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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
Green Building Bible, fourth edition (both books)
These two books are the perfect starting place to help you get to grips with one of the most vitally important aspects of our society - our homes and living environment.

PLEASE NOTE: A download link for Volume 1 will be sent to you by email and Volume 2 will be sent to you by post as a book.

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    • CommentAuthorDarylP
    • CommentTimeMar 6th 2015
     
    •  
      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeMar 6th 2015 edited
     
    Seems only the other day this govt was saying that previous (govt's) policy to strongly emphasise building on brown land, was impeding housebuilding (read, housebuilders' profits), so the brown land should be left to rot and housebuilders allowed to build on virgin land. They never explained why 'the market' didn't force down the price of brown land so that 'the burden' of remedial works could be afforded by the housebuilders (alternatively by the land vendors, before sale), within market house sale price.

    Yet now here's this 'new' housebuilding land, which presumably is mostly brown land. Will the houebuilders be any keener this time around?
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeMar 6th 2015 edited
     
    He also said today that a parking ticket made him angry.

    Brownfield sites may have potentially more uses than greenfield ones, that will keep the price up. They may also have less costs associated with them for the owner.

    The market only exploits potential and market imbalance, doubt if anyone is building in PZ town at the moment, but St Ives, just 7 miles away, seems to have new buildings going up.

    More interesting was the Oxford college claiming that the population has gone up by 565,000 in the last 3 years. With all the talk from the political parties about unchecked immigration, I would have thought it would have gone up by more than that.
    Since 2010/2011 to 2012/2013 Live Table 209 shows that we have completed 419,810 dwellings.
    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building
    Now there may be a backlog of demand that needs fulfilling, but is certainly isn't caused by population increase per se.
    •  
      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeMar 6th 2015
     
    Posted By: SteamyTeaBrownfield sites may have potentially more uses than greenfield ones, that will keep the price up
    Interesting, so
    Posted By: fostertom... policy to strongly emphasise building on brown land, was impeding housebuilding, so the brown land should be left to rot and housebuilders allowed to build on virgin land
    shd be modified to read

    '... so the brown land should be left to more profitable 'other' use and poor struggling housebuilders allowed to build on virgin land'.

    Fair enough maybe, in cases where the brown land's location suggests obvious 'other use' - but where not so, why doesn't the land price fall to make the remaining use (housebuilding) economical (assuming there's demand in the area anyway), after remedial costs?

    Posted By: SteamyTeaBrownfield sites may ... have less costs associated with them for the owner.
    How come?
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeMar 6th 2015 edited
     
    With supply and demand it is not just the availability of goods that dictate the price. The money supply also affects it.
    If the goods do not have to be sold and the costs of keeping them are low, and/or, there is no other suitable alternative investment to be made, then the goods remain unsold.
    Currently we have low holding costs (with land this may be fencing/security, farm land may need more maintenance that a city centre concrete slab), low money supply (borrowing is harder) and few alternative investments (though if the economy really is picking up then that changes rather faster than people imagine).

    It is probably cheaper to hold onto city/town land and hope that the price will be higher in a year or two than it is two hold onto greenfield. There may also be a greater desire/need for rural developments at the moment.

    You also have to throw in things like availability of labour into the mix, if there are no suitable construction workers available, then the site does not get developed. There is also the need to have customers, if a city centre flat is so high in price that there is no available to purchase it, then you are best of not developing.

    So you have to have a number of paths crossing to make something worthwhile, and they are just not happening at the moment.
    They will sometime though.
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