House Critic

This is an interesting tale…
A Polish Catholic priest could be exhumed from his resting place to solve a property dispute over the sale of the £16.5million house that inspired Toad Hall in The Wind in the Willows.

The property has other issues like rows about ROWs – rights of way –

So should you bury someone in your garden? There are rules but it is possible. See this article on Garden law about burying someone in your own garden
I wouldn’t.

Sarah Beeny has said she might sell Rise Hall after this planning row.

This article also states that “Humberside Fire And Rescue Service has placed a fire prevention notice on the building prohibiting its use as a public venue.”

I’ve written about Rise Hall previously

It’s underground. The story is on the daily mail – they have lots of pictures
Introducing… the earth-scraper: Architects design 65-storey building which plunges 300 metres below ground

The traditional reasons for people having to sell have been death, divorce or debt. You can probably throw in desire as a fourth one but it’s much less of a strong motivator sometime.

Of course they’re not the only reasons: people often say they want to downsize (Yes another D in the house selling list) but this is often something they dream of in a rather unrealistic way.
Wanting to sell your 3 bedroom house to go and buy a smaller place only works if the smaller places are significantly cheaper or you move to a cheaper area.
If we’re sticking with looking for D reasons then dementia would be one you could add to the list along with disease. We can throw in disability too. If you can’t get up the stairs anymore then you might want to consider selling up to somewhere without stairs.
Are there any more D reasons for moving?

Shelter have released a report saying that rents are unaffordable in many parts of the country.
Their report is here

* Many rural areas are bearing the brunt of high rent rates and low earnings, with rents more affordable in Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham than in north Devon, north Dorset or Herefordshire.
* London boroughs are the most expensive in England, with the average rent for a two bedroom home in the capital (£1,360) almost two and a half times the average in the rest of the country (£568).
* The least affordable local authority area outside London is Oxford, where typical rents account for 55% of average earnings.

Shelter thinks that families shouldn’t spend more than 35% of their income on rent.

Local housing allowance levels are said to be to blame for the increase in rents. If landlords can get more from tenants on benefits then rents overall will rise. Rents need to come down to be genuinely affordable.
People who can’t afford to pay the rent if they work will see no point in working. To be a sustainable economy the UK needs to be able to have people in work and able to support themselves.

For shelter’s idea to work (excluding any tax credits which younger childless single people wouldn’t be able to get) then on minimum wage for a 35 hour week – a weekly income of £212.8, shouldn’t have to pay more than 35% of that in rent which means you wouldn’t want to spend more than £74.48 on rent.

This works out at (x52/12) a monthly rent of £322.75

A search on rightmove in my area shows that the cheapest 1 bedroom property is £395 a month.

Which shows that housing is very unaffordable in my area for almost everyone.

LHA has been changed for under 35s so they have to share a property now rather than having a flat or house to themself.

Whilst I applaud shelter’s ideas of building more houses to solve this problem, in reality it won’t. House builders throw in some “affordable” housing – which usually isn’t actually affordable, but this just shows that the rest is even more unaffordable.