ï¿½60,000 House on it's way

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ï¿½60,000 House on it's way
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tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45676
Location: Essex

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 05 4:32 pm Post subject: ï¿½60,000 House on it's way

https://www.odpm.gov.uk/pns/displaypn.cgi?pn_id=2005_0106

News Release 2005/0106:
06 June 2005
PRESCOTT'S ï¿½60,000 HOUSE CHALLENGE - NEXT MILESTONE REACHED

33 invited to take part in next stage and new sites announced in the Design for Manufacture Competition

The challenge for house builders to design and construct high quality homes for around ï¿½60,000 took another step forward today when the Deputy Prime Minister announced that 33 organisations would be invited to participate in the next stage of the Design for Manufacture Competition.

The 33 - a mixture of consortia, partnerships and individual companies from the UK and overseas - will now be invited to submit firm proposals in the second stage of the competition. Successful bidders have until July to submit their Stage Two proposals.

The Design for Manufacture Competition is being run by English Partnerships, the Government's regeneration agency, on behalf of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Announcing the successful firms at the BRE OFFSITE 2005 conference this afternoon, the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott said:

"I am encouraged by the response from the construction industry to step up and take on my challenge to produce the ï¿½60,000 home. The level of interest in this competition has been staggering. We received over 50 expressions of interest in the first stage, involving more than 100 companies. Originally it was predicted that between 15-25 firms would move to this next stage, but since the quality of the entries was so high that number has easily been surpassed.

"My Design for Manufacture Competition is challenging house builders to think creatively and innovatively in order to provide homes that are well designed and affordable at the same time. At a time when construction costs are rising and we need to build more for our money, I want to help more people get onto the housing ladder while still driving up standards in design, construction methods and creating truly sustainable communities."

The Deputy Prime Minister also announced three further sites that will be used for the Competition - School Road, Hastings; Horn's Cross, Stone; and Rowan High School, Merton. In total 10 sites have now been chosen to be used by the eventual competition winners. The successful bidders will be chosen early next year and it is expected that work will begin on the first sites in Spring 2006.

In addition, invitations are being sent out today to those people the Government would like to be on the Design for Manufacture judging panel. Potential panelists are from a range of backgrounds including design specialists, local authorities, housing corporations and environmental experts. The panel will be responsible for selecting the final shortlist and making recommendations to the Deputy Prime Minister.

The Deputy Prime Minister added:

"Innovation and imagination is the name of the game. This is a stretching challenge but one that is necessary if we are to tackle the problems we face in terms of housing shortage and buyers being priced out of the market. Twinned with that I want to stimulate fresh thinking in the industry with the UK becoming world leaders in terms of construction methods and design excellence.

"I am looking forward to seeing the developed proposals in Stage Two - let's see what can be achieved and really make this Competition a success - I wish all 33 organisations the best of luck in this next stage."

Following his keynote speech at the BRE OFFSITE conference, the largest exhibition of off-site and Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) ever seen in the UK, the Deputy Prime Minister opened the new Innovation Park, sponsored by ODPM and the DTI, which is located at BRE. The Park, that will accommodate seven demonstration houses in total, will be used over the next two years for training purposes - educating builders, contractors and manufacturers about Modern Methods of Construction, renewable systems, innovative IT systems and brand new concepts for the construction industry.

Notes to Editors

1. A full list of successful bidders is attached.

Stage One - technical evaluation
List of successful bidders -in random order (58 K)

2. The 10 sites chosen for development in the Competition are listed below.

ï¿½ Allerton Bywater Millennium Community, Leeds
ï¿½ Oxley Park, Milton Keynes
ï¿½ Oxford Road, Aylesbury Vale
ï¿½ Upton, Northampton
ï¿½ London Road, Newport Pagnell
ï¿½ Kingsclere Road, Basingstoke
ï¿½ Leybourne Grange, Maidstone
ï¿½ School Road, Hastings - announced today
ï¿½ Horns Cross, Stone - announced today
ï¿½ Rowan High School, Merton - announced today

3. The Deputy Prime Minister first announced the competition to construct a home for around ï¿½60,000 on 26 September 2004 and the Competition was officially launched in April 2005.

4. About 30% of the approximately 1000 housing units built within the Competition will be built to a target cost of ï¿½60k (the remainder will be larger and smaller units that should be built at an equivalent cost-efficiency).

5. In total 53 organisations submitted the Pre-Qualifying Questionnaire by the deadline, which was 13 May 2005. 33 firms will now be invited to submit detailed proposals in Stage Two. 20 were not successful for a variety of reasons - they either failed to complete the PQQ fully, or failed the financial vet or did not specify an adequate explanation of key delivery arrangements.

6. The Stage Two brief, which organisations will need to complete and return in July, is now available on the English Partnerships web site.

7. Also today the Deputy Prime Minister has published the technical annex to the ODPM's consultation 'HomeBuy - expanding the opportunity to own' which shows that people on low incomes will have the opportunity to buy their own homes. HomeBuy and Design for Manufacture are just two of the ODPM's housing initiatives that demonstrate the Government's commitment to widening access to the housing market and encouraging a step change in the construction industry.

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 05 9:51 pm Post subject:
I'm not sure that ï¿½60k is a tough enough target. A volume builder should be able to do that quite easily.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 05 9:55 pm Post subject:
But I assume that they're allowed to take their normal margin out of that.

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 05 9:58 pm Post subject:
I guess it depends if you include land cost. A big builder could be putting houses up for ï¿½30 per square foot (that's a guess) . Even if you doubled the build cost it would give you a 1000 square foot house for 60k, which would be a reasonable 3 bedroom.

wellington womble

Joined: 08 Nov 2004
Posts: 15051
Location: East Midlands

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 9:34 am Post subject:
I agree - building houses isn't particluarly expensive (in reletive terms) its finding somewhere to put them that costs. You can buy a very nice looking log cabin chalet type building (3 bed, 2 bath) for 20K, plus delivery (and presumably assembly).

Behemoth

Joined: 01 Dec 2004
Posts: 19023
Location: Leeds

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 9:38 am Post subject:

Jonnyboy wrote:

I'm not sure that ï¿½60k is a tough enough target. A volume builder should be able to do that quite easily.

When they first floated this a big developer said they could do it but the houses would be uninspiring rows of 'barrack like terraces' with a basic fit. i.e. no corners or fancy windows etc. How this differs from the acres of uninspiring 'luxury' detached I don't know.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 9:40 am Post subject:

Behemoth wrote:

When they first floated this a big developer said they could do it but the houses would be uninspiring rows of 'barrack like terraces' with a basic fit. i.e. no corners

Igloos?

Jonnyboy

Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 23956
Location: under some rain.

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 9:46 am Post subject:

Behemoth wrote:

Jonnyboy wrote:

I'm not sure that ï¿½60k is a tough enough target. A volume builder should be able to do that quite easily.

There is an element to that but design isn't just about cost. Our house is designed to be a quick and cheap(ish) construction, the dormers certainly add to the cost but not hugely, there is no real difference to the cost of plastering inside but they make for a more interesting internal room shape in what is admittedly a square house.

Behemoth

Joined: 01 Dec 2004
Posts: 19023
Location: Leeds

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 9:48 am Post subject:
Exactly - I think it showed a lack of imagination on the part of the developer rather than insurmountable problems.

Andy B

Joined: 12 Jan 2005
Posts: 3920
Location: Brum

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 11:57 am Post subject:

Wont it seriously devalue the current market if they build loads putting a lot of people at risk of negative equity, or will investors buy them hold onto them for a while, sidestepping any quick buck routes and then make a killing further down the line. And why do we need masses more houses when the population is fairly static with an increasing number of OAP's whos numbers will start declining anyway? Then we will have more houses then we need and even more problems for the housing market.

Northern_Lad

Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 14210
Location: Somewhere

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 12:15 pm Post subject:
The population is fairly static (if not shrinking), but the demographics are changing. More people are now living by themselves, families are getting smaller (less children), more OAPs living in their own homes. Add to this the fact that people want to live in bigger and bigger houses now.

tawny owl

Joined: 29 Apr 2005
Posts: 563
Location: Hampshire

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 05 1:51 pm Post subject:

Andy B wrote:

The only people it might affect are those people who have bought up lots of houses to let - they may well find they won't have the people to rent, and personally, I don't think that's a bad thing. I read somewhere about some couple who had over 400 houses, and as they were buying a house every month and that was a while ago, it's probably up to 500 now. I think should be stopped; I've no objection to someone owning another house, or even a few, but housing stock isn't like shoes; you can't just go out and buy a cheaper one if you don't like what's available, and depriving nearly 500 people of the chance to buy their own houses I think is immoral (Rant). In addition, as the price goes up (because there are fewer houses available), more people are forced into renting, thus rents go up, making it even more attractive to buy to let, thus cutting the number of houses more, and so on. Having rent protection. like they do in a lot of European countries would help there.

Another thing that would help of course (and clear up some of the congestion) is for corporations and goverment departments to move out of the southeast, so people can work in cheaper areas. There are still plenty of homes in the North that are round about the 60-grand mark. Cutting stamp duty would help as well - houses in Ireland for instance, don't attract any stamp duty for first-time buyers up to about ï¿½250,000, whereas here we're paying it from ï¿½60,000 upwards, and more and more people are caught in that net every year.

Celtic Mike

Joined: 10 Aug 2005
Posts: 7

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 05 10:50 am Post subject: ï¿½20,000 Log cabin
Can anyone post a link or URL for a company who sells those ï¿½20,000 log cabins? Sounds veeeery interesting! Cheers

Bernie66

Joined: 14 Jan 2005
Posts: 13967
Location: Eastoft

Posted: Thu Aug 11, 05 9:49 pm Post subject: Re: ï¿½20,000 Log cabin

Celtic Mike wrote:

Can anyone post a link or URL for a company who sells those ï¿½20,000 log cabins? Sounds veeeery interesting!

Cheers

I know Finn Forest do some pretty awesome log cabins

https://www.finnforest.co.uk

Blue Peter

Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Posts: 2400
Location: Milton Keynes

Posted: Fri Aug 12, 05 9:08 am Post subject:

Jonnyboy wrote:

I guess it depends if you include land cost.

I may be wrong, but I have heard that the lucky purchasers of the 60K house get to rent the land, on which their castle is planted, from the government,

Peter.

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