Homes Hammered

I was right about that house.  You remember, the one I was on about a couple of weeks ago.  The one I used to fantasize about buying, only to discover recently that it had just been pulled down.  I predicted that the land it had sat on would be used to put up a small village.  Well, I drove past the site again the other day and lo and behold, there was a hoarding up outside, advertising the yet to be built new 'houses'.  I say houses, but I'm not sure that the collection of miniature one and two bedroomed houses illustrated qualify as such, they are so tiny.  I know I'm going to sound like a Daily Mail editorial, but the proposed buildings really are out of character for the area - which is a long winding village road full of largish detached houses.  I know that we need more new housing in the UK, particularly in rural areas, but these proposed houses are clearly not intended as low cost or social housing.  They'll be sold at ludicrous prices to first time buyers desperate to get on the bottom rung of the housing ladder.

But that, it seems, is what the modern property market is all about - selling the least possible property for the highest possible price.  It's all about buying nice old houses like my former dream house and demolishing them to exploit the land they sit on.  Never mind that people need space to lve and breath, we'll just pack as many of them into as small a space as possible.  I've had cause to look around a large number of modern houses over the past couple of decades and, increasingly, they make my two up, two down, look palatial by comparison.  I was lucky enough to be able to buy my house during the depths of a depression, when repossessions were high and prices rock bottom.  Before I bought it, I'd looked at several more modern properties.  They were awful: cramped, poorly lit, bathrooms with extractor fans rather than windows and built on top of one another, with nothing separating you from the neighbours.  In short, bloody depressing.  So, I opted for this Victorian end of terrace.  It has its own problems, of course, but the rooms are relatively spacious and I don't feel the neighbours are on top of me. Anyway, I blame the likes of Homes Under the Hammer for encouraging everyone to believe they can be a property developer and to go around pulling down perfectly good houses which would still make decent family homes.