It seems a bit silly to compare what I could do, compared to what a Government working with a major contractor could do.
Ed Balls recently announced that he would seek to build 100,000 homes from the £3bn from the sale of 4G.
Work that out.
£30k a home.
And that’s exactly the kind of “maths for morons” and stupid political statements that created the national debt and ongoing deficits this country has now. The banking crisis served as a useful diversion to the damage the Labour government had done to our finances that we will be dealing with for years to come.
Don’t make it party political.
I could quite easily point you towards the inventors of the PFI, and how these are a massive drain on our books, I can point you to the sell off of private companies, for pennies most of the time, so that bankers and investors could make a mint from what we created with our taxes…etc etc etc
That would be boring.
The reality is this.
House prices are too high.
End of story.
Where is your answer to the question what are we going to do about it?
You have none, but want to quibble about the cost of home building when done on a massive scale, which neither of us are really in a position to prove.
What I can say is this.
That housing will pay for itself in 10 years. Everything beyond that is profit.
You could make 100,000 homes pay for themselves in a far shorter period, by simply selling them off to key workers at a reduced price.
Let’s say it does cost £40k to build a home. You can sell it for £80k, which would be MASSIVELY below the average price, to Key workers or low earners, sell 50,000 of those homes, you have paid for the other 50,000.
Sell the other 50,000 and you have paid to build 100,000 more.
Don’t talk about simple maths.
Unless it actually will cost over £100k to build each and every single home, when you are building massive amounts, then the maths work out.
Whether it is £80k or £100k that is still massively below the current average house price, which is over £200k.
Historical fact about the national debt IS party polical and quoting the ramblings of Ed Balls introduced politics. By the way Balls actually costed the homes at £25k each - 500 million was to be reserved for a stamp duty holiday). As I said, the only way to get near that is prefab/pod type construction or tower blocks - certainly not “houses”.
I don’t have an answer because the answer to the question (partly because I no longer do that for a living) but it isn’t as easy as you seem to think it is. It isn’t just a case of waving a magic wand and everything will be right. There is a social housing project underway near where I live. Well I say underway, but actually it is sitting idle at the moment because the builder has gone bust. They were the third building firm to go bust over the same project - so now the social housing lies unfinished and unavailable to those that need it. Why - because it isn’t cheap to build social housing and it isn’t a matter of simple maths! To suggest otherwise is just plain wrong and it might sound good as a soundbite to impress the voters, but turning it into reality is something else.
Kaos, you might understand better with some real numbers. A typical small house (two bedroom) would be around 800/900 square foot a three bedroom would be 1000 and up.
These are old figures, and prices have gone up not down. These prices don’t take into account infrastructure such as the roads, sewers, landscaping and so on.
http://www.publicarchitecture.co.uk/knowledge-base/files/indicative_building_costs.pdf
£30k a home is bullsh1t. Yes, I build and refurbish houses and flats. Finished product is £1200 per sq m of internal area + land + utilities + fees is realistic. Work that out.
Has Hamza been fried yet ?
You sound like a politician ! Go and try to build a house, see how much it costs you.
Are you the MD of Barrett homes then? You working on the scale of building 100,000 homes, building materials, hiring staff and machinery at that level?
I wonder how you find the time managing such a large company, considering the amount of drivel you post on here 
(that was just a joke, please don’t take it too harshly)
Even the self-build place suggests £1,000 per sq m. (and that includes the land charges) and that is for people doing it themselves through hiring a small contractor.
You telling me doing it in bulk won’t save a penny?
I don’t think that is true.
Stop telling me to go and build a house, like somehow we have the resources of a Government.
It is plain silly.
It is like me telling you to go buy yourself an orchard and see how much the apples cost you!!
As an excuse for telling you that apples cost £30 each.
We both know it’s bullshit, me telling you to go buy an orchard, doesn’t prove my point any more than you telling me to go build a single home on my own proves your point.
I have and do work for a major contractor . Men cost what men cost , the more you hire does not make it cheaper . Steel costs what steel costs the more you buy does not make it cheaper , Same goes for timber , bricks , copper , plastic etc etc . The discount you get for buying 1000 tons of something as opposed to 10 ton of something … is not nearly even close to what you might think it is . And then there is the transport costs . And all the specialised plant required to deal with large quantitys . Unloading a pallat of bricks out a tranny van can be done by hand . You get 1000 ton of brick delivered and you need forklifts , cranes , movment orders , qualified drivers and banksmen , fuel , fitters when it breaks down , facilitys for all these men … The list goes on and on and on and on . Bulk = more expense not less .
about time he got dealt with. p.s abu close the door behind you your letting a draft in thankyoupleasebye
We can both offer logical arguments NumNum, but until someone actually turns up with some facts on the matter, it is just pie in the sky. Your opinion versus mine, based on our singular logical arguments.
For instance, you need a plan to build your home, but if you build ten, well you still only need one plan, if you have to put in plumbing, electricity and gas, surely it is cheaper to do that buy the street load, than for a single plot, if you were to have a road of single plot homes?
There are many arguments for whether the price goes up or down, and even SMALL changes in price for bulk, make a large impact when you are buying bulk.
If something costs me 10p if I buy 10 and 9p if I buy 100. Then i have saved 10p, if I buy 1,000 it saves me £1, if I buy 10,000 it saves me £10.
From a starting price difference of just 1p.
Until we can get some facts, and if I weren’t so busy I would look into that, it is merely conjecture.
I will say this though.
The Labour Government is unlikely to want to embarrass themselves and have probably done the research to back up their plans for 100,000 homes at a cost of £3bn.
And I have not seen the Conservative Party nor the Lib Dems publicly point out that they are wrong, I have seen commentators and opinion writers like us do it, but I have seen nothing official, from people with the resources to find out.
The plan will be one plan but each home has its own set of drawings . Some saving available if every home is identical .But if there is lots of paper and lots of plots you need more on site engineers to read those drawings . The utility companys charge the same rate to connect one home as for 100 homes . No savings there as they have you by the bollocks and they know it . You can buy more of something for less as I said you do get a discount . But once you buy big you need to be equipped for big and that kills any discount very quickly . We get a trade discount from the big suppliers, but once you see how much as tower crane and forklifts and brick lifts , hoists , drivers and slingers and banksmen cost you would see that discount quickly swallowed . If we hire men for a job they aint much interested in us saying " well we are hiring 10 of you so we only want to pay you £9 and hour not the £10 if we were only hiring John there . I have worked in the civils field for 15 years now . Every type of development you can imagine from the new toilet block in naval headquarters to The Shard . Some of the big jobs require you to have custom machinery made . We had to get Komatsu to make us a digger for a job . That digger once built and with specially made attatchments cost 1.2 million . As the standard £700,000 roll of the production line version could not cope with the scale of the materials being handled . Same in the Shard , we had to get a specially made machine that would dig to the depth required . As with all specially made machines it cost more … and spare parts also need to be custom one off made .
Fir instance … one of these … plus attendants 
cost a lot more than one of these plus attendant … 
If you need to move 1 ton of steel you can use one of these 
If you need to move 100 ton of steel … without doing lots of back and forth or having lots of the above you need one of these …
Now there is a production saving obviously but it aint as big as what you might think it is . Feel free to research how much it costs to get Justin to move something big across london as opposed to getting men to take it apart using lots of runs with a transit and then rebuild it at the other end . My argument is fact based , Its my job . In this area I am an expert witness with many many years experience on the super huge projects . I have worked on projects that added 30% more homes to a town . That scale of work needs massive infrastructure and planning that building one home on a plot does not even have a comparison with . Plug into the street hahahaha you gotta build the ferking street and the dual carraigway and the shopping center and all the other thing people and familys need that move into those homes .
Here is how you expand a town on a big scale . http://www.geddesconsulting.com/uploads/downloads/Planning%20Statement.pdf As you can see its not a simple as throwing up some houses .
Kaos I think you’re out-voted on the cost of house building…
I have to agree with the rest. Economies of scale don’t really come into it. The only savings you could envisage are down the supply chain if you are building masses of identical soulless houses. Then again most of the time any such savings are hoovered up in the contractors profits…bearing in mind they negotiate their prices for everything anyway- that’s how they get their margin.
The cost of these huge building projects are in the infrastructure, planning, mobilisation and management. Legal fees for planning consultants etc.
Having said all that a council house replacement programme would be a good idea. If you got the timing right you could have a new smaller house built and ready for the flown-the-nest tenant to move straight into when they vacate their 5 bed mansion.
Refurbishment and sub-division of larger property is usually going to be most cost effective than new build. Not as glamorous but has the benefit of not having to displace people from their local area.
I have nothing to say about Hamza btw as I haven’t been following the story.
I can’t argue with your experience.
I can only repeat.
This is the second time Labour have costed at about £30k a home. Spending £3bn on building 100,000 homes this time, but last time it was a smaller number of homes and the estimated cost was still £30k.
Now what I don’t understand is this: If you are right, why are Labour not being ridiculed by the other political parties for proposing a ridiculous idea that doesn’t add up?
They have been ridiculed on the idea, but not on the costing.
So either you are missing something in your experiences or the political parties have decided to go easy on each other?
I think I know why, because when they put forward these types of ideas they have to cost them, they have to explain how it will work out, how it will work out to that much, and they have done this.
Now I don’t have the resources, nor frankly the time, to do a comparison cost exercise, so unless someone actually points out the flaw in their plan, I am willing to take it on face value.
Silly ?
The thing is, you buy in bulk, you design big, you buidl big, yes it gets a bit cheaper, not much but your overheads are higher.
If you googled the £30k per house build cost then you will find that Ed Balls is talking balls http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/property/residential-property/the-mystery-of-ed-balls-plan-for-100000-new-houses/3617.article
'Balls is planning to spend £500,000 on a two-year stamp duty holiday for first time buyers. This won’t build any new houses directly. It might stimulate the market from the demand side, but, as Treasury officials were quick to point out, the last stamp duty holiday was a flop.So Balls only has £25k for each house.
The National Housing Federation confirms to me that you can’t build houses for this sum:
“You’re right to note that £25k is not enough to build a new home. This figure simply relates to the level of government investment per home, but doesn’t include the money housing associations will invest (derived from their own private borrowing e.g. bond finance). Housing associations will match every £1 of government investment with up to £5 from their own resources. “
Yes i know how much it costs to build houses, and buildings of all kinds. I have only been designing and getting all sorts of civils and buildings completed for for 22 years. By myself and though working for large companies. I only do a few one offs and conversions myself (thanks to the destruction of the economy by the “no more Boom and Bust Labour government” ).
I would be interested to see the self build place that says its £1000 per sq m (turnkey contract) including the land, I would be interested to see that. Cuz it dont include the land, fella.
There is some info to help you understand here : http://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/costs/calculator There are up to date costs on the download pdf at the bottom. You need Option D (for those who stand back and watch and say they did it all).
Be aware that throwing up 100000 houses will require more trades and plant than are available, wage rates will rise too, putting the costs up more.
And I dont need a friggin orchard, got a big apple tree thanks. The news is : apples are free.
Perfect
Something is definatley missing from the picture . As on my figures of what I have read they are aiming for £24752.47 per home . As only 2.5b is going to the actual making of the homes . If you put one multiskilled tradesman to work on one house , 10 hours a day , and he got the house built in 6 months that would not cover only his wages . So six men build it in a month … wages still not covered . A more realistic 4 man brick crew , 3 man groundworks crew plus digger and driver , 4 man roof crew , 1 plumber/gas fitter and mate , 1 sparkys plus mate ,4 chippys, 2 kitchen fitters , 2 painters … the inspection guys , an engineer plus staff holder and a foreman to keep it all running smoothly . Even if we ignore office staff, archietects, and materials to build the house … even if they do it in a week finished ready to move your furniture and dog into , you have popped the budget already .
The budget is nuts, it says in the article "“You’re right to note that £25k is not enough to build a new home. This figure simply relates to the level of government investment per home, but doesn’t include the money housing associations will invest (derived from their own private borrowing e.g. bond finance). Housing associations will match every £1 of government investment with up to £5 from their own resources. “
ie they already know that every £1 of that £25,000 per house will have to be matched with up to £5 from borrowing, so up to 6 times £25,000 = £150,000. That is reasonable… its just political drivel and poor journalism getting people confused again :blink:
the fact is, you would be very hard pressed to even get a decent loft conversion for £30,000, let alone a house
