Television star Kevin McCloud says that first-time buyers struggling to get on the housing ladder should “move to Germany”.
The Grand Designs presenter said their state funding models and strong building culture have helped boost the housing market.
He told the Standard as part of a wide-ranging interview: “They have a culture where building is considered a hugely important skill in society. Builders and carpenters train for three years to become apprentices. It’s like doing a degree.”
He added: “Anybody in the UK can set themselves up as a builder, you don’t need any formal qualification. It’s outrageous.
“…In our pursuit of the purely contractual and beleaguered construction generally, we’ve forgotten how important it is that people want to use their hands and their brains to do things, to make things.”
The average house price in the UK in January was £281,913, according to the UK House Price Index, a rise of 0.5 per cent on December 2023.
In London, the average house price is £730,885, according to the property portal Rightmove.
The most expensive area in which to buy is the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, where the average price is £1.2million.
German house prices fell by 10.2 per cent in the third quarter of last year, marking the largest decline on record, amid a European housing crisis. By year-end, the German house price index, benchmarked to 2015 prices, was at 145.5 per cent, indicating that a house valued at €250,000 in 2015 would now be worth €363,750.
McCloud called for the UK to adopt a healthier attitude to homes that isn’t obsessed with ownership.
“In Germany, social housing isn’t stigmatized,” he says. “It’s only in the UK that we had this strange Thatcherite notion that if you don’t own your home, you’re not part of a progressive and forward-thinking world of investment and self-improvement.”
“We have a poisonous culture in housing delivery and in our social housing programs. It’s hollowed out and it’s a great shame,” said McCloud.
“I get so angry, not because I’m so anti what happens here, but because I see what happens in Sweden and in Denmark and in Germany and in Belgium and in Austria, where 86 per cent of all new homes are custom or self-built.”
THE misfortune-after-misfortune saga of the “saddest ever” Grand Designs property continues, as the owner won’t be able to sell the house for another decade.
Grand Designs’ ”saddest” property may not sell find a new owner for ten years as “sadness is ingrained into every wall and window,” according to a psychic.
Chesil Cliff House in Devon, the UK, made headlines after it brought owner Edward Short a seemingly never-ending stream of misery for a whopping 12 years.
Not just that, but building the lavish white property by the coast left him with a hefty £7million in debt – and even cost him his marriage.
Edward began working on the picturesque five-bedroom, glass-fronted pad in 2010, with plans to live there with his then-wife Hazel and their two children Nicole and Lauren, now both in their 20s.
With an initial budget of close to £2m, the dad hoped to complete the ambitious project in 18 months – however, development issues meant the building process went on for a long 12 years, with costs spiralling out of control.
However, once the property had finally been complete, it was not to everyone’s taste, as British designer Kevin McCloud described it on Grand Designs as the “carcass” of a seashore wreckage.
Looking back at the time, which had put the family under a lot of stress, especially given the mounting debt, Edward previously said: “The whole project has been a horrendous strain for Hazel, I have sunk our family purse into this and I really feel for her.
”I never meant to put her through any of this,” he told DevonLive.
“There’s a lot of guilt about that.
”But there was no way out, once we started. If we didn’t finish we’d have been in big trouble,” the dad said in a chat with The Sun.
Since then, the lighthouse property has been put up for sale – however, with no luck of potential buyers keen to snap it up.
And according to tarot reader and celebrity psychic Inbaal Honigman, who spoke to the Daily Star, it more bad news for Edward and the £7million mansion.
“The Tarot card which comes up for the house is the very sad seven of Swords,” she said.
“It is a card named ‘futility’, which represents grief, loss and loneliness.
“Houses carry the energy of people and events that existed within them, and the Grand Designs’ saddest house’s history of separation and subsequent loneliness is represented in this Tarot card.”
What’s more, she noted, the sadness is essentially ”ingrained into every wall and window”.
Another card – the 10 of Wands – revealed that the house is most likely to not sell in the next ten years, if it remains as is.
Inbaal added that for the outcome to change, the circumstances have to change – and there are some things the owner could do.
Inbaal pointed out that the house needs to to have its energy uplifted for the property to finally sell – and one way to achieving that is placing rose quartz crystals for love around the mansion.
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Work on Chesil Cliff House started with a budget of £1.8m and was supposed to be completed within 18 months.
Last year, the unfinished home was taken off an estate agent’s site during talks with a “serious buyer”, who reportedly backed out at the last minute.