To add to the discussion of housing costs: building houses is so expensive, slow, and difficult that people are pushed into buying and keeping old and cold houses with maintenance issues. Not only that, they pay top dollar, and can’t afford to replace them with nice new houses.
I don’t think we can or should ignore that our larger cities, the land can be damn near half the cost of the house. If we want to make new houses cheaper, that’s a good place to look.
But also this article highlights that instead of self-inspection, we could have made it a lot faster by having them pass inspection the first time. If they can do it right the first time this means fewer inspections and should also cut down on the wait for an inspector to come and check.
I also wonder if were gonna start seeing houses advertised for sale as “passing council inspection” vs these “trusted” companies who have not been inspected, and since a large proportion fail their first inspection surely a house that has not been inspected is worth less due to the higher risk of not being built properly?
You make interesting points about self-inspection. I don’t trust it. The leaky homes situation from the ‘90s shows that people will cut corners when they think they can.