What A Splendid Idea

[youngmafbog]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-24550698

Buy your home for a £1 and be given 30k loan to do it up. Sounds an excellent idea to me. It houses people, gives them their own home and will bring the streets back to life.

There is nothing worse than boarded up housing that tends to end up attracting all sorts of worthless scum(Druggies etc) so anything to combat this wins my vote.

Anyone else like it?

[jim360]

It seems an interesting idea and I hope it works out.

[LazyGun]

I do like the idea of old housing stock being refurbished and renewed as part of an urban regeneration programme, rather than simply being torn down, since in many cases those old build houses offered the residents a much more substantial and larger property than the rabbit hutches on offer today.

My sole proviso would be how energy efficient such housing stock is, in terms of insulation - particularly relevant given the talk of escalating fuel bills, etc.

[AB Editor]

Stoke/Newcastle is a desperate place. I hope it works out for them.

[FredPuli43]

There's somewhere in the North (Manchester?) where, instead of bulldozing terraced houses, the council has refurbished them, often knocking two into one, and had them fitted with proper insulation and modern heating. That, and this scheme in Staffordshire seem excellent ideas.


Now , if I could buy my home for £1 and a £30k grant to refurb, I wonder how long it would be before I sold it a full market price ?

[sandyRoe]

I think with some grants there's a condition that if you sell within a certain time you have to repay it.
This seems an excellent idea.

[237SJ]

Great idea and the commitment to live there for 5 years will stop the buy to let landlords moving in for the kill. I don`t know how they will enforce that though.

[SeaJayPea]

They've done the same thing in Liverpool recently and you have to sign a contract that you won't try and sell for a minimum of five years.

I can remember an estate in Tottenham that they did a similar thing on about 25 years ago, they called it 'homesteading' and it was massively over-subscribed. Gave a load of people who wouldn't have been able to get on the housing ladder otherwise a leg-up. Much cheaper for the authority than knocking it down and re-building.

[The Builder]

Fred's N. Manchester scheme is exactly what should be happening. So much "red-brick terraced" housing in this country is in very poor condition.

I guess the Manchester scheme brought the stock up to modern standards of insulation etc. I fear that, with the £30k grant, very little of that will be spent on fundamentals such as insulation and the structural fabric.

Better than leaving them unoccupied of course. Unless they are of historical or aesthetic merit, then it's time to be rid of them. Modern "flat-pack", factory made units are available (even Ikea!). Their insulation level is way beyond anything the old housing can ever hope to attain.

The change will come when good design and "kerb appeal" remove the stigma........... and the misconceptions.

[FredPuli43]

Kerb appeal and fashion certainly matter, Builder. My old father's favourite jest when he had some minor argument with my mother was "You can go and live in Rock Road!" Rock Road is a road of substantially mean and terraced houses, probably intended for railway workers. The houses now fetch about £600, 000 . Well, they are pretty central and, unsurprisingly, convenient for the mainline railway station to London.

[AB Editor]

"Now , if I could buy my home for £1 and a £30k grant to refurb, I wonder how long it would be before I sold it a full market price ?"

I believe you have to live there for 5 years.

[The Builder]

Rock Road, Urmston Fred?

I think prices took a tumble when you left ;o)

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/home-values/urmston/rock-road/

[FredPuli43]

No, Ed, it's in Cambridge, a city where anything near the centre costs £600,000 at least! Where's Urmston, exactly? I did spend some time looking for areas where housing was cheap; almost anywhere is cheap compared to Cambridge; for my needs are few, so a simple two bed would suffice. Made the mistake of going to Savill's site and entering 'South Wales'. Being Savill's, they offered me some nice properties and all over £1.5 million! Still, you get a lot more mansion for your money than you do around here.

[FredPuli43]

Sorry, meant the Builder, not Ed. I expect the Ed already lives in AB towers, a small estate with only 200 acres and nine bedrooms, and only 9 loose boxes for the horses

[andy-hughes]

It is a great idea. I live in Stoke and there are huge swathes of land where terraced properties have been demolished and the promised re-builds have never appeared.

Anything that keeps existing properties standing and people in them gets my vote.

[Old_Geezer]

If it is worth someone buying for £1 and getting a £30k loan to do it up then why is it not worth the council doing it up instead ? I don't see this changing much save to admit the council can't be bothered and would prefer to flog public property for next to nothing to lucky individuals. But of course it isn't council money is it, it's public money and the government can always demand more from the public to fund their philanthropy.

[DrFilth]

FredPuli43 they have modernised whole streets in manchester and this was over 30 years back, these were in the south part of the city.

i use to live in one the was done up, sorted

[DrFilth]

Old_Geezer the council do houses up , they did a large area in sections, the people moved out and lived in caravans in platt fields park while they did the houses up , they move back in to the modernised house then another family move into the caravan and they get their house modernised

[FredPuli43]

And what would the council in Stoke do with the properties if they did them up themselves? If they rented them, they would still have the capital tied up. Now, they are selling them to local residents who do not own any other property. These people must be renting or living with relatives. Here we come into political philosophy mixed with hard economics. Keep properties for rent and tie up the capital whilst maintaining them as landlords or sell them thereby creating new home owners and more stability in the community? You decide. Since an amount of money for this comes from the government and the houses were owned by private landlords before the council bought them, it is easy to see why this council decided on what they did.

[Old_Geezer]

Councils are supposed to have money tied up in property. To have council property to rent out to those unable to afford to buy. If they have done up others why are they not doing so here ?