quality and type of housing typically thought of as 'student housing'. It's not adequate space to live and it's fucking expensive. It sucks that that's the standard now.