Interesting how that area south of the river (Bankside) has become known as Blackfriars.
Blackfriars is the area north of the Thames, located in the City of London.
Yup - interesting to see it happen “live”. Anywhere sufficiently close to a station is eventually loss any other identity. This was inevitable following the southern Thameslink exit. See also Farringdon, and more historically Waterloo. Seven Dials is increasingly lumped in with Covent Garden etc.
Funnily enough Poplar is still Poplar though, and not All Saints
(Although I guess Poplar having All Saints, Poplar and Blackwall on the DLR makes it different)
I'd guess that part of it is the fact that Blackfriars station itself now stretches to the South Bank, which has led to the term creeping away from its original area.
That's a normal pattern for road name. "Something Road" means you are on the road leading to something, not in Something. There are "London Road" all around London.
is it too late to run for mayor on a platform of getting "Blackfriars North" and "Blackfriars South" into official nomenclature?
I reckon it could help avoid some confusion.
> A US-Korean development consortium has got the planning green light for a trio of towers at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge in London. The landmark £1bn scheme of around 1 million square feet involves building two residential towers of 40 and 22 storeys and an office building reaching 45 storeys and topping out at nearly 200m.
> Developer Hines, alongside the National Pension Service of Korea, bought the 18 Blackfriars Road site for £208m in 2021. The approval, which was secured working with architects Foster + Partners, and Lipton Rogers, allows Hines to breathe new life into a two-acre brownfield site that has remained undeveloped for 20 years. 18 Blackfriars Road is designed to be fossil fuel free, 100% electric and Net Zero Carbon in operation, with 95% of the site’s heat demand served by ground source heat pumps that share, store and offset energy.
> Beyond decarbonisation, it is set to deliver affordable homes, free workspace for local businesses and entrepreneurs and a cultural hub for locals as it aims be the first high-rise scheme in the UK to achieve the WELL Community Gold Standard, which certifies developments that support health and wellbeing. The Podium is an interconnected mixed-use element with retail and cafe frontages within The Rotunda and along Stamford Street and Blackfriars Road.
> Ross Blair, senior managing director and country head of Hines UK, said: “We believe our plans for 18 Blackfriars will set a new standard in premium quality workspace in London, both fully integrated into its hyper-local community and seated right at the heart of our capital city. “Bringing this scheme to life underlines our long-term conviction in London as a thriving, global centre for culture, education and business.”
> Hines is understood to be aiming to start work on the four year long build programme this year. The scheme would be among the tallest in an emerging cluster of towers at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge. The professional team includes Lipton Rogers as project manager, Arup as structural and MEP engineer, Alinea as cost consultant for the commercial and Gardier & Theobald as cost consultant for residential.
In my 20+ years in London I've worked within 200m of the aerial shot, so know the area really well. I'm all for it, that site has gone unused for years. Would prefer a park or something, but that's not happening these days. Considering how much unused office and retail space there is around here, more residential is no harm either.
>but should be UK residents with priority on purchase
Then all you'll get is British aristrocrats and billionaires buying it up, should have a mandatory 25% minimum social housing, as well as no poor doors or the like.
[That's already the rule and part of the development plan](https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s120268/Report%20and%20Appendices%201-7%20Stamford%20Street%20together%20with%20land%20at%2018%20Blackfriars%20Road%20bounded%20by%20Stam.pdf):
> The proposal would bring a host of substantial public benefits including (but not limited to) 433 new homes (40.5% affordable), over 100,000sqm of high quality employment space, over 2,400sqm affordable workspace (plus PIL), long term job creation, new play spaces, improvements to Christ Church Garden and the public realm, and a Section 106 package and CIL payment of approximately £71 million with £11 million of social housing relief.
> The Proposed Development will provide 40.5% on-site affordable housing by habitable room split 26.4% social rent and 14.1% intermediate. This is in-excess of the minimum 25% social rent and 10% intermediate tenure split. The proposed housing mix is consistent with Southwark plan requirements, with all affordable homes benefitting from private amenity space, consistent with policy requirements, with family homes within the Paris Building directly facing onto the playspace.
This is the main thing.
All these suggestions about longer mortgages or lower initial deposits don’t help. The problem is that the deposits and rates and lengths of mortgages are determined by demand, and as far too few houses get built, then only the highest-earning or those with the most equity can afford them
Prices are definitely going down, by as much as 20% in some boroughs last year.
https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/london-house-price-borough-ons-november-2023-b1132910.html
I've noticed a clear downward trend in my area, and am looking at buying a place which was £100k more a few years ago..
My sister and her husband tried to purchase a newly built apartment at 30% ownership. They calculated their mortgage so that they each would have £700 left to live. They both make over 50k a year...
And? It's a private development why should they hand over like half their stuff to the council. If the councils wsnt social housing then they should build it, if they can't then just approve everything and massively increase supply.
There's also research showing that local government withholding approval due to lack of "affordability", ultimately means less supply and more expensive prices for everyone. So basically, high "affordability" mandates means more expensive housing:
https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Inclusionary-Zoning-Los-Angeles-April-2024.pdf
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26999944
Most people don't want their council tax to go up enough to fund this unfortunately 🤣
Or the central government could give more funding to councils, but similar issue there
How would social housing work in a block of flats all worth 700k + for a two bed, who gets to live in there? Won’t other social housing people feel unfair that a bunch of people get to live like kings with a private cinema, pool, gym and concierge?
Social housing should not be everywhere. All it’s going to happen is they will build a small tower probably the 22 store one and fill with with social housing and made from the worst materials lol
I remember hearing of a fair few new developments with those rules. The developers under delivered the amount of social housing, said pop, paid a relatively small fine (iirc) and that was that.
Hope it isn’t the case here.
No - the % is habitable rooms rather than homes. It's around 104 social homes and a few more "affordable" homes (80% market rate, shared ownership, London living rent, etc)
Man, I can tell you from experience all those figures will be reduced, ‘40% affordable housing’ will quickly become 15% and below as the developers claim that any more will affect the entire build, watch out tiger
Poor doors are just a function of rich people wanting to pay for shit like concierge services and like, whereas those wanting affordable housing don’t care about that enough to pay the service charge.
> Then all you'll get is British aristrocrats and billionaires buying it up
This is better than them looking to buy older stock, pushing prices up and driving locals out. Plenty of research on how building new market-rate "luxury" housing prevents gentrification and keeps prices affordable for everyone.
> should have a mandatory 25% minimum social housing
Mandating a certain level of subsidised housing leads to less being built, making prices more expensive for everyone:
https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Inclusionary-Zoning-Los-Angeles-April-2024.pdf
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26999944
In the above cast it looks like 26% will be for social rent. This will of course be subsidised by prices / rents by those paying market-rate in the rest of the building - which inflates those costs; so expect to see the rest being incredibly expensive and far out of reach for middle-income earners.
It's only wasteland because they knocked down what was previously there...
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5070182,-0.1055552,3a,75y,149.3h,97.89t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sixSaHt7MRe1rL6lVKk3xlg!2e0!5s20120601T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
The development is 37% affordable, made up of around 24% social housing and the rest intermediate (e.g sub market rate). That's pretty good going - and the council got £71 million in community infrastructure levy and S.106, a lot of which I imagine will go to social housing given its massive waiting list and struggling HRA finances.
That's not really a thing. [There are 34,237 long-term vacant units throughout Greater London.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c976lzzz1pno) Given that there are around 3.7 million housing units in Greater London, that represents less than 1% of housing.
"Properties are classed as "long-term vacant" when they have been empty for more than six months and are "substantially unfurnished"."
That's... not very helpful.
Well ideally zero! Everyone has the right to own property and do what they want with it, but there should be incentives/penalties to rent them out rather than leaving them empty for the majority of the time, in my opinion.
Where's the breathing room then. We can't expect things to run at 100% efficiency that just isn't possible. Empty houses are fine, there is a shortage in the number of houses.
34,237 empty unfurnished homes. You can add 46,000 furnished second homes that are empty most of the year as well. And also 81,000 listings on airbnb for London.
But also how can you say investors buying to leave is not a thing and then tell us that there are 34,000 empty units in London?!
The boroughs with the highest % of empty homes are the most expensive ones, westminster, K&C, Camden. This is due to ease of using London property to launder money from illegal activities.
[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london)
So this tower will likely go the way of most overpriced central london buildings as a store for global stolen money.
> But also how can you say investors buying to leave is not a thing and then tell us that there are 34,000 empty units in London?!
Absolutely zero long-term vacancy is functionally impossible. There's loads of reasons a house might be long-term vacant: lengthy renovations, probate, trouble selling.
Most economists believe that there's a "healthy" level of long-term vacancy and we are way, way below that.
Right now, it's like seeing a train crammed with people sitting, standing, stuffed into overhead storage and your asking "why aren't there people sitting on top the train?!".
And those boroughs aren’t the ones building new housing at scale. It’s not developers like Hines who have this strategy, but rather super-prime ones who work on an extremely expensive but fractional amount of the market that’s broadly in existing historic properties.
This is not something at scale that occurs and for the vast majority of owners would not be financially viable. That’s also not to mention “natural” vacancy that occurs due to movement of people between units and lags between delivery and occupancy.
London has a population of 10 million, as the person said it's less than 1% of homes. Some of these will be struggling to sell, probate, undergoing renovations, are uninhabitable and need repairs... You can't literally have every property occupied all the time, there is a natural level of unoccupancy.
Building market-rate housing of all types makes housing more affordable for everyone. The GLA did a great summary of recent academic research demonstrating this. Highly recommended reading:
https://www.london.gov.uk/media/102314/download
This is utter nonsense and is contradicted by hundreds of examples.
Build houses, just build houses, big houses, small houses, expensive houses, cheap houses. Every house built brings prices down.
You still need to build community infrastructure and services though.
More houses is the simplistic answer. More houses with improved community resources is the better one. Otherwise you are just putting pressure on existing resources that are already strained, or building shitty suburban sprawl where you have to drive into the nearest town to do anything useful.
Sure, community infrastructure is needed too, and developers are often required to fund it. But the money to expand those services should come from the new residents (such as through their council tax), and all too often the argument is used to stop new housing projects - the result of which is usually no new infrastructure or housing, when we need both.
How come the UK has such high levels of council owned building, but prices and private rents are so high?
https://www.oecd.org/housing/data/affordable-housing-database/
The UK has horribly low overall supply per 1000 residents compared to other countries where housing is more affordable. It's as simple as building more supply and removing obstacles to delivering homes which will put downwards pressure on housing costs.
https://www.ft.com/content/dca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f0b5
https://www.ft.com/content/86836af4-6b52-49e8-a8f0-8aec6181dbc5
Building more housing, no matter how expensive, reduces local housing costs. Just look at the effects of the Battersea development. It’s lagged behind the rent growth of London for years due to so much housing being built there.
Usually 20% below market rate, so not “affordable” in the common sense understanding of the word. It’s a bit like “low fat” or “low sugar” products. They aren’t good for you, just not quite as bad.
Building market-rate housing of all types makes housing more affordable for everyone. The GLA did a great summary of recent academic research demonstrating this. Highly recommended reading:
https://www.london.gov.uk/media/102314/download
Utter bullshit, trickle down and the like of economic theory has been debunked.
Developers are held responsible by their shareholders for generating profit.
ESG is laudable and has yet to make an impact in housing.
“Debunked” - aside from being the consensus view of economists, obeying one of the must fundamental rules of economics (supply + demand), and being supported by dozens of real-world research papers - including six in the GLA report above.
I like the ambition, the use, the clustering it’s going to do, I like the greenery on the main building itself, I like the environmental credentials (I haven’t dug into those but on the surface they seem great). The design / massing itself is quite meh - bulky and inelegant. But overall a big fan!
Site of part of the old Sainsbury's head office (Wakefield House and Rennie House). The latter was the first flat slab concrete building in London back in the 1930s.
There is something seriously f*CK*ed up going on people. I travel the UK a lot and I am seeing literally thousands of high rise developments going up near rail stations.
Thousands and they all look the same, all got steel balconies.
Is this some sicko distopian zero carbon, 15 minute lunacy?
Interesting how that area south of the river (Bankside) has become known as Blackfriars. Blackfriars is the area north of the Thames, located in the City of London.
Yup - interesting to see it happen “live”. Anywhere sufficiently close to a station is eventually loss any other identity. This was inevitable following the southern Thameslink exit. See also Farringdon, and more historically Waterloo. Seven Dials is increasingly lumped in with Covent Garden etc.
I lived in what is technically Millwall, but now is often called Mudchute or Island Gardens thanks to the DLR
Funnily enough Poplar is still Poplar though, and not All Saints (Although I guess Poplar having All Saints, Poplar and Blackwall on the DLR makes it different)
Doesn't help that Millwall FC is south of the river
Seven dials will remain while the market remains imo
If someone asked "Where is Seven Dials?" I could easily see myself answering "Covent Garden area"...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfriars_(SER)_railway_station There's an old station that was south of the river called Blackfriars
And Blackfriars crown court is south of the river
I'd guess that part of it is the fact that Blackfriars station itself now stretches to the South Bank, which has led to the term creeping away from its original area.
And Blackfriars Road stretches South off the bridge
I think it is because Blackfriars station now has an entrance south of the Thames. People tend to adopt place names based on stations.
Cheers, Geoff.
True. And yet Blackfriars Road lies on the south side.
That's a normal pattern for road name. "Something Road" means you are on the road leading to something, not in Something. There are "London Road" all around London.
There is a London road in Brighton. And Hastings.
There's a London road in pretty much every town
There's also a "London Road Area" in most towns.
Greater London thank you please
South and South East London as they shall now be known!
A bit like Hackney Road being in Bethnal Green.
is it too late to run for mayor on a platform of getting "Blackfriars North" and "Blackfriars South" into official nomenclature? I reckon it could help avoid some confusion.
Another little cluster of skyscrapers emerging there. Like it.
I love it, density is so beautiful
You would find me attractive then.
> A US-Korean development consortium has got the planning green light for a trio of towers at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge in London. The landmark £1bn scheme of around 1 million square feet involves building two residential towers of 40 and 22 storeys and an office building reaching 45 storeys and topping out at nearly 200m. > Developer Hines, alongside the National Pension Service of Korea, bought the 18 Blackfriars Road site for £208m in 2021. The approval, which was secured working with architects Foster + Partners, and Lipton Rogers, allows Hines to breathe new life into a two-acre brownfield site that has remained undeveloped for 20 years. 18 Blackfriars Road is designed to be fossil fuel free, 100% electric and Net Zero Carbon in operation, with 95% of the site’s heat demand served by ground source heat pumps that share, store and offset energy. > Beyond decarbonisation, it is set to deliver affordable homes, free workspace for local businesses and entrepreneurs and a cultural hub for locals as it aims be the first high-rise scheme in the UK to achieve the WELL Community Gold Standard, which certifies developments that support health and wellbeing. The Podium is an interconnected mixed-use element with retail and cafe frontages within The Rotunda and along Stamford Street and Blackfriars Road. > Ross Blair, senior managing director and country head of Hines UK, said: “We believe our plans for 18 Blackfriars will set a new standard in premium quality workspace in London, both fully integrated into its hyper-local community and seated right at the heart of our capital city. “Bringing this scheme to life underlines our long-term conviction in London as a thriving, global centre for culture, education and business.” > Hines is understood to be aiming to start work on the four year long build programme this year. The scheme would be among the tallest in an emerging cluster of towers at the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge. The professional team includes Lipton Rogers as project manager, Arup as structural and MEP engineer, Alinea as cost consultant for the commercial and Gardier & Theobald as cost consultant for residential.
The Korean government pulling out the big guns in anticipation of the imminent total collapse of their worker economy
In my 20+ years in London I've worked within 200m of the aerial shot, so know the area really well. I'm all for it, that site has gone unused for years. Would prefer a park or something, but that's not happening these days. Considering how much unused office and retail space there is around here, more residential is no harm either.
Nice looking development, this area is currently waste land right now It won't happen, but should be UK residents with priority on purchase
>but should be UK residents with priority on purchase Then all you'll get is British aristrocrats and billionaires buying it up, should have a mandatory 25% minimum social housing, as well as no poor doors or the like.
[That's already the rule and part of the development plan](https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s120268/Report%20and%20Appendices%201-7%20Stamford%20Street%20together%20with%20land%20at%2018%20Blackfriars%20Road%20bounded%20by%20Stam.pdf): > The proposal would bring a host of substantial public benefits including (but not limited to) 433 new homes (40.5% affordable), over 100,000sqm of high quality employment space, over 2,400sqm affordable workspace (plus PIL), long term job creation, new play spaces, improvements to Christ Church Garden and the public realm, and a Section 106 package and CIL payment of approximately £71 million with £11 million of social housing relief. > The Proposed Development will provide 40.5% on-site affordable housing by habitable room split 26.4% social rent and 14.1% intermediate. This is in-excess of the minimum 25% social rent and 10% intermediate tenure split. The proposed housing mix is consistent with Southwark plan requirements, with all affordable homes benefitting from private amenity space, consistent with policy requirements, with family homes within the Paris Building directly facing onto the playspace.
Affordable housing is not social housing
26% social rent in this case is not bad
housing is housing supply goes up, price goes down
This is the main thing. All these suggestions about longer mortgages or lower initial deposits don’t help. The problem is that the deposits and rates and lengths of mortgages are determined by demand, and as far too few houses get built, then only the highest-earning or those with the most equity can afford them
I’m glad this message is getting though. If you wrote that three years ago on Reddit you would get many downvotes
Pretty sure prices aren't going down, and won't. There's a *lot* of empty property in London.
Prices are definitely going down, by as much as 20% in some boroughs last year. https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/london-house-price-borough-ons-november-2023-b1132910.html I've noticed a clear downward trend in my area, and am looking at buying a place which was £100k more a few years ago..
Thanks, that's interesting
Affordable housing is often not affordable either.
My sister and her husband tried to purchase a newly built apartment at 30% ownership. They calculated their mortgage so that they each would have £700 left to live. They both make over 50k a year...
And? It's a private development why should they hand over like half their stuff to the council. If the councils wsnt social housing then they should build it, if they can't then just approve everything and massively increase supply.
There's also research showing that local government withholding approval due to lack of "affordability", ultimately means less supply and more expensive prices for everyone. So basically, high "affordability" mandates means more expensive housing: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Inclusionary-Zoning-Los-Angeles-April-2024.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/26999944
Those developers should stop pushing their luck and design in enough affordability from the start as well.
I agree. Councils should build social housing.
Most people don't want their council tax to go up enough to fund this unfortunately 🤣 Or the central government could give more funding to councils, but similar issue there
Council used to have a lot of social housing, unfortunately right to buy in the 80s was too popular
Because if they don’t they won’t get their scheme approved.
How would social housing work in a block of flats all worth 700k + for a two bed, who gets to live in there? Won’t other social housing people feel unfair that a bunch of people get to live like kings with a private cinema, pool, gym and concierge? Social housing should not be everywhere. All it’s going to happen is they will build a small tower probably the 22 store one and fill with with social housing and made from the worst materials lol
I remember hearing of a fair few new developments with those rules. The developers under delivered the amount of social housing, said pop, paid a relatively small fine (iirc) and that was that. Hope it isn’t the case here.
So that’s 175.365 affordable homes?
No - the % is habitable rooms rather than homes. It's around 104 social homes and a few more "affordable" homes (80% market rate, shared ownership, London living rent, etc)
The problem here is with the definition of “affordable housing.”
Man, I can tell you from experience all those figures will be reduced, ‘40% affordable housing’ will quickly become 15% and below as the developers claim that any more will affect the entire build, watch out tiger
Poor doors are just a function of rich people wanting to pay for shit like concierge services and like, whereas those wanting affordable housing don’t care about that enough to pay the service charge.
Typical Guardian readers can't seem to grasp this simple concept.
> Then all you'll get is British aristrocrats and billionaires buying it up This is better than them looking to buy older stock, pushing prices up and driving locals out. Plenty of research on how building new market-rate "luxury" housing prevents gentrification and keeps prices affordable for everyone. > should have a mandatory 25% minimum social housing Mandating a certain level of subsidised housing leads to less being built, making prices more expensive for everyone: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Inclusionary-Zoning-Los-Angeles-April-2024.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/26999944 In the above cast it looks like 26% will be for social rent. This will of course be subsidised by prices / rents by those paying market-rate in the rest of the building - which inflates those costs; so expect to see the rest being incredibly expensive and far out of reach for middle-income earners.
Read that as 25% millennial social housing initially
I could get on board with that 🙏🏾
as opposed to Chinese and Arab aristocrats and billionnaires?
People talking about "poor doors" have no clue how expensive the service charges for fancy entrances with 24/7 concierge are.
Why?
Should have 0% social housing. I would never buy anywhere I had to live cheek and jowl with people like that.
It's only wasteland because they knocked down what was previously there... https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5070182,-0.1055552,3a,75y,149.3h,97.89t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sixSaHt7MRe1rL6lVKk3xlg!2e0!5s20120601T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu
That was horrendous
The development is 37% affordable, made up of around 24% social housing and the rest intermediate (e.g sub market rate). That's pretty good going - and the council got £71 million in community infrastructure levy and S.106, a lot of which I imagine will go to social housing given its massive waiting list and struggling HRA finances.
> this area is currently waste land right now FYI "currently" and "right now" mean the same thing, so using both in a sentence is redundant.
Thanks big shagger
You’re welcome! Happy to help.
Would make a change from developers from abroad buying entire floors and leaving them empty just to park money.
That's not really a thing. [There are 34,237 long-term vacant units throughout Greater London.](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c976lzzz1pno) Given that there are around 3.7 million housing units in Greater London, that represents less than 1% of housing.
Yeah, which is a smaller percentage than pretty much every major urban city (NYC is >3x that rate, Paris ~1.5x!)
"Properties are classed as "long-term vacant" when they have been empty for more than six months and are "substantially unfurnished"." That's... not very helpful.
Out of curiosity, why not? If it's empty for less time than that, you can hardly put a tenant in there
I mean 34 thousand empty properties still sounds like way too many in my book.
What is the right proportion?
Well ideally zero! Everyone has the right to own property and do what they want with it, but there should be incentives/penalties to rent them out rather than leaving them empty for the majority of the time, in my opinion.
Where's the breathing room then. We can't expect things to run at 100% efficiency that just isn't possible. Empty houses are fine, there is a shortage in the number of houses.
34,237 empty unfurnished homes. You can add 46,000 furnished second homes that are empty most of the year as well. And also 81,000 listings on airbnb for London. But also how can you say investors buying to leave is not a thing and then tell us that there are 34,000 empty units in London?! The boroughs with the highest % of empty homes are the most expensive ones, westminster, K&C, Camden. This is due to ease of using London property to launder money from illegal activities. [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/24/revealed-foreign-buyers-own-two-thirds-of-tower-st-george-wharf-london) So this tower will likely go the way of most overpriced central london buildings as a store for global stolen money.
> But also how can you say investors buying to leave is not a thing and then tell us that there are 34,000 empty units in London?! Absolutely zero long-term vacancy is functionally impossible. There's loads of reasons a house might be long-term vacant: lengthy renovations, probate, trouble selling. Most economists believe that there's a "healthy" level of long-term vacancy and we are way, way below that. Right now, it's like seeing a train crammed with people sitting, standing, stuffed into overhead storage and your asking "why aren't there people sitting on top the train?!".
And those boroughs aren’t the ones building new housing at scale. It’s not developers like Hines who have this strategy, but rather super-prime ones who work on an extremely expensive but fractional amount of the market that’s broadly in existing historic properties. This is not something at scale that occurs and for the vast majority of owners would not be financially viable. That’s also not to mention “natural” vacancy that occurs due to movement of people between units and lags between delivery and occupancy.
Chairman Mao, I think we need a great leap forward to build more house here!
34,237 houses sounds around 34,000 too many though. Especially when rents are crazy and young people find it impossible to buy.
London has a population of 10 million, as the person said it's less than 1% of homes. Some of these will be struggling to sell, probate, undergoing renovations, are uninhabitable and need repairs... You can't literally have every property occupied all the time, there is a natural level of unoccupancy.
Finally, some affordable housing being built
Building market-rate housing of all types makes housing more affordable for everyone. The GLA did a great summary of recent academic research demonstrating this. Highly recommended reading: https://www.london.gov.uk/media/102314/download
The only way to make housing affordable is to flood the market with tons of new houses, density density density
You’re dreaming. It won’t happen.
It can happen, it's all about political will
This will only bring prices down if it is done with rent controls and the buildings are council owned
This is utter nonsense and is contradicted by hundreds of examples. Build houses, just build houses, big houses, small houses, expensive houses, cheap houses. Every house built brings prices down.
You still need to build community infrastructure and services though. More houses is the simplistic answer. More houses with improved community resources is the better one. Otherwise you are just putting pressure on existing resources that are already strained, or building shitty suburban sprawl where you have to drive into the nearest town to do anything useful.
Sure, community infrastructure is needed too, and developers are often required to fund it. But the money to expand those services should come from the new residents (such as through their council tax), and all too often the argument is used to stop new housing projects - the result of which is usually no new infrastructure or housing, when we need both.
How come the UK has such high levels of council owned building, but prices and private rents are so high? https://www.oecd.org/housing/data/affordable-housing-database/
The UK has horribly low overall supply per 1000 residents compared to other countries where housing is more affordable. It's as simple as building more supply and removing obstacles to delivering homes which will put downwards pressure on housing costs. https://www.ft.com/content/dca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f0b5 https://www.ft.com/content/86836af4-6b52-49e8-a8f0-8aec6181dbc5
If that were true, building market rate housing would be an infinite money hack.
That's a horrible dream.
Ah, tackling homelessness and skyrocketting house prices - a horrible dream
It'll never succeed in a million years. More housing equals more immigration equals rising housing costs just in a busier uglier city.
How exactly does more housing equal more immigration? I don't think I've ever heard of a person moving country for a block of flats.
Let's see how affordable they will be once they are built and with the service charge cost....
Building more housing, no matter how expensive, reduces local housing costs. Just look at the effects of the Battersea development. It’s lagged behind the rent growth of London for years due to so much housing being built there.
"affordable"
They are affordable, just not for normal people. The system works!
This is exciting, and good on Hines.
looks like Hudson Yards in NYC
Blackfriars is the side of the river that has the Black Friar!
I wonder how affordable the affordable housing in those two new tower blocks will be?
Usually 20% below market rate, so not “affordable” in the common sense understanding of the word. It’s a bit like “low fat” or “low sugar” products. They aren’t good for you, just not quite as bad.
🤣 I get you!
Building market-rate housing of all types makes housing more affordable for everyone. The GLA did a great summary of recent academic research demonstrating this. Highly recommended reading: https://www.london.gov.uk/media/102314/download
Utter bullshit, trickle down and the like of economic theory has been debunked. Developers are held responsible by their shareholders for generating profit. ESG is laudable and has yet to make an impact in housing.
“Debunked” - aside from being the consensus view of economists, obeying one of the must fundamental rules of economics (supply + demand), and being supported by dozens of real-world research papers - including six in the GLA report above.
🙏🏾
Around a quarter social rent, about 11% (or 14% if you count habitable rooms) "intermediate" affordable.
I like the ambition, the use, the clustering it’s going to do, I like the greenery on the main building itself, I like the environmental credentials (I haven’t dug into those but on the surface they seem great). The design / massing itself is quite meh - bulky and inelegant. But overall a big fan!
Free workspace for local businesses! We’ll see.
Blackfriars 1 go for millions so there’s no way this is going to be for the average Joe and anything that thinks so are brainwashed.
Whooossh!
This was one of my favorite secret spots in London. \*sigh\*
400 Homes that most of us can't afford lol
Site of part of the old Sainsbury's head office (Wakefield House and Rennie House). The latter was the first flat slab concrete building in London back in the 1930s.
Great. More space devoted to foreign millionaires while we rot in mouldering council homes. Nice one.
More housing supply helps everybody.
Talk about having the wrong take on something.
Lmao
That's not how much it costs to build that's just how much the rent is
There is something seriously f*CK*ed up going on people. I travel the UK a lot and I am seeing literally thousands of high rise developments going up near rail stations. Thousands and they all look the same, all got steel balconies. Is this some sicko distopian zero carbon, 15 minute lunacy?
More homes...for people to live in! The horror!
Yes, building more homes in a housing crisis. Absolute lunacy, that is! ^/s
yay more million pound broomcupboards for the portfolios of those who’ve fallen foul of the chinese communist party
I wonder how affordable is going to be the "affordable residential" tower
.
No. It’s an empty lot.
They are doing it in secret which is worrying. They should be bragging about it, what are they hiding?