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  • Tax cuts from the tories? Further inflated house prices? Who'd have thought?

    This was a good read: https://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2017/nov/18/house-prices-land-prices-cheaper-homes

    In the Netherlands, the only sizeable country in Europe more densely populated than England, the Expropriation Act allows local authorities to buy land at current-use value. They prepare it for development, use part for social housing and sell the rest for commercial use, often at a large profit.

    Think of it. Councils take all the financial uplift from planning permission, using potentially huge profits from land sales to build social housing almost at no cost to the public purse. Developers focus on making profits from building high-quality homes, not from hoarding plots. Land speculation is killed off almost overnight.

    Instead, the chancellor will tell us in this week’s budget that the solution is billions more for help to buy. All that does is raise property prices and landowner profits. If only Philip Hammond could be more like Churchill.

  • The Dutch Expropriation Act sounds similar to the UK's Compulsory Purchase Act, which allows councils to do exactly the same. Not entirely sure why they don't, but I'd agree that they don't.

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