Lifehold UK is coming . . .
Housing in crisis.
The UK has a housing crisis – insufficient properties are available to meet demand, and many older houses do not meet modern standards of safety or insulation and some are in poor condition. At the same time there are empty houses and also development sites where construction has been postponed.
Many who do have homes are experiencing rent or mortgage payments taking up an increasing proportion of their income.
In short, housing poverty.
The problem is hard to solve due to a scarcity of affordable housing land – and that is due to corporations and individuals holding land as an investment.
This constrains the supply of land, which raises prices, encourages further land investors, and creates an escalating price spiral.
The result is empty houses, delayed building of new houses, few affordable homes, homelessness and housing poverty.
Lifehold UK has the solution.
Our Rational Housing Framework breaks the inflationary feedback loop that suppresses land supply and consequently releases housing land to the purpose of housing people.
A key concept is housing land allocated as Lifehold – this is land that is yours for the whole of your life.
This simple change in land ownership profoundly affects the ease and costs of owning a house. It also creates opportunities for the design and manufacture of modular, flexible buildings – a whole new industry and an unprecedented opportunity for workforce mobility and use of marginal land.
Importantly, Lifehold land is of no interest to investors.
As the number of Lifeholders increase, the residential freehold land price bubble will slowly deflate as prices are tempered by this substantially cheaper alternative ownership model.
Here are just a few of the Rational Housing Framework benefits:
House prices
A wholly owned house for life will be within a price range of £20,000 – £80,000.
(Actually, rather less for used properties.)
Once the inflated price of freehold land is removed and housing production moves to a more efficient modular manufacturing model, the price of a house will comprise little more than its material costs plus transport and assembly. In fact, given the availability of materials and simplicity of design, the cost should be somewhat less than a family car.
Stamp duty, mortgage broker fees and conveyancing costs do not apply.
Economy benefits
High mortgage payments and expensive rents will be re-directed as consumer spending to benefit the economy.
The £57 billion currently paid annually in rents can release approximately 10% per year (compound) into new consumer spending.
The £1,600 billion in outstanding residential mortgage loans correlates with approximately £48 billion annual repayments. Due to contract commitments this will change more slowly and release 5% (compound) into new consumer spending.
That is a total consumer spending-led economic stimulus of over £8 billion per year.
Additionally, the £30 billion annual spend on housing benefits will rapidly reduce as housing achieves its true value and benefit claimants largely opt for a supported pathway to Lifehold.
New, green housing sector
The design requirements for an ideal Lifehold house is quite different to existing approaches. There are opportunities to create new industries by innovation in house design with unprecedented credentials for insulation, carbon capture, recycling and relocation. This is led by the need to abandon quarried building materials and to substitute those that are grown and have already acted to sequester carbon. These are incorporated into house modules that are reusable, upgradable and relocatable.
Coupled with recent innovation in foundations and groundworks, ‘Moving house’ can, at last, be a literal term.
House module refurbishments and upgrades will become a significant new sector. Used modules will have a value in a secondary market with transport and on-site assembly providing further industry opportunities.
We aim to place houses firmly in the circular economy – a first and globally-leading enterprise.
Levelling Up
There is no cause for optimism that any meaningful ‘Levelling Up’ can be achieved without radical changes to the land ownership model that has created and maintains societal imbalance.
The Rational Housing Framework will achieve levelling.
This stands as an indictment to the succession of previous, failed initiatives, and a challenge to new grants and subsidies that veneer a system structurally mis-aligned with its intended goals.
How do we do it?
Our Rational Housing Framework looks at housing with new eyes. By exposing the underlying falsehoods of housing design and the entrenched vested interests that grossly inflate house prices and ancillary costs, we lay a new foundation for truly affordable home ownership. (Which, by the way, we radically define as “affordable to someone on an average wage”).
The Rational Housing Framework explains the origin of the current housing crisis and the new principles and controls that will re-engineer the housing market and provide the hope of house ownership to a generation currently sentenced to life-long housing poverty. Though the ancient (but mostly forgotten) land ownership model called Lifehold is at the core of our Rational Housing Framework, it must be applied with controls to prevent opportunities for exploitation that has blighted much Leasehold property.
Our commitment therefore extends to;
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- Providing educational resources and media references supporting the Lifehold ownership model
- Supporting and certifying independent Lifehold Land Trusts and offering a model Lifehold Land Trust
- Advising government and policy-makers on appropriate interventions to encourage participation
- Working with architects, utility companies, manufacturers and other stakeholders on house design and production
The Rational Housing Framework will be published on the new website at launch.
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Questions?
The Rational Housing Framework is unfamiliar and ‘new’. By including self-evident conclusions from the realities of our current housing market, it invites a fresh view of long-held misunderstandings.
Our proposition will be challenging to any who gain from the current housing crisis, and to those whose firm views are unmoved by reason and evidence.
We aim to address all concerns with educational resources and our media packs.
Questions are inevitable. We aim to answer as many queries as possible in the FAQ’s on the new website.
Complete the form below to be notified about the launch, or if you need to contact us in the meantime.
The full Lifehold UK website and resources will be announced here.
For notification when published, or to request a preview prior to publication, use the contact form below.
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