More homes needed in UK
There has always been a housing shortage in the UK. Despite expanding upwards and outwards with our property building prowess, we are still struggling to provide affordable housing to thousands of people.
The government recently announced their plan to build a further 3 million homes by 2020, that's 270,000 per year, but a report has stated that by 2020 that still won't be enough, the way that the population is expanding.
At the moment the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit say that nowadays house prices cost a staggering 7 times more than an average salary. By 2020 this will be closer to 9 times the average persons annual wage.
It seems that the UK are considerably slower than many other developed countries in property building. It's not just about popping a few houses about though. Proper infrastructure needs to be organised, there need to be roads, public transport and local facilities where all these new properties are being built otherwise people won't buy them or if that is there only option it is forcing them to use cars - and aren't we trying to reduce car use?
And yet, we are still constantly seeing hundreds of damaged and derelict property (the UK is reported to have just under a million vacant homes) that could be renovated and maintained without the need to expand into our green and brown belt areas, and probably ready to live in a lot quicker than building a house from scratch.
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