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Post by Patrick on Jan 21, 2009 15:45:15 GMT
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Post by riotgrrl on Jan 21, 2009 15:56:04 GMT
 Well said Patrick. It's happened a lot in Argyll on our SW coast (which is v. pretty); poshos from the SE of England buying up a 2nd home that lies empty most of the year. School roles falling because no kids in these houses to be schooled. Schools close. House prices pushed beyond reach of young local couples, etc. etc. The other thing that happens is poshos from SE of E retire to these villages, and while that's not quite so bad (as they are often active in the local community activities and bring all that to the area) it can completely change the character of a village.
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Post by everso on Jan 21, 2009 17:39:30 GMT
So what's to be done? Pass a law so that we don't have the freedom to sell our property to whoever we please?
And who sold the cottages in Helford to the posh people from the South-East (at a huge profit) in the first place? Can you imagine the uproar if people were only allowed to sell their properties at a price that their neighbours could afford?
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Post by riotgrrl on Jan 21, 2009 18:10:22 GMT
So what's to be done? Pass a law so that we don't have the freedom to sell our property to whoever we please? And who sold the cottages in Helford to the posh people from the South-East (at a huge profit) in the first place? Can you imagine the uproar if people were only allowed to sell their properties at a price that their neighbours could afford? Of course you're right. In principle we are all free to dispose of our property however we see fit, and it would be wrong of the Govt to legislate as to who we could and couldn't sell our houses too. But the consequences of second homes in rural villages are terrible. And it would behove those moving into a new rural area NOT to whinge about how the people who have lived there for generations do things. Stories like Patrick's make my blood boil. |
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Post by everso on Jan 21, 2009 18:23:16 GMT
So what's to be done? Pass a law so that we don't have the freedom to sell our property to whoever we please? And who sold the cottages in Helford to the posh people from the South-East (at a huge profit) in the first place? Can you imagine the uproar if people were only allowed to sell their properties at a price that their neighbours could afford? Of course you're right. In principle we are all free to dispose of our property however we see fit, and it would be wrong of the Govt to legislate as to who we could and couldn't sell our houses too. But the consequences of second homes in rural villages are terrible. And it would behove those moving into a new rural area NOT to whinge about how the people who have lived there for generations do things. Stories like Patrick's make my blood boil.[/color] I don't doubt you're right, Riot. There's nothing worse than seeing your town or village change completely and utterly. I think that's what many people in London's East End have said for a number of years, and why they've moved out to Romford. And why some of those in Romford have moved out to Chelmsford:-/ |
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Post by swl on Jan 21, 2009 18:25:30 GMT
People who buy holiday homes in picturesque villages do so because it is picturesque and tend to fight tooth and nail against any changes. You can sorta see their point of view, but they end up stifling communities because they aren't allowed to grow and develop. The incomers want the place to stay like the postcard. I saw this a lot on Arran - 52% of the population are English. In Summer the population goes up from about 3500 to about 15,000 as the holiday homes fill up. And another thing - what the fuck is it with the English and committees? A bunch of us were thinking of building a Viking Longboat one night in the pub. We were just going to use an old byre and build it there over the winter. Before we knew it, there was a fucking committee! We just laughed when they said they were having a meeting and didn't go - the next day we discovered we had all been given jobs as fundraisers, marketing & PR and so on. FFS! Every time anyone wanted to do something, some English incomers would form a committee. I'm certain that if an asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, as the pyroclastic flows and tsunamis swept the planet, the bloody English would be forming a committee. LINK |
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Post by everso on Jan 21, 2009 18:33:53 GMT
People who buy holiday homes in picturesque villages do so because it is picturesque and tend to fight tooth and nail against any changes. You can sorta see their point of view, but they end up stifling communities because they aren't allowed to grow and develop. The incomers want the place to stay like the postcard. I saw this a lot on Arran - 52% of the population are English. In Summer the population goes up from about 3500 to about 15,000 as the holiday homes fill up. And another thing - what the fuck is it with the English and committees? A bunch of us were thinking of building a Viking Longboat one night in the pub. We were just going to use an old byre and build it there over the winter. Before we knew it, there was a fucking committee! We just laughed when they said they were having a meeting and didn't go - the next day we discovered we had all been given jobs as fundraisers, marketing & PR and so on. FFS! Every time anyone wanted to do something, some English incomers would form a committee. I'm certain that if an asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, as the pyroclastic flows and tsunamis swept the planet, the bloody English would be forming a committee.LINK I do believe you're right swl. But don't the "bloody" Scottish form committees? |
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Post by Patrick on Jan 21, 2009 21:38:38 GMT
You don't always know who you're selling to of course. If you're out all day and the agent takes folk round you wouldn't. When we sold the family home we quite liked the idea of it going to the hippy-ish fairly local people who just wanted it for what it was and keep chickens and things. As it was it went to someone who gutted the place and changed it beyond recognition. However it did remain their family home for twenty years or so as it was with us.
It's the ease of travel and the inequality of the housing market that's done it. in 1981 we went down to Somerset in our little Fiat 850 - it took seven hours. With only a battery tape recorder for company. Today with the comfort and safe high speeds of some of the humblest hatchbacks you could probably knock a couple of hours off, but yes, I think there should be a certain consideration of the needs of the community in these areas. The easiest way of doing it would be some sort of declaration of use when purchasing the place - Like the tax bands of a car segregate "Private/Light Goods" from "Commercial". A holiday home needs to be in a different tax bracket and costed accordingly. After all - You can live in a village without street lights and still be charged for them?
Otherwise - we just throw in the towel and designate areas of the country as holiday camps!
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Post by Patrick on Jan 21, 2009 21:55:46 GMT
And another thing - what the fuck is it with the English and committees? A bunch of us were thinking of building a Viking Longboat one night in the pub. We were just going to use an old byre and build it there over the winter. Before we knew it, there was a fucking committee! We just laughed when they said they were having a meeting and didn't go - the next day we discovered we had all been given jobs as fundraisers, marketing & PR and so on. FFS! Every time anyone wanted to do something, some English incomers would form a committee. I'm certain that if an asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, as the pyroclastic flows and tsunamis swept the planet, the bloody English would be forming a committee. LINKCouple of years ago I was involved with the incubation of a community radio station, helping out because I had trained as a broadcast jounalist, but at a college not a uni. It was just a few interested people who got together in order to put something together that would do more than the local commercial station for the area - a local college was involved to help out, and we were having meetings (yawn) to get everything together. It was fun, relaxed and slowly finding it's way, and we all would go off to the pub aftewards. Then the local YMCA got involved and everything changed. They were initially involved to help out with some of the funding anyway - but then they took over big time - advertising in the paper for Co-ordinators etc - so we ended up with two gormless idiots with degrees in media studies who turned up with their flip charts and talked about "cohesion" and "Diversity" (which became the name of the station) It was sick making, and (OK, sour grapes) when went along to their "new station committee gathering" and said what I had done in the past and how could I help - I was blanked out! No treading on the toes of the uni 12 year olds! Oh No! Am I bitter? |
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Post by everso on Jan 22, 2009 0:36:54 GMT
You don't always know who you're selling to of course. If you're out all day and the agent takes folk round you wouldn't. When we sold the family home we quite liked the idea of it going to the hippy-ish fairly local people who just wanted it for what it was and keep chickens and things. As it was it went to someone who gutted the place and changed it beyond recognition. However it did remain their family home for twenty years or so as it was with us. It's the ease of travel and the inequality of the housing market that's done it. in 1981 we went down to Somerset in our little Fiat 850 - it took seven hours. With only a battery tape recorder for company. Today with the comfort and safe high speeds of some of the humblest hatchbacks you could probably knock a couple of hours off, but yes, I think there should be a certain consideration of the needs of the community in these areas. The easiest way of doing it would be some sort of declaration of use when purchasing the place - Like the tax bands of a car segregate "Private/Light Goods" from "Commercial". A holiday home needs to be in a different tax bracket and costed accordingly. After all - You can live in a village without street lights and still be charged for them? Otherwise - we just throw in the towel and designate areas of the country as holiday camps! Thing is, not everyone wants to live a hippy existence. Most people want to bring a house up to modern standards - is that so very wrong? The point I was trying to make, though, was that the locals who originally owned the properties had no second thoughts about their community or about keeping the property for locals to buy at much lower prices. They sold (in most cases, not all I'll grant you) to the highest bidder, took the money, and ran. |
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Post by Patrick on Jan 22, 2009 8:25:38 GMT
No estate agent (as you'd know) is going to say to someone "Well if you put it on the market at £xx,xxxx below the going rate then some of the locals will be able to afford it" are they? As I say - you don't really choose who buys your house do you? The only way anyone (as far as I'm aware) could stipulate who buys it is if there's a covenant on it as in the case of agricultural property that stipulates "only for farm workers". I remember reading through The Sunday Times when I was 10 or 12 and saying to my Dad "Why don't we move to Cornwall or Somerset? Houses are dirt cheap there!!!" In the early eighties they were less than half what the South East prices were! Stub Crouch in 1982 was valued at £52,000. By 1987 when my brother and I sold it it was for £70,000. You could pick up a pretty Cornwall cottage back then for about £20,000 or less! Yet it was just as pretty then - if not more considering the fewer cars on the road.
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Post by everso on Jan 22, 2009 11:51:27 GMT
No estate agent (as you'd know) is going to say to someone "Well if you put it on the market at £xx,xxxx below the going rate then some of the locals will be able to afford it" are they? As I say - you don't really choose who buys your house do you? The only way anyone (as far as I'm aware) could stipulate who buys it is if there's a covenant on it as in the case of agricultural property that stipulates "only for farm workers". I remember reading through The Sunday Times when I was 10 or 12 and saying to my Dad "Why don't we move to Cornwall or Somerset? Houses are dirt cheap there!!!" In the early eighties they were less than half what the South East prices were! Stub Crouch in 1982 was valued at £52,000. By 1987 when my brother and I sold it it was for £70,000. You could pick up a pretty Cornwall cottage back then for about £20,000 or less! Yet it was just as pretty then - if not more considering the fewer cars on the road. Estate agents give a valuation based on current values in the area and I've never ever come across a vendor who suggested selling the property for less than its current value. An agent always takes instructions from the vendor and in my experience whenever there was a lot of interest in a property and there were several potential purchasers involved who were in a position to go ahead, the vendor, without fail, would choose the highest offer. The only time a vendor would choose a lower offer would be when the that purchaser's position was better - for instance if they did not require a mortgage. Patrick, just supposing you had bought a cottage in Cornwall in 1987 for £20,000, and then, for whatever reason, found you had to sell it 20 years later. Are you seriously telling me you wouldn't have sold it for the going rate in 2007? BTW, I have come across properties where there's a covenant on them. For instance, the vendor could stipulate that if there were any improvements carried out on the property and any profit made from those improvements then he/she could be entitled to a percentage of that profit if the potential purchaser then sold it on. One last thing. If one of these village properties were deliberately sold at a knock down price to a needy local person to enable them to have somewhere to live, do you seriously think that same person wouldn't have any ambition to do the place up and sell it on at a profit? |
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Post by Patrick on Jan 22, 2009 17:58:25 GMT
You've got the wrong end of my stick. I mentioned the price differential for Cornwall - not because of a "If we had bought there" - but from the point of view that at some point the South West went from one of the poorest areas in the country (and to a lot of extents behind the picture postcard image it still is!) to one of the most valuable property wise. Ergo - in the 80's values were a third of those in the South East. Now that all the Londoners are down there - the prices are nearly on a par. I'm on the side of the little man here struggling to own a home.
Anyway - the likes of Bairstow Eves/Ward and Partners/Mann and Co are well known for their price pushing tactics, the leaflets through the door saying "I see your house is for sale - go with us and make even more money" etc.
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Post by everso on Jan 22, 2009 22:29:44 GMT
You've got the wrong end of my stick. I mentioned the price differential for Cornwall - not because of a "If we had bought there" - but from the point of view that at some point the South West went from one of the poorest areas in the country (and to a lot of extents behind the picture postcard image it still is!) to one of the most valuable property wise. Ergo - in the 80's values were a third of those in the South East. Now that all the Londoners are down there - the prices are nearly on a par. I'm on the side of the little man here struggling to own a home. Anyway - the likes of Bairstow Eves/Ward and Partners/Mann and Co are well known for their price pushing tactics, the leaflets through the door saying "I see your house is for sale - go with us and make even more money" etc. But as I said in an earlier post, how would you lower house prices in certain areas? There would be hell to pay! |
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