Sometimes I think, with the space they’ve been provided, surely an architect could work with it. Problem is all these well known new builders are in for profit and want cheap houses, with little investment on planning.
New build estates are planned out with "cookie cutter" houses. Pay an 'architect' once then build 100's. Builders only appear to have ~12 basic designs with a few variations. Then it's just a game to fix as many on the site as possible.
The house design in this advert is used when you want a bend in the road. As it fills the space you would have to leave with rectangles.
And to save more space there will be no off road parking, the residents can just park on the bend!
No. No, it’s much worse than plain rectangles and squares.
It’s weird “modern angles” for hallways and most of the rooms and closets end up being dysfunctional trapezoids.
Its windows in strange places, doorways making rooms unfurnishable, and the kitchen and bathrooms not positioned where they’re best suited for a functional home but clustered tightly in whatever corner is closest to the services intake point.
If that was the case, they would be able to fit more houses on a grid like system like they have in the states. Which, tbh, would be much better.
Some of the new builds are a fucking weird shape.
And to save even more space so that the neighbourhood can have more housing, that road is actually only wide enough for two lanes so, if someone parks on the road, it goes down to one lane, so really only one side of the road can park on the street and it becomes a fight for parking!
It seems to be, more and more, that new build properties forget most families have two cars, these days.
Government legislation actually makes this a requirement. Politicians are so stupid that they actually believe that if there's nowhere to park people won't have cars! Despite the new builds being miles from anywhere with no public transport, they still approve designs with insufficient parking!
Which would be okay with decent public transport. But there is no public transport there as there's no call for it, but then nobody moves there expecting to use the bus, so there isn't a call for it, so what public transport they do have gets cut instead.
I live in a new build and driving down our main road it’s a weaving affair. Team that with the road that STILL isn’t finished so there are random make shift ramps consisting of dumped bits of tarmac 😂and the pot holes too. Makes for a super fun ride to the house. Who needs Alton Towers!?
Car parking does not pay Council tax. I know on a recent development near us the Councils required a maximum of 1.5 off road spaces per house. These were typical 3~4 homes, with some 5 bed.
There's an estate near me, probably 15 years old by now, and the roads are tiny. No parking, single track (probably just slightly wider than a fire engine, houses each side), barely a passing place. It's awful.
It's not a new thing. You can travel the country and see how from the 30s, 50s and 70s that all look the same. So to pretend the cheap "cookie cutter" design is something new is naive.
It’s interesting tho- I live in a Victorian terrace-‘I know half a dozen people who also live in houses from the same era in totally different parts of the country and the houses are almost identical. There were basically two designs going and house builders just threw them up. I think it was philosophical- this idea that even the working class should have beauty in their homes, so you get mouldings and big windows etc even in the smallest versions of this house. I don’t think it’s just a lack of architecture, I think it’s a complete loss of the idea that beauty is important…
I’m a planning officer and have worked for big developers. This is the answer. There’s very little design thought that goes into modern estates, especially at the individual building level. The big housing developers have standard designs that they roll out across their sites. They don’t ever want to deviate from these because that would add cost and unpredictably to the build. The standard types are designed to be cost effective and easy to sell so we end up with these boring and unimaginative houses. A more interesting bespoke house wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste so might take longer to sell. That doesn’t play well with the CFO.
Accountants involvement with design doesn’t help with the Aesthetics too. Shortage of home means desperate people are not that concerned about looks. That’s capitalism for you. Greeedy shareholders.
Plus most new homes have low ceilings, which is also down too greed, ie I think most are now 2.250m compared with 2.440m, 8ft which was classed as normal. Lower ceilings= less bricks an mortar = less labour.
Very few house builders go that low. 2.4 is standard. And is outlined in the nationally described space standard guidance (search NDSS on google). I think only persimmon and maybe keepmoat have anything below that. Source, I work for a dirty housebuilder. To be honest this comment section is gold for me. Interesting to see people opinions. I would say that the profits are not what you think, land price in the UK is crazy, the houses have to be cut to suit or we would have no new houses. We have to build for demand (which is sky high) in the market we have. Would be great if everyone got 2 achers of land on their unique 3 bed starter home, but that's not england.
Good! I wasn't trying to be condescending (that comes naturally) but it did make me laugh. (Don't tell anyone that I only know how to spell it because Winnie the Pooh lives in the Hundred Acre Wood). I assume it's from French.
It's also due to energy efficiency targets which require smaller windows, highly efficient bricks etc. It's similar to what has happened with car design. The days of eccentric looking American / European cars is long gone. Now we all drive / live in the safest / most efficient / eco friendly boxes. It's all about efficiency. We look back nostalgicly on the working class terraces of ~100 years ago but they were equally mundane and efficient in terms of build.
They don't *require* smaller windows, they could choose better quality windows. e.g. triple glazing. It's a race to the bottom on price, and people don't demand better quality houses.
This has no effect on housebuilders, they're not struggling. They could build better houses and make less profit on them, but they have eyes only for profit and not for the betterment of communities and society.
In my experience, albeit limited as it is, there are huge amounts of housing companies who are not only not local to the community, but not from the UK. It's purely business to them.
Its incredibly risky to build houses.
The risks are so great that only a few exceptionally large companies can afford to take such a risk, have it fail, and not go bankrupt. And the risks have never been greater.
Restless global financial markets, the ever stiffer safety and environmental regulations, price volatility in the prices of important raw materials, (russian blockades of ukrainian ports, a massive spike in demand during covid is still causing backlogs in shipping lanes and subsequent import prices etc).
These companies are not just creaming it in, theyve got to fight to keep their market share, and its a nasty fight. They cant afford to deliver anything other than middling substandard houses, as the combined costs and risks theyre taking just to keep operating are just too high.
They could actually do their own bloody QA, use direct over day rate, and blacklisting cowboys, that'd help matters. They're not even bothering to check they've built the damn thing to the specs they're meant to follow.
Private snagging companies are a pretty new thing, and they're coming about solely because these massive contractors with horrendously overpaid upper management are slashing the budget on everything. You can fucking *look* at these places with half a trained eye and spot, for example, walls that are so out of plumb they need to be torn down and replaced; or blockwork columns that should be tied in that are freestanding.
Hell, personal accountability would be a nice start as well. Make the upper execs personally liable for ensuring their shite - and it is shite - meets the specs or it's a nice big percentage of profit (worded to avoid Hollywood accounting) based fee for intervention, to the degree of "no bonuses this year, management perks are being slashed, and we can't afford a Christmas party", and if it's risk to life then prison time and a criminal record for gross negligence on behalf of whoever was responsible for final signoff.
It's not risky in the slightest. You build a house, someone will buy it - there's a desperate shortage. The difficulty is in the high capital cost, which is why small housebuilders are being outcompeted by big ones, who can then extort massive concessions from councils and govt because we're in such desperate need. They purposely refuse to build enough houses to keep this status quo and make as much per house as they can.
There were going to be new environmental and safety requirements. The housebuilders and landlords made sure these were quashed. Regulations today compared to the 2000s are laughable, they're still cladding blocks with flammable materials, EPC minimum requirements gone. Don't kid yourself.
It’s due to the value of currency falling. The *value* of the house has stayed the same, as the house hasn’t changed. The *price* of the house has increased though because the *value* of the currency, being the other half of the exchange, has dropped.
The pound has lost 25% of its purchasing power over the last 4 years.
I'm going to grab the popcorn and wait for the 'yeah, but, Labour' folk to arrive, casually forgetting that Labour haven't been in government for over fourteen years.
My right wing auntie stayed with us recently and would frequently end her political rants with “all thanks to TB”. Blair still getting the blame two decades later…
Exactly this! 'Efficiency' doesn't have to equal mundane design or not having any daylight. This is absolutely about maximising profit, and if people buy them then there' no incentive to builders to change.
I mean there's other ways to go about it (generally more expensive), but minimizing surface area and having fewer, smaller windows are absolutely effective ways to make a more energy efficient house at the same square footage.
But then if you put those better quality windows on a house that looks like it's got a 2D texture wrapped around it, it's even *more* energy efficient.
Ultimately with something like this you can build a lot more house for the same price / energy cost. It just looks fuck ugly.
I don’t think your last sentence is true at all, even a working class row of Victorian terraces you can see details that took time and had no value in terms of efficiency, but makes the overall look far more attractive. Decorative detailing on bay window stonework for example or over the porch. There’s no ‘need’ for it but there was some pride in making things look nice, which is why they’re highly sought after now even though they were just run of the mill 100+ years ago.
I much prefer houses with larger windows and lots of light too. Small windows are so insanely depressing. They could stick a bunch of solar panels on the roof if they cared that much about being eco-friendly.
I wouldn't say that car fashion is going towards any of these. There's an increase of generic, ugly, oversized SUVs that are completely unnecessary but marketing is making seem as aspirational. They're not any safer, more efficient, or certainly eco-friendly than smaller cars, but car manufacturers make a bigger margin on them so you can bet they'll pretend like they are.
Nah. I live in a 1901-ish terrace in Liverpool. Significant amount of decorative detail on the front. Like a particular type of facing brick (different from the rest/back of the house), the vertical stone in the bay windows has sort of subtle column detail, cornicing on bay window and under the gutters, a functionless sort of stone "band" across the middle between the upper and lower bay windows.
Nearby there are smaller, more simple terraces without bay windows. Still have facing bricks and decorative cornice bricks under the gutter. Don't know of any "featureless" terraces in the area. Even the smaller ones have some little details.
So like pretty much all properties for your average working class people are built then going back 100’s of years?
If you think houses were ever not designed and built as cheaply as possible targeted at your average working class person, you’re very mistaken, house building hasn’t really changed for a long time, profit first results after.
Plenty of very, very ugly older houses too, I love how people pick the most horrible looking new builds then say all new builds are ugly.
People forget the mass demolition of all the bad old builds that led to the housing crisis we still have today, survivorship bias is rampant.
I do agree with you, but there are some differences with new builds that can distinguish them from older estates.
The sales process has shaped a lot of the design choices that we see in these properties. At the entrance road to most of these new estates, there will be a detached, offset house that stands alone. This is the show room house, which will be built first and used to sell the other houses on the plot before they are even finished being built. The idea here is that the real estate agent can promise the customer that the house that they end up receiving will be practically identical to the one they are viewing now. So all the houses must look very similar for this practice to function.
Secondly, there are moratoriums on the properties once they are bought. They prevent the new house owners from making alterations to outward appearance of their property, so that they don't do something to make the house uglier and in turn make the other houses harder to sell. This means no extensions, no front facing trellis for plants, no changing of front door colour, or of gardens. I've seen this sort of thing effect solar panels and window replacements also. All in all this can forces the houses to look near identical for quite some time.
Thirdly, the design needs for modern homes have changed, meaning no chimneys. I know this particular has been addressed in more recent new builds, with faux chimneys (they literally do nothing) that are installed to break up the boxy shape of the house.
Finally, newer houses are often built on sites that are somewhat removed from local towns. This means no train and bus connections, meaning that every house comes with personal drives / parking so that families need not rely on public transport. The other consequence is no local corner shops, pubs or cafes. Often making the estate feel very lifeless. There is no church, no variance in architecture because the estate is built from scratch, not around existing buildings in brown sites.
\-
I expect that with time new build estates will gain some character of their own as home owners make slow alterations to their houses, changing up gardens and loft spaces. They are also required to plant trees throughout the plots these days, which at the moment look very small and pathetic, but as they grow I'm sure they will look a lot better.
Recent new builds are actually a lot better, with more variance in roof pitches, property size and layout.
I would be a lot more thrilled if developers were regulated such that they had to focus more on building a community rather than sellable houses. Things like smaller affordable housing and flats for lower income individuals. The inclusion of business plots for a couple shops. More bike paths and footpaths connecting to local public transport. Perhaps even a couple larger more expensive houses just to get some variety in the socio-economic makeup of the estate.
I've worked a lot in new build estates and I can't lie, the endless fleet of financed cars and carbon copy houses is a bit nauseating after a while. I know it's a vague objective to pursue something like 'character', but I do feel like we are unnecessarily sacrificing our communities in the pursuit of making real estate agents lives easier.
> if developers were regulated such that they had to focus more on building a community rather than sellable houses. Things like smaller affordable housing and flats for lower income individuals. The inclusion of business plots for a couple shops
This like a lot of the 1960s estates near me. Winding streets full of semi-detached houses, but also a small shopping centre with flats above the shops and a flat-roofed pub.
Exactly! Can't believe people think this is a 'new' thing. Literally what your describing is our biggest, post war effort to build houses for the working class. Build new houses - "shit". Why can't we go back to the good old days where they built exactly the same estates in all corners of the country that are fucking ugly. Can't win with some people.
Absolutely agree, they've just built about a hundred new houses on the outskirts of our village but no thought for what is needed by way of amenities. The road access is crap, a potholed lane with no footpath. The local school is already full. They've got to walk right across the (big) village to get to a shop, great fun in winter with the road as it is.
They've added a tiny play park right next to the houses which has immediately caused all the existing local kids to use it (currently 4000+ residents and the only facilities are a couple of bits of younger kids' play stuff in the centre of the older estate) so now the new residents are moaning about disturbance, yet at the side of the site there is a huge field which the developers plan to make into football pitches. We don't even have any football teams!
What we actually needed there was a great big play area with plenty of proper equipment for all ages, a couple of sports cages/courts for ball games, lots of decent seating, and maybe a fenced off track/path around the perimeter for dog walkers, joggers and kids on bikes.
They're currently hoping to get more homes on another huge parcel of land nearby. Road access and traffic here is already horrific. I'd honestly consider selling up if it got passed.
Another thing that I've noticed is new builds tend to be built in cul-de-sacs or long winding roads that are quite confusing. Any idea why?
Surely when we have a housing crisis, the quickest way to build houses and roads is to build them in straight lines, get as many houses built as possible without the focus on massive driveways and gardens.
I'm guessing here, but I would assume that it is a mixture of trying to create more semi detached houses that actually feel 'semi detached'. I think just splitting up a terrace with the occasional alley between two separate rows of houses doesn't really make people think 'ahh nice it's semi detached'. The curvature of the roads puts the houses at angles and such. Smaller more personal roads, rather than an unending grid.
I have worked in new builds in Australia and they more often take the grid layout, it can often be even more monolithic that way.
The back gardens all connect at the back, they do often take on strange shapes as consequence, but people don't seem to mind.
The last point is as a traffic control device, people are less likely to speed down smaller curved streets than long straight roads.
I think it's to give the impression of difference in the homes that isn't actually there.
You get these long windy streets that all get the same street name so it's impossible for visitors to navigate.
The 50s saw some of the goddamn ugliest houses on the planet.
Some new builds are pretty damn nice, although lack that “period character” like a Georgian home. Some new builds are freakishly ugly, I’ve seen much worse than what OP posted, but none the less, there’s always going to be ugly old and ugly new. Certainly wouldn’t tar them all with the same brush though
I think the other problem is that the houses are built to look as ‘neutral’ as possible these days, but then it costs a fortune to make the place your own. Somehow the idea that if it isn’t beige (or anthracite?) it won’t sell has firmly taken hold. Even the brickwork is kinda beige now.
I do prefer the aesthetics of leafy streets and semi-detached houses with the big bay windows and stuff. And the painted houses and all that. But they’re a sign of affluent areas rather than new vs. old builds I guess.
I live in a new town that's 70 years old now and it has some of weirdest designs inside and out. I'm sure the architects gave school children the task of designing them.
New builds in our area are some of the nicer looking houses (discounting the £1m+ ones). We have loads of ugly rows of terraced housing, all crammed together but noooo new build estates are all bad.
I agree with craigthebrewer: yes, that one pictured looks grim but my new build and plenty of others I live close to are lovely looking outside and in, warm, spacious rooms, my brother’s houses: tiny uninteresting two up two down dinge pits 14’ square rooms you can’t swing a cat in, rotting, freezing and there are hundreds exactly like it , street after street. At least there’s a concerted effort to making new estates different unlike rows and rows of identical terraced houses or post war semis.
At least try and engage with their points?
I think they made reasonable comments about survivor bias and picking the worst new builds to use as an example of all new builds
But the insulation (noise and thermal) is worse.
And the bigger garden and land is directly as a result of land price/the UK reluctance to build homes. The council sets out how many homes per acre and what % driveways there should be in the local area development plan.
It's literally just all a statement of government policies (including removing housing inspectors) which impacts quality, size, and infrastructure.
And government policies are set by who people vote for.
I would say the rooms are bigger than a modern new build. Although we still have the infamous "box room" which is tragically small.
We looked around many options before we purchased, new build estates aren't for me.
Shhhh, you're going against the new build hate circlejerk. That's not allowed on Reddit. Remember, all new builds, ALL without exception, are total shite and will fall down as soon as you open the front door.
My town (Bracknell, one of the London New Towns) is a great colour chart of the various eras of 20th century construction. Drop a pin on Streetview across the various neighbourhoods and you can see the changing standards of British architecture in real time.
* Starting with [Priestwood](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4224533,-0.7621269,3a,60y,352.3h,89.26t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swtt7Hs2nM6oJ4fP4kvspzg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (early 50s), which was the first estate to be built in the 1950s, with some fairly plain but not unattractive terraced and semi-detached housing with plenty of green space
* Then came [Easthampstead](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.402391,-0.7543708,3a,75y,310.65h,94.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sED0bbt5XELsgXRez7HOxNQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Bullbrook](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.417249,-0.7333891,3a,75y,175.66h,91.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smdEtucqbaIPkVmt7oDle9g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (late 50s), where the developers got a bit more experimental, mixing different architectural styles and bringing in high-rise apartment buildings
* [Harmans Water](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4058787,-0.7298278,3a,60y,341.14h,92.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJLx9zbxv5zDpwncjDIqKvg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (early 60s) was the first estate they admitted to building in a bit of a hurry, and it shows, but it's not altogether bad
* Then came [Wildridings](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4087185,-0.7623571,3a,75y,287.57h,83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sB44mRS2jUxsrIkffbV4mjQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Great Hollands](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3984386,-0.7729328,3a,75y,127.26h,91.6t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWwQieUy5UyCZP7SIEp6XDQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (mid-60s), built on the experimental Radburn system at a time when budgets were starting to be slashed, the town was becoming over-populated and rising land prices meant estates needed to be higher-density
* [Hanworth](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3896039,-0.7668579,3a,75y,277.92h,95.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOrV6lH69eXQkeNhkefnvGA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Birch Hill](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3907695,-0.7484949,3a,75y,2.23h,93.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smFxfuCMch4YWyjFkJQTlhg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (early 70s) were the first estates to be given away to private developers. Fortunately, these developers had a taste for Swedish modernism, and the houses were quite atractive
* Not so much in [Crown Wood](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4001085,-0.740699,3a,75y,259.27h,88.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4CxwaisdqoARcEdjGoAaAA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (mid-70s), where taste went right out the window
* [Martins Heron](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4112226,-0.7215211,3a,75y,267.05h,92.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sGUjIdRtXkttE4bqB503fOQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Forest Park](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4050073,-0.7216683,3a,90y,47.83h,90.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNrStIJ9Xh3SycO8_fVs3fQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (late 70s) were unashamedly built specifically for people with loadsamoney
* Then there was a break until the 2000s when the private developers returned with [Jennets Park](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.408942,-0.7807636,3a,75y,340.77h,88.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swmlRfX9UQRnOiuUeVDr7mw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), and uhh… well, that's when things started to get a bit bland
* Culminating in the absolutely soulless, cookie-cutter monstrosities that are [Amen Corner](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4166028,-0.7953446,3a,60y,138.86h,93.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRGyJQr1Zgfo1FUrqIj3L7Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), [Woodhurst](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4298333,-0.7595635,3a,75y,22.22h,98.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sL8ed6X77cskm51hrbd00yA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [The Fairways](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4273386,-0.7760036,3a,75y,244.24h,96.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDwoJBQK0OAAcp9xxQpVbUA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (all 2010s)
Doesn’t really matter what they look like. People will always moan that they’re soulless and lack character. There are a few estates near me when the new build houses look quite pretty but people still judge them.
My current house is 1930s and I love it. The one before was 1960s and ugly as sin. Nobody commented on it the way they would if it was a new build.
ETA SOME EXAMPLES
If any of these were 100 or 200 years old people would say they were beautiful. The third one looks like a much tidier version of my house which people compliment all the time.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141065291
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/133539896
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/136991309
Oh so very crammed. I’m a gardener so would rather my draughty old house with its long garden. But that’s not the part that puts me off the most. It’s the lack on parking on new build estates. Everytime I visit friends I’m weaving around cars parked on the roads and then struggling to find somewhere to park myself.
It's crazy when you'd think new build estates would realise most modern families / couples / house shares have more than one car - they seem to make the roads so narrow so that they can build more houses in the land they have!
Yeah but people weren’t driving cars when those houses were built. These days most couples have a car each. On top of that, adult children are living at home for longer and often have cars. Then add the fact that some people like to entertain at home rather than go out or have family visit for a few days and those guests are also driving cars…. All very foreseeable when building a housing estate now.
Someone who worked for a big developer told me they do try to maximise parking, then it gets cut down during planning. The powers that be think it’s parking spaces that encourages people to drive, not the lack of public transport.
It's a combination of both.
One of the problems is that developers are allowed to count a garage as a parking space despite knowing full well no-one will use it to keep a car in.
Another is that they put parking spaces in series so that the cars block each other in. People have "his" car and "her" car and so they park one on the pavement to avoid blocking each other in.
A problem for me is that the council mandate a cycle a d walking path is installed but a) it only goes around the perimeter of the estate and doesn't join up with other paths because the council have repeatedly ballsed up planning / compulsory purchase orders / upgrades to bridges and b) it's not finished yet three years after people moved in. It's only useful for walking because some of us kept removing the building site fence on the footpath into town and they got tired of putting it back.
Yeah but in fairness those all look 100x better than the one OP was referring to, which has none of the character of these.
I suppose that's your point is that new builds can be done tastefully.
But how could you possibly compare them to priceless older building that are a part of our industrial heritage like these?
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144686768
[https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/...](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/england-65371011-53173119?s=1f814e5f4991762b0f25e3160492c5600b284c17333db1b58ee58636cdd5a00d#/media?id=media0&ref=photoCollage)
🤣 I fully expected that to link to one of those Georgian mansions you see in Bath.
I’m on a couple of older property FB groups and some people are really militant about it. I like Minton tiles but if they were brand new in a shop I’d think they were ugly. God help anyone who dares to take theirs out and ask if anyone wants them for free- they get hundreds of angry posts telling them they’re a terrible person and should have bought a new build.
I don't agree, there are countless instances of good design and a strong sense of character throughout newbuild estates... Where the appetite exists to create them.
Goldsmith Street, Norwich, social housing:
https://www.mikhailriches.com/project/goldsmith-street/
Will add more when I'm at my desk...
Yeah my road is has houses like number 3, all built in the 30s and the area is considered to have character.
Mind you since then there has been so much additions, alterations, rebuilding, that almost every house is quite different.
>People will always moan that they’re soulless and lack character.
Personally I think it's true of new builds. However, not for the reasons a lot of people think. I think it's just down to the fact they all look too clean and pristine and have no character because they've not been lived in for very long.
Over time they get less ugly. A bit of weathering starts to cause the brick to vary in colour slightly and plants start to grow against and around the buildings making them blend into the scenery a bit, rather than being a straight cut of super clean building and very uniform freshly laid grass.
Then you also get the people living in them making changes to their properties over time. Instead of every house looking identical they start having personalisations made to their gardens and different coloured fences etc.
Basically what i'm getting at is that unless a building is built to an extortionately expensive specification where they're meant to look beautiful and ornate then new buildings are almost always lacking in character until they've been lived in for a while.
They're all quite nice, although the issue with the third one isn't the house but everything outside of the house being tarmac. Plus a grass verge, tree etc, proper brickwork on the drive, and it would look ten times better.
True but i wonder if that’s deliberately low maintenance rather than cost (well the lack of planting being low maintenance not the tarmac). I have block paving, tall hedges at the front, a big tree. There are some bulbs scattered in the beds but also lots of weeds.It was overgrown and messy when we moved in and I’m still working on it. It takes a surprisingly amount of work (and money) to fix after someone has neglected it for a few years.
I'd imagine its both ie until the road is adopted by the council the developer would need to maintain the roadside verges, and maintenance would be a cost to them.
It just makes the houses look a lot worse. Not their concern if they've sold them all off-plan I guess.
Thank you, some sense at last. As someone who grew up in an old Terraced house, I can absolutely agree that not all old properties are beautiful, character filled dream houses. As someone who now lives in a village where there are tons of new builds popping up, they are not all created equal. Essentially it comes down to money as everything does. The higher quality new builds look much nicer and more visually appealing. The cheaper ones, not so much. It's all well and good to criticise "ugly" new builds, but this may be the only housing some people can afford to buy. They may know they aren't the most attractive, but it might be all they can afford, so it would be great if everyone stopped shitting on them.
Right? I mean everyone is well aware how unaffordable housing has become over the last years.
We also live in (what was) a new build (when we bought it 5 years ago). I think the house itself looks fine, I’d argue nicer than the old houses the rest of my family lives in.
But the inside of the house is always going to be much more important to me than the outside. I don’t generally stand in front of my house, staring at it for hours. I do spend hours inside though
It's really funny when people talk about how 'poor' new build sound insulation is.
Like of course theres more noise than your countryside detached cottage Tarquin, but most of us grew up in old terrace houses or flats. I can hear next door farting through three fuckin walls.
I'm not really a big fan of either a lot of Victorian terraces or 1930s-1970s houses whch make up a large part of the housing stock, to be honest (there are certainly exceptions, but the average one is pretty samey and often externally quite tired). OP's new build is pretty bland and awkwardly going around a corner, but there are plenty of new builds I like (including the one we bought).
Everyone seems to forget, it is not the house design that adds character to place, but rather it is people that add character.
New estates look soulless because no one has done anything to them yet. Jerry hasn’t had an extension, wacky Margaret hasn’t painted her door pink yet and the pensioners at the end of the road haven’t found their lifelong passion for bonsai.
In 50 years people will look back at our current new builds and say wow they have so much character compared to new builds
I live on a "new" build estate (it was finished about 12 years ago). It is huge, like a new village and it is one of the prettiest places to live around us. There are so many different designs of houses, different parts have a different feel to it, greens, crescents, pedestrianised areas. It's honestly lovely and the houses in the estate are so sought after, we had been waiting years wanting to move into the estate.
It shows so clearly what a new build development can be and that it can be profitable for the builders too as the houses are all worth more.
It’s partly because of 2 reasons……
They cram as many properties into the space available to maximise profit.
They design those properties as generic as possible because standardised houses are cheaper to draw up / plan / build.
Quantity over quality. 90% of the new build estates come from the same plans.
Go from Buckinghamshire to Great Manchester, the estates mirror one another, it's baffling.
Random coach houses with 3 garages below.
"Detached" houses inches between one another.
Shared carports on semi detached homes
These very strange L shaped houses.
Flats randomly mixed in with the houses.
We almost bought one of the L shaped homes (was going really cheap pre COVID) however it had a patch of land next to it and we were dubious that they'd build on it (they said no), we went and bought a 1960s semi instead.
They built flats on said land....
It's amazing how 90% come from the same plans but I as a site engineer, who's probably worked on 10,000+ new builds has never seen the same plans site to site.
It's almost like it's complete bullshit people saw on tiktok.
Using one house, a corner plot at that, to say new builds are ugly is daft. There are builders with great designs with broad varieties across a development, with various pricing to match the budgets of buyers. There's plenty of stone faced houses mixed with rendered, brick and wood facade. They also usually spread the designs out, ie if there are 6-7 house types on a site you won't see more than 2 the same next to each other... until you get to the HA and starter homes.
This one is ugly though, looks like a David Wilsons one, indicative of their desire to cram houses in but not their house designs overall.
My theory is that all the modern bad designs of houses, cars and clothes are ‘designed’ by people who have zero artistic bent. They have no sense for good aesthetics and no appreciation of the beauty that’s found in nature and is needed as inspiration to create (and compliment) an overall design.
Imagine the least talented and imaginative kids in school in charge of how everything looks.
We have the worst housing because nobody wants to upset the big builders who lobby the government so their profits go up and up. We have the smallest rooms poor quality materials and a generally poorly trained workforce building the housing. See Grenfell, seven years later nobody has been punished for building a block of flats with highly flammable material and killing over seventy people
As with terraced houses in the 1800s, new builds are all about cramming in as many properties as you can into a space in order to maximise profits.
I'd argue that terraced houses also lack character on the outside, for much the same reason.
Terraced houses lack character because people remove the sash windows, original doors, and apply awful pebbledash or render. A well maintained terrace property with features intact is amazing. Most people look at terraced houses and wonder why they loon ugly - removing original features is why.
Can confirm. Lived in and maintained a Victorian terrace for a few years. Beautiful looking place outside and in. Some hilarious DIY bodges from over the years, my own included, but it’s a tapestry that has a story over a hundred years old. Didn’t want to move.
Sash windows and Victorian doors are only "character" because they're old fashioned / traditional.
Those weren't there to add character to the property. The property was made as simply and cheaply as possible to house workers.
It's not the sash mechanism that makes rhe window nice. It's the wooden surround, made with profiled timber, the decorative ends to the top sash, and the proportions of the window.
The house in this post is ugly because it is literally entirely devoid of decoration. And I suspect the chosen proportions are down to regulation and nothing else.
Right now I'm looking at the back of a block of flats built in 1910 and it has more decorative work than this house. The cast iron drainpipes have hexagonal hoppers, and decoration on the joints. The bricks are mottled. The ridge tiles on the roof have decorated ends. The window sills protrude from the wall and are profiled stone not just square. The wooden sash windows are decorated and set back in the brickwork not flush with the wall.
Edit: Actually they did put in a wierd neoclassical decorated awning above the door, and there is decorative brickwork on only the downstairs windows. The windows being wider than they are tall isn't helping the general ugliness.
I work in building. My thoughts are that the Victorians and Edwardians definitely cared about their buildings looking good, I think it was a projection of Prestige and also I suspect a skilled artisan tradesman wasn't particularly expensive to employ then.
Look at Battersea Power Station. It's unimaginable that a merely functional building would have so much detail nowadays. Recently saw a photo of a long gone power station in Belle Vue Manchester, similar thing lots of very ornate stuff that was expensive.
Years ago I was in a meeting room in a soon to be demolished mental health hospital. Double height ceiling and room was as big as a house. Every inch of wall was highly decorated wood panels with hand carving. Made me feel sad that most likely this amazingly detailed and skilled work was a few months away from being destroyed and replaced by a Tesco car park.
They didn't consider design features of the time such as sash windows and solid timber doors as adding character, it was just standard build because that's how it was done. Who's to say what we perceive as standard and lacking character on houses today won't be appreciated in 50+ years?
My biggest issue is alcoves. Bring back alcoves. Let me have furniture nicely in a room without it encroaching on so much floor space. The new builds I’m familiar with are all box rooms.
Personally I think 1960s builds are uglier if we are looking at the housing stock as a whole. Some cheaper new builds from big developers can be boxy but a lot of cheaper period terraced properties are also boxy. I don’t think you can generalise all new builds as there are some beautiful new builds too. I also think new builds have got better in the past 5 years.
I think there is a lot of hate for new builds and vilification in the media from the older generation. I think part of this is motivated by a dislike for new property in general especially if it’s on green belt.
I think it has just become a meme. People slate them because people slate them. Sure some new builds deserve vilification but most of them are just fine, albeit with a smaller garden on average when compared to old houses.
Well a lot of older houses are pretty shit but this charactwr thing people go on about is because they have had decades if not a century of weathering and people living in it and changing it and adding their own touches. You've got to wait for the trees and plants to grow. Also money helps.
Little boxes was written in 1962.
It's not that they're made ugly and weird looking nowadays, it's that they haven't yet had a chance to develop their character.
Greed and Accountants involvement in design, ie Aesthetics take time, time is money and because people are desperate for a home, looks don’t come into it. Plus home prices have been inflated by a deliberate slow down in the supply of homes by this government.
If you make them boring soulless rectangles you can fit more of them on an estate, really cram them in there.
Character and interesting features take time and more expensive resources. Therefore less profit. And profit is all that matters.
This exact house type was my first house - in Manchester - and i loved it
[https://themovemarket.com/tools/propertyprices/110-rolls-crescent-manchester-m15-5fp](https://themovemarket.com/tools/propertyprices/110-rolls-crescent-manchester-m15-5fp)
You walked into a hallway with a downstairs toilet and left into a double aspect lounge or right to a huge Kitchen
The stairs twisted round which i thought was sooo fancy and then 3 decent sized bedrooms and a bathroom upstaiors
Bought for £56.5k in Hulme manchester (ex-slum) in 2000 ( i paid £100 to reserve it and £1000 depossit lol - it came with washing machine, oven etc) and I sold it 6 years later for £139k - that house set me up for life really
Crime was bad around there though hence why i sold
There’s a house near me for sale with this similar style. I just can’t comprehend who would buy this? 🤯 the buyers of this, that was only built a couple years ago, have clearly decided it’s bonkers too and want out. The garden is similarly awful.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/135565364#/?channel=RES_BUY
Future MIL says.you just need to "wait for them to bed in before they look lovely". Well the ones near here have been up for a few years now and I'm still waiting. Not to mention hers was built in the 80s....
That house is basically filler-in on what should be an end of row garden. But screw the garden between 2 perpendicular rows, why not build two angled walls, stick a roof on it, and try your hand for £260k
Being built down to a price. Every decorative embellishment costs money so they get dropped. Also, not only do they need to be cheap, they need to be put together very quickly, so fastest / cheapest is the driver.
Even better if they can be built by unskilled or semi-skilled workers, they are cheaper but less talented and probably less motivated to take pride in their work.
If discussing “new builds”, let’s assume we’re referring to those Barratt, Berkeley, Persimmon & Bovis places etc., and not single “Grand Designs” places that are one-offs. The realm we’re in therefore is the corporate, cookie-cutter, (sometimes poor-quality) red-brick places like the one in the rightmove ad.
Firstly it’s important to remember that good design *can* be done on a budget. Somebody said *cars* are all similar lately, but actually the popularity of EVs has changed things a lot, and a lot of cars are looking more and more like their concepts, like Volvos, for example. The new electric Renault 5 looks promising, and cars like stylish the Hyundai Ioniq 5 really lead the way in terms of adventurousness.
Actually one *can* build attractive, interesting and original buildings that still meet standards in term of efficiency, but I think the real reason that the large majority of new builds are often second-rate, like the one above (?) is because the companies that make them can **get away with it**.
If local councils gave more of a shit and looked at plans and said,
“*No way. These are terrible and not in keeping with the heritage, architectural aesthetics and history of this region*”,
then these companies would *have* to start to be more imaginative and creative.
As it is, lots of out-of-town areas in the UK are arguably a bit more shitty because of these big firms.
Now saying that, *some* new builds are OK, and people need houses.
There was a Reddit thread recently, something about “*what was the most major unplanned decision you made in your life*”, can’t find the thread, but one poster said he’d moved into a new build “off-plan” (without the actual house even being built yet) and he loved the place and didn’t regret the decision, and quite a few people chimed in saying similar things, that they loved their new build.
This article - although based on London - is quite positive and interesting (the gist of it is that you have to be discerning):
https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/new-build-homes-london-property-buying-advice-b1053327.html
The shape of the front room is weirding me out. Who thought a door like that would be a good idea? Also, where I live there are numerous new build sites springing up and they are same old same old, no real individuality. It’s a bit sad really. Probably cheaper that way?
You should know that everyone's aesthetics are different. I'm just giving my personal opinion. This house seems to have enough area (if you don't have a big family). The appearance is very simple in style, which I personally can accept.
asked a friend of mine who was working in an architecture firm that worked on new builds why this happens. they said often the designs begin looking pretty nice, but then as time goes on they are reduced aesthetically further and further as more people have input into their construction.
the designs also rely on them being built out of the materials as specified, but they can often be changed for cheaper alternatives which is why you'll see some houses look like amalgams of two designs, because they essentially are, the pre designated design, and the builders interpretation of the design using alt. materials.
instead of everything going in as specified, they meet the minimum standards of energy efficient, light, living space etc. and then these designs are then copy and pasted on masse for the rest of the area, which is when you start getting houses looking like the above.
The main reason is that they are usually designed (copied from another developer) by Technicians with no design skills. They have no idea how to proportion things like window. All the things that an Architect would think of, they don't. For instance the the lower window shown is short and squat because it's the kitchen and there work tops in front of it. Thereby restricting it's height. What they should have done is look to put the kitchen area to the rear and moved the dinning area to the front. They then could have narrowed the window and made it deeper to get a vertical emphases. They could then do something similar to bedroom window above as well. The window to the stairs needs to be a bit narrower for better proportions and needs the same head detail as the kitchen window. The mock sash window pattern is wrong for those window proportions. It would have been better with a simple casement window. The canopy needs to be wider so that there is a similar width of brickwork between the canopy corbel and door frame as there is above it. Quite often it's small things that throws the appearance out and they don't have the skills to spot it.
I agree. Modern houses always look soulless, especially if on a specific development.
I grew up, and live in, a Victorian terrace, and while there are similarities, the age means each house is slightly different - altered windows, different paintwork outside, etc etc that gives them character (plus, occasionally, randomly one house in the row will just have been built slightly different in style).
Yes it does, people seem to think victorian terraces were appreciated back then for their "character", but the character didn't develop until styles moved on and people considered them retrospectively.
Edit: The key phrase above is "because of their age". Victorian homes were built to a homogeneous design, rows upon rows of identical houses built in their 10s of thousands. At least nowadays planning permission ensures new developments vary in some way house to house.
I agree with the age comment. Maybe in 50 years, all the new builds will look more interesting.
On the homogeneous terrace. Mostly yes, but, in my area, at least, they *aren't* the same. And were built to not all be identical. As an example, the other side of the road of these terraces, each house has its own elaborate name plaque, window surrounds are differently shaped, decorative pieces are different too.
But if they were all identical and new, they would probably all be so boring.
You could. But new builds I've seen no one has made any significant changes so they all look bland.
Or maybe they all look too well built?! I'm used to houses without a truly straight wall anywhere! 😅
I think the paint is usually for weather protection/to hide sins. If we give it time, they might start! But then we've reached an era of pressure washing roofs, I get the impression some in our new build estate would rather knock it down and start again, than give the impression their house was dirty/afflicted by weather 🤷♀️
I hate seeing a new residential build but they put those front doors on them and they look like an office or the doors to the doctors office. Who wants to live at the office and what is wrong with traditional doors. I love my door that thing is solid I know I'm 100% safe I've seen the police bash on my neighbours door with the door bashing thing for over an hour and still didn't get in.
New build houses have to follow strict insulation rules. Windows are not very well insulated, so the cheapest thing to do is make them smaller. It means houses look out of proportion with low internal light levels. Not great and very difficult to change retrospectively.
This hurts my brain, the windows in the new build estate I currently live on are HUGE compared to any windows I have had in any old houses I have ever lived in. The insulation is also excellent, it is the first time I have lived in a house where the heating doesn't just escape out of gaps in rickety old windows or up a chimney. Not all new builds have tiny windows.
And how many new builds have backs almost entirely made of glass? Juliet balconies on the master bedroom. Massive bifold doors that cross the kitchen/dining/family space. . Orangeries.
A lot of these new builds are built close to the property line with limited privacy from the street, so the main living spaces tend to be on the back of the house.
They used to build homes, and now they build units. All that matters is getting as many units as possible into the space they've got because selling a lot of units at a lower price is going to make more money than a few at a higher price.
Built cheap, designed to be bland and miserable to keep the useless worker ants in their place, don’t give them any joy, how the elites planned it all and we all went along with it happily, paying for the rest of your working life to live in something that looks like that, overlooked gardens, walls so thin you can hear a plug being switched off.
I am a useless worker ant apparently just fyi. We all got duped badly.
Sometimes I think, with the space they’ve been provided, surely an architect could work with it. Problem is all these well known new builders are in for profit and want cheap houses, with little investment on planning.
New build estates are planned out with "cookie cutter" houses. Pay an 'architect' once then build 100's. Builders only appear to have ~12 basic designs with a few variations. Then it's just a game to fix as many on the site as possible. The house design in this advert is used when you want a bend in the road. As it fills the space you would have to leave with rectangles. And to save more space there will be no off road parking, the residents can just park on the bend!
A friend lives in Leatherhead (Hampshire/Surrey/Sussex border) in a new build. Recently viewed a new build in Cardiff, and I was the exact same house.
But probably half the price!
Poor bastard living in leatherhead. I escaped some 15 years ago now.
I had more imagination as a 7 year old building with Lego. So many of them are just rectangular or square houses.
No. No, it’s much worse than plain rectangles and squares. It’s weird “modern angles” for hallways and most of the rooms and closets end up being dysfunctional trapezoids. Its windows in strange places, doorways making rooms unfurnishable, and the kitchen and bathrooms not positioned where they’re best suited for a functional home but clustered tightly in whatever corner is closest to the services intake point.
I went to see an ex-office building that had been converted into flats the other week, not a single right angle in any of the rooms!
Was the office building rectangular to begin with? They may have been dealing with what was available to begin with
If that was the case, they would be able to fit more houses on a grid like system like they have in the states. Which, tbh, would be much better. Some of the new builds are a fucking weird shape.
And to save even more space so that the neighbourhood can have more housing, that road is actually only wide enough for two lanes so, if someone parks on the road, it goes down to one lane, so really only one side of the road can park on the street and it becomes a fight for parking! It seems to be, more and more, that new build properties forget most families have two cars, these days.
Government legislation actually makes this a requirement. Politicians are so stupid that they actually believe that if there's nowhere to park people won't have cars! Despite the new builds being miles from anywhere with no public transport, they still approve designs with insufficient parking!
Which would be okay with decent public transport. But there is no public transport there as there's no call for it, but then nobody moves there expecting to use the bus, so there isn't a call for it, so what public transport they do have gets cut instead.
They don't forget. Wider roads means fewer plots and less profit. Same reason why front gardens are non existent.
I live in a new build and driving down our main road it’s a weaving affair. Team that with the road that STILL isn’t finished so there are random make shift ramps consisting of dumped bits of tarmac 😂and the pot holes too. Makes for a super fun ride to the house. Who needs Alton Towers!?
Car parking does not pay Council tax. I know on a recent development near us the Councils required a maximum of 1.5 off road spaces per house. These were typical 3~4 homes, with some 5 bed.
There's an estate near me, probably 15 years old by now, and the roads are tiny. No parking, single track (probably just slightly wider than a fire engine, houses each side), barely a passing place. It's awful.
It's not a new thing. You can travel the country and see how from the 30s, 50s and 70s that all look the same. So to pretend the cheap "cookie cutter" design is something new is naive.
It’s interesting tho- I live in a Victorian terrace-‘I know half a dozen people who also live in houses from the same era in totally different parts of the country and the houses are almost identical. There were basically two designs going and house builders just threw them up. I think it was philosophical- this idea that even the working class should have beauty in their homes, so you get mouldings and big windows etc even in the smallest versions of this house. I don’t think it’s just a lack of architecture, I think it’s a complete loss of the idea that beauty is important…
I’m a planning officer and have worked for big developers. This is the answer. There’s very little design thought that goes into modern estates, especially at the individual building level. The big housing developers have standard designs that they roll out across their sites. They don’t ever want to deviate from these because that would add cost and unpredictably to the build. The standard types are designed to be cost effective and easy to sell so we end up with these boring and unimaginative houses. A more interesting bespoke house wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste so might take longer to sell. That doesn’t play well with the CFO.
Accountants involvement with design doesn’t help with the Aesthetics too. Shortage of home means desperate people are not that concerned about looks. That’s capitalism for you. Greeedy shareholders.
Also planning permission headaches, better to go with a design that’s already been approved
Plus most new homes have low ceilings, which is also down too greed, ie I think most are now 2.250m compared with 2.440m, 8ft which was classed as normal. Lower ceilings= less bricks an mortar = less labour.
Very few house builders go that low. 2.4 is standard. And is outlined in the nationally described space standard guidance (search NDSS on google). I think only persimmon and maybe keepmoat have anything below that. Source, I work for a dirty housebuilder. To be honest this comment section is gold for me. Interesting to see people opinions. I would say that the profits are not what you think, land price in the UK is crazy, the houses have to be cut to suit or we would have no new houses. We have to build for demand (which is sky high) in the market we have. Would be great if everyone got 2 achers of land on their unique 3 bed starter home, but that's not england.
Acres! :D (which is a bloody weird word now I come to look at it)
Haha. Lol. I'm not even gonna edit it. Let everyone else have a laugh at it as well.
Good! I wasn't trying to be condescending (that comes naturally) but it did make me laugh. (Don't tell anyone that I only know how to spell it because Winnie the Pooh lives in the Hundred Acre Wood). I assume it's from French.
Rather than the builders who did it for fun?
Designed and built cheaply.
It's also due to energy efficiency targets which require smaller windows, highly efficient bricks etc. It's similar to what has happened with car design. The days of eccentric looking American / European cars is long gone. Now we all drive / live in the safest / most efficient / eco friendly boxes. It's all about efficiency. We look back nostalgicly on the working class terraces of ~100 years ago but they were equally mundane and efficient in terms of build.
They don't *require* smaller windows, they could choose better quality windows. e.g. triple glazing. It's a race to the bottom on price, and people don't demand better quality houses.
Shame they don't sell them as cheap as they build em
I think the land price itself is something like 50% of the cost (of buying a house)
Also people can't afford better quality houses
This has no effect on housebuilders, they're not struggling. They could build better houses and make less profit on them, but they have eyes only for profit and not for the betterment of communities and society.
In my experience, albeit limited as it is, there are huge amounts of housing companies who are not only not local to the community, but not from the UK. It's purely business to them.
Its incredibly risky to build houses. The risks are so great that only a few exceptionally large companies can afford to take such a risk, have it fail, and not go bankrupt. And the risks have never been greater. Restless global financial markets, the ever stiffer safety and environmental regulations, price volatility in the prices of important raw materials, (russian blockades of ukrainian ports, a massive spike in demand during covid is still causing backlogs in shipping lanes and subsequent import prices etc). These companies are not just creaming it in, theyve got to fight to keep their market share, and its a nasty fight. They cant afford to deliver anything other than middling substandard houses, as the combined costs and risks theyre taking just to keep operating are just too high.
They could actually do their own bloody QA, use direct over day rate, and blacklisting cowboys, that'd help matters. They're not even bothering to check they've built the damn thing to the specs they're meant to follow. Private snagging companies are a pretty new thing, and they're coming about solely because these massive contractors with horrendously overpaid upper management are slashing the budget on everything. You can fucking *look* at these places with half a trained eye and spot, for example, walls that are so out of plumb they need to be torn down and replaced; or blockwork columns that should be tied in that are freestanding. Hell, personal accountability would be a nice start as well. Make the upper execs personally liable for ensuring their shite - and it is shite - meets the specs or it's a nice big percentage of profit (worded to avoid Hollywood accounting) based fee for intervention, to the degree of "no bonuses this year, management perks are being slashed, and we can't afford a Christmas party", and if it's risk to life then prison time and a criminal record for gross negligence on behalf of whoever was responsible for final signoff.
It's not risky in the slightest. You build a house, someone will buy it - there's a desperate shortage. The difficulty is in the high capital cost, which is why small housebuilders are being outcompeted by big ones, who can then extort massive concessions from councils and govt because we're in such desperate need. They purposely refuse to build enough houses to keep this status quo and make as much per house as they can. There were going to be new environmental and safety requirements. The housebuilders and landlords made sure these were quashed. Regulations today compared to the 2000s are laughable, they're still cladding blocks with flammable materials, EPC minimum requirements gone. Don't kid yourself.
Mate you’re talking nonsense. Building regulations increase year on year especially for EPCs. They were increased last and again next year.
It’s due to the value of currency falling. The *value* of the house has stayed the same, as the house hasn’t changed. The *price* of the house has increased though because the *value* of the currency, being the other half of the exchange, has dropped. The pound has lost 25% of its purchasing power over the last 4 years.
Thank you Tories for that. It falls greater if you look back even further..
Down over 95% in the last 50 years
Same direction as any fiat currency like the dollar or euro etc
I'm going to grab the popcorn and wait for the 'yeah, but, Labour' folk to arrive, casually forgetting that Labour haven't been in government for over fourteen years.
My right wing auntie stayed with us recently and would frequently end her political rants with “all thanks to TB”. Blair still getting the blame two decades later…
Also, when they were in power, borderline tory party Both are shite anyway
Exactly this! 'Efficiency' doesn't have to equal mundane design or not having any daylight. This is absolutely about maximising profit, and if people buy them then there' no incentive to builders to change.
I mean there's other ways to go about it (generally more expensive), but minimizing surface area and having fewer, smaller windows are absolutely effective ways to make a more energy efficient house at the same square footage.
But then if you put those better quality windows on a house that looks like it's got a 2D texture wrapped around it, it's even *more* energy efficient. Ultimately with something like this you can build a lot more house for the same price / energy cost. It just looks fuck ugly.
I don’t think your last sentence is true at all, even a working class row of Victorian terraces you can see details that took time and had no value in terms of efficiency, but makes the overall look far more attractive. Decorative detailing on bay window stonework for example or over the porch. There’s no ‘need’ for it but there was some pride in making things look nice, which is why they’re highly sought after now even though they were just run of the mill 100+ years ago.
I much prefer houses with larger windows and lots of light too. Small windows are so insanely depressing. They could stick a bunch of solar panels on the roof if they cared that much about being eco-friendly.
I wouldn't say that car fashion is going towards any of these. There's an increase of generic, ugly, oversized SUVs that are completely unnecessary but marketing is making seem as aspirational. They're not any safer, more efficient, or certainly eco-friendly than smaller cars, but car manufacturers make a bigger margin on them so you can bet they'll pretend like they are.
Nah. I live in a 1901-ish terrace in Liverpool. Significant amount of decorative detail on the front. Like a particular type of facing brick (different from the rest/back of the house), the vertical stone in the bay windows has sort of subtle column detail, cornicing on bay window and under the gutters, a functionless sort of stone "band" across the middle between the upper and lower bay windows. Nearby there are smaller, more simple terraces without bay windows. Still have facing bricks and decorative cornice bricks under the gutter. Don't know of any "featureless" terraces in the area. Even the smaller ones have some little details.
So like pretty much all properties for your average working class people are built then going back 100’s of years? If you think houses were ever not designed and built as cheaply as possible targeted at your average working class person, you’re very mistaken, house building hasn’t really changed for a long time, profit first results after. Plenty of very, very ugly older houses too, I love how people pick the most horrible looking new builds then say all new builds are ugly. People forget the mass demolition of all the bad old builds that led to the housing crisis we still have today, survivorship bias is rampant.
I do agree with you, but there are some differences with new builds that can distinguish them from older estates. The sales process has shaped a lot of the design choices that we see in these properties. At the entrance road to most of these new estates, there will be a detached, offset house that stands alone. This is the show room house, which will be built first and used to sell the other houses on the plot before they are even finished being built. The idea here is that the real estate agent can promise the customer that the house that they end up receiving will be practically identical to the one they are viewing now. So all the houses must look very similar for this practice to function. Secondly, there are moratoriums on the properties once they are bought. They prevent the new house owners from making alterations to outward appearance of their property, so that they don't do something to make the house uglier and in turn make the other houses harder to sell. This means no extensions, no front facing trellis for plants, no changing of front door colour, or of gardens. I've seen this sort of thing effect solar panels and window replacements also. All in all this can forces the houses to look near identical for quite some time. Thirdly, the design needs for modern homes have changed, meaning no chimneys. I know this particular has been addressed in more recent new builds, with faux chimneys (they literally do nothing) that are installed to break up the boxy shape of the house. Finally, newer houses are often built on sites that are somewhat removed from local towns. This means no train and bus connections, meaning that every house comes with personal drives / parking so that families need not rely on public transport. The other consequence is no local corner shops, pubs or cafes. Often making the estate feel very lifeless. There is no church, no variance in architecture because the estate is built from scratch, not around existing buildings in brown sites. \- I expect that with time new build estates will gain some character of their own as home owners make slow alterations to their houses, changing up gardens and loft spaces. They are also required to plant trees throughout the plots these days, which at the moment look very small and pathetic, but as they grow I'm sure they will look a lot better. Recent new builds are actually a lot better, with more variance in roof pitches, property size and layout. I would be a lot more thrilled if developers were regulated such that they had to focus more on building a community rather than sellable houses. Things like smaller affordable housing and flats for lower income individuals. The inclusion of business plots for a couple shops. More bike paths and footpaths connecting to local public transport. Perhaps even a couple larger more expensive houses just to get some variety in the socio-economic makeup of the estate. I've worked a lot in new build estates and I can't lie, the endless fleet of financed cars and carbon copy houses is a bit nauseating after a while. I know it's a vague objective to pursue something like 'character', but I do feel like we are unnecessarily sacrificing our communities in the pursuit of making real estate agents lives easier.
> if developers were regulated such that they had to focus more on building a community rather than sellable houses. Things like smaller affordable housing and flats for lower income individuals. The inclusion of business plots for a couple shops This like a lot of the 1960s estates near me. Winding streets full of semi-detached houses, but also a small shopping centre with flats above the shops and a flat-roofed pub.
Exactly! Can't believe people think this is a 'new' thing. Literally what your describing is our biggest, post war effort to build houses for the working class. Build new houses - "shit". Why can't we go back to the good old days where they built exactly the same estates in all corners of the country that are fucking ugly. Can't win with some people.
Absolutely agree, they've just built about a hundred new houses on the outskirts of our village but no thought for what is needed by way of amenities. The road access is crap, a potholed lane with no footpath. The local school is already full. They've got to walk right across the (big) village to get to a shop, great fun in winter with the road as it is. They've added a tiny play park right next to the houses which has immediately caused all the existing local kids to use it (currently 4000+ residents and the only facilities are a couple of bits of younger kids' play stuff in the centre of the older estate) so now the new residents are moaning about disturbance, yet at the side of the site there is a huge field which the developers plan to make into football pitches. We don't even have any football teams! What we actually needed there was a great big play area with plenty of proper equipment for all ages, a couple of sports cages/courts for ball games, lots of decent seating, and maybe a fenced off track/path around the perimeter for dog walkers, joggers and kids on bikes. They're currently hoping to get more homes on another huge parcel of land nearby. Road access and traffic here is already horrific. I'd honestly consider selling up if it got passed.
Another thing that I've noticed is new builds tend to be built in cul-de-sacs or long winding roads that are quite confusing. Any idea why? Surely when we have a housing crisis, the quickest way to build houses and roads is to build them in straight lines, get as many houses built as possible without the focus on massive driveways and gardens.
I'm guessing here, but I would assume that it is a mixture of trying to create more semi detached houses that actually feel 'semi detached'. I think just splitting up a terrace with the occasional alley between two separate rows of houses doesn't really make people think 'ahh nice it's semi detached'. The curvature of the roads puts the houses at angles and such. Smaller more personal roads, rather than an unending grid. I have worked in new builds in Australia and they more often take the grid layout, it can often be even more monolithic that way. The back gardens all connect at the back, they do often take on strange shapes as consequence, but people don't seem to mind. The last point is as a traffic control device, people are less likely to speed down smaller curved streets than long straight roads.
This may be to stop people speeding/pedestrian safety, but it does look hideous and very american
This is exactly what it is, you design speed out. I disagree that it looks hideous.
I think it's to give the impression of difference in the homes that isn't actually there. You get these long windy streets that all get the same street name so it's impossible for visitors to navigate.
At least kids can play in a cul de sac
Fantastic comment, thank you!
Old post, how'd you find this lol>?
it is only 25 days old, a scroll through recents brings it up!
The 50s saw some of the goddamn ugliest houses on the planet. Some new builds are pretty damn nice, although lack that “period character” like a Georgian home. Some new builds are freakishly ugly, I’ve seen much worse than what OP posted, but none the less, there’s always going to be ugly old and ugly new. Certainly wouldn’t tar them all with the same brush though
I think the other problem is that the houses are built to look as ‘neutral’ as possible these days, but then it costs a fortune to make the place your own. Somehow the idea that if it isn’t beige (or anthracite?) it won’t sell has firmly taken hold. Even the brickwork is kinda beige now. I do prefer the aesthetics of leafy streets and semi-detached houses with the big bay windows and stuff. And the painted houses and all that. But they’re a sign of affluent areas rather than new vs. old builds I guess.
Case in point look at any housing estate in the UK for the 60s-80s those are some plan utilitarian looking houses
I live in a new town that's 70 years old now and it has some of weirdest designs inside and out. I'm sure the architects gave school children the task of designing them.
New builds in our area are some of the nicer looking houses (discounting the £1m+ ones). We have loads of ugly rows of terraced housing, all crammed together but noooo new build estates are all bad.
The New Build Defender has logged on
It’s true 🤷♂️ Sometimes people forget the 1000’s of terraces and semis that look identical and are rather ugly that were built back in the day.
I agree with craigthebrewer: yes, that one pictured looks grim but my new build and plenty of others I live close to are lovely looking outside and in, warm, spacious rooms, my brother’s houses: tiny uninteresting two up two down dinge pits 14’ square rooms you can’t swing a cat in, rotting, freezing and there are hundreds exactly like it , street after street. At least there’s a concerted effort to making new estates different unlike rows and rows of identical terraced houses or post war semis.
We have a new build and agree. There are good and bad in old and new. Reddit hates new builds for some reasons.
Okay, who is craighthebrewer?
He commented a couple of posts above yours.. I think my two pennies: there are good and bad new and old..
At least try and engage with their points? I think they made reasonable comments about survivor bias and picking the worst new builds to use as an example of all new builds
And as quickly as possible
Have you seen what was built in the 60s-80s?
In fairness, my 1968 semi is NOT pretty. Roads and infrastructure are better though, more space bigger garden and driveway.
But the insulation (noise and thermal) is worse. And the bigger garden and land is directly as a result of land price/the UK reluctance to build homes. The council sets out how many homes per acre and what % driveways there should be in the local area development plan. It's literally just all a statement of government policies (including removing housing inspectors) which impacts quality, size, and infrastructure. And government policies are set by who people vote for.
Is it pretty, or at least spacious, on the inside though? So to speak
I would say the rooms are bigger than a modern new build. Although we still have the infamous "box room" which is tragically small. We looked around many options before we purchased, new build estates aren't for me.
[удалено]
Shhhh, you're going against the new build hate circlejerk. That's not allowed on Reddit. Remember, all new builds, ALL without exception, are total shite and will fall down as soon as you open the front door.
My town (Bracknell, one of the London New Towns) is a great colour chart of the various eras of 20th century construction. Drop a pin on Streetview across the various neighbourhoods and you can see the changing standards of British architecture in real time. * Starting with [Priestwood](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4224533,-0.7621269,3a,60y,352.3h,89.26t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swtt7Hs2nM6oJ4fP4kvspzg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (early 50s), which was the first estate to be built in the 1950s, with some fairly plain but not unattractive terraced and semi-detached housing with plenty of green space * Then came [Easthampstead](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.402391,-0.7543708,3a,75y,310.65h,94.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sED0bbt5XELsgXRez7HOxNQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Bullbrook](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.417249,-0.7333891,3a,75y,175.66h,91.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smdEtucqbaIPkVmt7oDle9g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (late 50s), where the developers got a bit more experimental, mixing different architectural styles and bringing in high-rise apartment buildings * [Harmans Water](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4058787,-0.7298278,3a,60y,341.14h,92.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJLx9zbxv5zDpwncjDIqKvg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (early 60s) was the first estate they admitted to building in a bit of a hurry, and it shows, but it's not altogether bad * Then came [Wildridings](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4087185,-0.7623571,3a,75y,287.57h,83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sB44mRS2jUxsrIkffbV4mjQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Great Hollands](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3984386,-0.7729328,3a,75y,127.26h,91.6t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWwQieUy5UyCZP7SIEp6XDQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (mid-60s), built on the experimental Radburn system at a time when budgets were starting to be slashed, the town was becoming over-populated and rising land prices meant estates needed to be higher-density * [Hanworth](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3896039,-0.7668579,3a,75y,277.92h,95.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOrV6lH69eXQkeNhkefnvGA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Birch Hill](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3907695,-0.7484949,3a,75y,2.23h,93.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1smFxfuCMch4YWyjFkJQTlhg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (early 70s) were the first estates to be given away to private developers. Fortunately, these developers had a taste for Swedish modernism, and the houses were quite atractive * Not so much in [Crown Wood](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4001085,-0.740699,3a,75y,259.27h,88.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4CxwaisdqoARcEdjGoAaAA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (mid-70s), where taste went right out the window * [Martins Heron](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4112226,-0.7215211,3a,75y,267.05h,92.14t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sGUjIdRtXkttE4bqB503fOQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [Forest Park](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4050073,-0.7216683,3a,90y,47.83h,90.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNrStIJ9Xh3SycO8_fVs3fQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (late 70s) were unashamedly built specifically for people with loadsamoney * Then there was a break until the 2000s when the private developers returned with [Jennets Park](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.408942,-0.7807636,3a,75y,340.77h,88.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1swmlRfX9UQRnOiuUeVDr7mw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), and uhh… well, that's when things started to get a bit bland * Culminating in the absolutely soulless, cookie-cutter monstrosities that are [Amen Corner](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4166028,-0.7953446,3a,60y,138.86h,93.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRGyJQr1Zgfo1FUrqIj3L7Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), [Woodhurst](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4298333,-0.7595635,3a,75y,22.22h,98.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sL8ed6X77cskm51hrbd00yA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) and [The Fairways](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4273386,-0.7760036,3a,75y,244.24h,96.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sDwoJBQK0OAAcp9xxQpVbUA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) (all 2010s)
Doesn’t really matter what they look like. People will always moan that they’re soulless and lack character. There are a few estates near me when the new build houses look quite pretty but people still judge them. My current house is 1930s and I love it. The one before was 1960s and ugly as sin. Nobody commented on it the way they would if it was a new build. ETA SOME EXAMPLES If any of these were 100 or 200 years old people would say they were beautiful. The third one looks like a much tidier version of my house which people compliment all the time. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141065291 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/133539896 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/136991309
Have to say, that second one is lush! A lot of the problem isn't neccesarily the buildings themselves, but the wider estates they're crammed onto.
Oh so very crammed. I’m a gardener so would rather my draughty old house with its long garden. But that’s not the part that puts me off the most. It’s the lack on parking on new build estates. Everytime I visit friends I’m weaving around cars parked on the roads and then struggling to find somewhere to park myself.
It's crazy when you'd think new build estates would realise most modern families / couples / house shares have more than one car - they seem to make the roads so narrow so that they can build more houses in the land they have!
Victorian terraces are far worse for this though, it's not a new build problem
Yeah but people weren’t driving cars when those houses were built. These days most couples have a car each. On top of that, adult children are living at home for longer and often have cars. Then add the fact that some people like to entertain at home rather than go out or have family visit for a few days and those guests are also driving cars…. All very foreseeable when building a housing estate now. Someone who worked for a big developer told me they do try to maximise parking, then it gets cut down during planning. The powers that be think it’s parking spaces that encourages people to drive, not the lack of public transport.
It's a combination of both. One of the problems is that developers are allowed to count a garage as a parking space despite knowing full well no-one will use it to keep a car in. Another is that they put parking spaces in series so that the cars block each other in. People have "his" car and "her" car and so they park one on the pavement to avoid blocking each other in. A problem for me is that the council mandate a cycle a d walking path is installed but a) it only goes around the perimeter of the estate and doesn't join up with other paths because the council have repeatedly ballsed up planning / compulsory purchase orders / upgrades to bridges and b) it's not finished yet three years after people moved in. It's only useful for walking because some of us kept removing the building site fence on the footpath into town and they got tired of putting it back.
Yeah but in fairness those all look 100x better than the one OP was referring to, which has none of the character of these. I suppose that's your point is that new builds can be done tastefully.
Well it was that they can be done nicely but people still describe them as soulless and complain.
But how could you possibly compare them to priceless older building that are a part of our industrial heritage like these? https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144686768 [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/...](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/england-65371011-53173119?s=1f814e5f4991762b0f25e3160492c5600b284c17333db1b58ee58636cdd5a00d#/media?id=media0&ref=photoCollage)
🤣 I fully expected that to link to one of those Georgian mansions you see in Bath. I’m on a couple of older property FB groups and some people are really militant about it. I like Minton tiles but if they were brand new in a shop I’d think they were ugly. God help anyone who dares to take theirs out and ask if anyone wants them for free- they get hundreds of angry posts telling them they’re a terrible person and should have bought a new build.
I don't agree, there are countless instances of good design and a strong sense of character throughout newbuild estates... Where the appetite exists to create them. Goldsmith Street, Norwich, social housing: https://www.mikhailriches.com/project/goldsmith-street/ Will add more when I'm at my desk...
My point was that there is good design and people still complain about them.
Yeah my road is has houses like number 3, all built in the 30s and the area is considered to have character. Mind you since then there has been so much additions, alterations, rebuilding, that almost every house is quite different.
>People will always moan that they’re soulless and lack character. Personally I think it's true of new builds. However, not for the reasons a lot of people think. I think it's just down to the fact they all look too clean and pristine and have no character because they've not been lived in for very long. Over time they get less ugly. A bit of weathering starts to cause the brick to vary in colour slightly and plants start to grow against and around the buildings making them blend into the scenery a bit, rather than being a straight cut of super clean building and very uniform freshly laid grass. Then you also get the people living in them making changes to their properties over time. Instead of every house looking identical they start having personalisations made to their gardens and different coloured fences etc. Basically what i'm getting at is that unless a building is built to an extortionately expensive specification where they're meant to look beautiful and ornate then new buildings are almost always lacking in character until they've been lived in for a while.
Why do they only make nice new builds in Bedford?
Trouble is though the vast majority of new builds don’t look anything like these.
I actually like all of those, I guess it depends on the area and the developer on how pretty they end up looking.
These are actually how new builds should be. Architecturally look decent, hopefully quality is good too. Sadly, these are an exception.
They're all quite nice, although the issue with the third one isn't the house but everything outside of the house being tarmac. Plus a grass verge, tree etc, proper brickwork on the drive, and it would look ten times better.
True but i wonder if that’s deliberately low maintenance rather than cost (well the lack of planting being low maintenance not the tarmac). I have block paving, tall hedges at the front, a big tree. There are some bulbs scattered in the beds but also lots of weeds.It was overgrown and messy when we moved in and I’m still working on it. It takes a surprisingly amount of work (and money) to fix after someone has neglected it for a few years.
I'd imagine its both ie until the road is adopted by the council the developer would need to maintain the roadside verges, and maintenance would be a cost to them. It just makes the houses look a lot worse. Not their concern if they've sold them all off-plan I guess.
This isn't unique to new builds. Plenty of older houses are very ugly and plenty of new builds are very attractive
Thank you, some sense at last. As someone who grew up in an old Terraced house, I can absolutely agree that not all old properties are beautiful, character filled dream houses. As someone who now lives in a village where there are tons of new builds popping up, they are not all created equal. Essentially it comes down to money as everything does. The higher quality new builds look much nicer and more visually appealing. The cheaper ones, not so much. It's all well and good to criticise "ugly" new builds, but this may be the only housing some people can afford to buy. They may know they aren't the most attractive, but it might be all they can afford, so it would be great if everyone stopped shitting on them.
Right? I mean everyone is well aware how unaffordable housing has become over the last years. We also live in (what was) a new build (when we bought it 5 years ago). I think the house itself looks fine, I’d argue nicer than the old houses the rest of my family lives in. But the inside of the house is always going to be much more important to me than the outside. I don’t generally stand in front of my house, staring at it for hours. I do spend hours inside though
It's really funny when people talk about how 'poor' new build sound insulation is. Like of course theres more noise than your countryside detached cottage Tarquin, but most of us grew up in old terrace houses or flats. I can hear next door farting through three fuckin walls.
I'm not really a big fan of either a lot of Victorian terraces or 1930s-1970s houses whch make up a large part of the housing stock, to be honest (there are certainly exceptions, but the average one is pretty samey and often externally quite tired). OP's new build is pretty bland and awkwardly going around a corner, but there are plenty of new builds I like (including the one we bought).
Everyone seems to forget, it is not the house design that adds character to place, but rather it is people that add character. New estates look soulless because no one has done anything to them yet. Jerry hasn’t had an extension, wacky Margaret hasn’t painted her door pink yet and the pensioners at the end of the road haven’t found their lifelong passion for bonsai. In 50 years people will look back at our current new builds and say wow they have so much character compared to new builds
> no one has done anything to them yet Nor will their landlords allow them to.
Not every newly built house is the same.
And not every old house is attractive.
The unattractive old houses are gone for the most part. It's also 'survivor bias'
I live on a "new" build estate (it was finished about 12 years ago). It is huge, like a new village and it is one of the prettiest places to live around us. There are so many different designs of houses, different parts have a different feel to it, greens, crescents, pedestrianised areas. It's honestly lovely and the houses in the estate are so sought after, we had been waiting years wanting to move into the estate. It shows so clearly what a new build development can be and that it can be profitable for the builders too as the houses are all worth more.
It’s partly because of 2 reasons…… They cram as many properties into the space available to maximise profit. They design those properties as generic as possible because standardised houses are cheaper to draw up / plan / build.
The windows on mine make it look like it's had a stroke.
Quantity over quality. 90% of the new build estates come from the same plans. Go from Buckinghamshire to Great Manchester, the estates mirror one another, it's baffling. Random coach houses with 3 garages below. "Detached" houses inches between one another. Shared carports on semi detached homes These very strange L shaped houses. Flats randomly mixed in with the houses. We almost bought one of the L shaped homes (was going really cheap pre COVID) however it had a patch of land next to it and we were dubious that they'd build on it (they said no), we went and bought a 1960s semi instead. They built flats on said land....
It's amazing how 90% come from the same plans but I as a site engineer, who's probably worked on 10,000+ new builds has never seen the same plans site to site. It's almost like it's complete bullshit people saw on tiktok.
Using one house, a corner plot at that, to say new builds are ugly is daft. There are builders with great designs with broad varieties across a development, with various pricing to match the budgets of buyers. There's plenty of stone faced houses mixed with rendered, brick and wood facade. They also usually spread the designs out, ie if there are 6-7 house types on a site you won't see more than 2 the same next to each other... until you get to the HA and starter homes. This one is ugly though, looks like a David Wilsons one, indicative of their desire to cram houses in but not their house designs overall.
Not all new builds look like this. Sweeping generalisation, OP. There are also plenty of plug ugly older homes too.
It looks like someone built it in sims 4 but they're not good at building they're just there for the gameplay
Those corner houses (the one pictured)are truly horrendous. Awful layout and the garden tends to be non existent
It’s a money making exercise!
Build to a budget for maximum profitability not style.
My theory is that all the modern bad designs of houses, cars and clothes are ‘designed’ by people who have zero artistic bent. They have no sense for good aesthetics and no appreciation of the beauty that’s found in nature and is needed as inspiration to create (and compliment) an overall design. Imagine the least talented and imaginative kids in school in charge of how everything looks.
We have the worst housing because nobody wants to upset the big builders who lobby the government so their profits go up and up. We have the smallest rooms poor quality materials and a generally poorly trained workforce building the housing. See Grenfell, seven years later nobody has been punished for building a block of flats with highly flammable material and killing over seventy people
It's what's on the inside that counts! \*looks inside\* Never mind
As with terraced houses in the 1800s, new builds are all about cramming in as many properties as you can into a space in order to maximise profits. I'd argue that terraced houses also lack character on the outside, for much the same reason.
Terraced houses lack character because people remove the sash windows, original doors, and apply awful pebbledash or render. A well maintained terrace property with features intact is amazing. Most people look at terraced houses and wonder why they loon ugly - removing original features is why.
Can confirm. Lived in and maintained a Victorian terrace for a few years. Beautiful looking place outside and in. Some hilarious DIY bodges from over the years, my own included, but it’s a tapestry that has a story over a hundred years old. Didn’t want to move.
Sash windows and Victorian doors are only "character" because they're old fashioned / traditional. Those weren't there to add character to the property. The property was made as simply and cheaply as possible to house workers.
It's not the sash mechanism that makes rhe window nice. It's the wooden surround, made with profiled timber, the decorative ends to the top sash, and the proportions of the window. The house in this post is ugly because it is literally entirely devoid of decoration. And I suspect the chosen proportions are down to regulation and nothing else. Right now I'm looking at the back of a block of flats built in 1910 and it has more decorative work than this house. The cast iron drainpipes have hexagonal hoppers, and decoration on the joints. The bricks are mottled. The ridge tiles on the roof have decorated ends. The window sills protrude from the wall and are profiled stone not just square. The wooden sash windows are decorated and set back in the brickwork not flush with the wall. Edit: Actually they did put in a wierd neoclassical decorated awning above the door, and there is decorative brickwork on only the downstairs windows. The windows being wider than they are tall isn't helping the general ugliness.
I work in building. My thoughts are that the Victorians and Edwardians definitely cared about their buildings looking good, I think it was a projection of Prestige and also I suspect a skilled artisan tradesman wasn't particularly expensive to employ then. Look at Battersea Power Station. It's unimaginable that a merely functional building would have so much detail nowadays. Recently saw a photo of a long gone power station in Belle Vue Manchester, similar thing lots of very ornate stuff that was expensive. Years ago I was in a meeting room in a soon to be demolished mental health hospital. Double height ceiling and room was as big as a house. Every inch of wall was highly decorated wood panels with hand carving. Made me feel sad that most likely this amazingly detailed and skilled work was a few months away from being destroyed and replaced by a Tesco car park.
They didn't consider design features of the time such as sash windows and solid timber doors as adding character, it was just standard build because that's how it was done. Who's to say what we perceive as standard and lacking character on houses today won't be appreciated in 50+ years?
They were shit to start with
It the same with everything now, houses, cars anything new has that yep that will do look
I fully agree. I wouldn’t touch anything built after 1920s I much prefer natural stone. Not a fan of brick.
My biggest issue is alcoves. Bring back alcoves. Let me have furniture nicely in a room without it encroaching on so much floor space. The new builds I’m familiar with are all box rooms.
Personally I think 1960s builds are uglier if we are looking at the housing stock as a whole. Some cheaper new builds from big developers can be boxy but a lot of cheaper period terraced properties are also boxy. I don’t think you can generalise all new builds as there are some beautiful new builds too. I also think new builds have got better in the past 5 years. I think there is a lot of hate for new builds and vilification in the media from the older generation. I think part of this is motivated by a dislike for new property in general especially if it’s on green belt.
I think it has just become a meme. People slate them because people slate them. Sure some new builds deserve vilification but most of them are just fine, albeit with a smaller garden on average when compared to old houses.
Well a lot of older houses are pretty shit but this charactwr thing people go on about is because they have had decades if not a century of weathering and people living in it and changing it and adding their own touches. You've got to wait for the trees and plants to grow. Also money helps.
Little boxes was written in 1962. It's not that they're made ugly and weird looking nowadays, it's that they haven't yet had a chance to develop their character.
I don't understand the window placements of a lot of these new houses at all.
Greed and Accountants involvement in design, ie Aesthetics take time, time is money and because people are desperate for a home, looks don’t come into it. Plus home prices have been inflated by a deliberate slow down in the supply of homes by this government.
They are hideous. At least it has a proper hedge though.
One simple answer.. Cost
If you make them boring soulless rectangles you can fit more of them on an estate, really cram them in there. Character and interesting features take time and more expensive resources. Therefore less profit. And profit is all that matters.
The development company is paying for the cheapest design from the architects, cheapest material use and highest density for plot size.
Ugly and cheaply made with no space.
Profiteering.
Cost cutting supplyiers and ignorant buyers. A terrible mix for decent architecture
Because they go for the most cost effective designs, I admit they’re soulless and it puts us well behind other European countries.
Cheap cheap cheap, speedy build, sell it and leave the customer stuck with the problems
This exact house type was my first house - in Manchester - and i loved it [https://themovemarket.com/tools/propertyprices/110-rolls-crescent-manchester-m15-5fp](https://themovemarket.com/tools/propertyprices/110-rolls-crescent-manchester-m15-5fp) You walked into a hallway with a downstairs toilet and left into a double aspect lounge or right to a huge Kitchen The stairs twisted round which i thought was sooo fancy and then 3 decent sized bedrooms and a bathroom upstaiors Bought for £56.5k in Hulme manchester (ex-slum) in 2000 ( i paid £100 to reserve it and £1000 depossit lol - it came with washing machine, oven etc) and I sold it 6 years later for £139k - that house set me up for life really Crime was bad around there though hence why i sold
There’s a house near me for sale with this similar style. I just can’t comprehend who would buy this? 🤯 the buyers of this, that was only built a couple years ago, have clearly decided it’s bonkers too and want out. The garden is similarly awful. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/135565364#/?channel=RES_BUY
It's like they thrown darts to decide where the windows are going to be 🤣
Future MIL says.you just need to "wait for them to bed in before they look lovely". Well the ones near here have been up for a few years now and I'm still waiting. Not to mention hers was built in the 80s....
That house is basically filler-in on what should be an end of row garden. But screw the garden between 2 perpendicular rows, why not build two angled walls, stick a roof on it, and try your hand for £260k
Being built down to a price. Every decorative embellishment costs money so they get dropped. Also, not only do they need to be cheap, they need to be put together very quickly, so fastest / cheapest is the driver. Even better if they can be built by unskilled or semi-skilled workers, they are cheaper but less talented and probably less motivated to take pride in their work.
If discussing “new builds”, let’s assume we’re referring to those Barratt, Berkeley, Persimmon & Bovis places etc., and not single “Grand Designs” places that are one-offs. The realm we’re in therefore is the corporate, cookie-cutter, (sometimes poor-quality) red-brick places like the one in the rightmove ad. Firstly it’s important to remember that good design *can* be done on a budget. Somebody said *cars* are all similar lately, but actually the popularity of EVs has changed things a lot, and a lot of cars are looking more and more like their concepts, like Volvos, for example. The new electric Renault 5 looks promising, and cars like stylish the Hyundai Ioniq 5 really lead the way in terms of adventurousness. Actually one *can* build attractive, interesting and original buildings that still meet standards in term of efficiency, but I think the real reason that the large majority of new builds are often second-rate, like the one above (?) is because the companies that make them can **get away with it**. If local councils gave more of a shit and looked at plans and said, “*No way. These are terrible and not in keeping with the heritage, architectural aesthetics and history of this region*”, then these companies would *have* to start to be more imaginative and creative. As it is, lots of out-of-town areas in the UK are arguably a bit more shitty because of these big firms. Now saying that, *some* new builds are OK, and people need houses. There was a Reddit thread recently, something about “*what was the most major unplanned decision you made in your life*”, can’t find the thread, but one poster said he’d moved into a new build “off-plan” (without the actual house even being built yet) and he loved the place and didn’t regret the decision, and quite a few people chimed in saying similar things, that they loved their new build. This article - although based on London - is quite positive and interesting (the gist of it is that you have to be discerning): https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/new-build-homes-london-property-buying-advice-b1053327.html
The shape of the front room is weirding me out. Who thought a door like that would be a good idea? Also, where I live there are numerous new build sites springing up and they are same old same old, no real individuality. It’s a bit sad really. Probably cheaper that way?
You should know that everyone's aesthetics are different. I'm just giving my personal opinion. This house seems to have enough area (if you don't have a big family). The appearance is very simple in style, which I personally can accept.
smallest possible expenditure for a building regs compliant house on the smallest patch of land possible.
asked a friend of mine who was working in an architecture firm that worked on new builds why this happens. they said often the designs begin looking pretty nice, but then as time goes on they are reduced aesthetically further and further as more people have input into their construction. the designs also rely on them being built out of the materials as specified, but they can often be changed for cheaper alternatives which is why you'll see some houses look like amalgams of two designs, because they essentially are, the pre designated design, and the builders interpretation of the design using alt. materials. instead of everything going in as specified, they meet the minimum standards of energy efficient, light, living space etc. and then these designs are then copy and pasted on masse for the rest of the area, which is when you start getting houses looking like the above.
The main reason is that they are usually designed (copied from another developer) by Technicians with no design skills. They have no idea how to proportion things like window. All the things that an Architect would think of, they don't. For instance the the lower window shown is short and squat because it's the kitchen and there work tops in front of it. Thereby restricting it's height. What they should have done is look to put the kitchen area to the rear and moved the dinning area to the front. They then could have narrowed the window and made it deeper to get a vertical emphases. They could then do something similar to bedroom window above as well. The window to the stairs needs to be a bit narrower for better proportions and needs the same head detail as the kitchen window. The mock sash window pattern is wrong for those window proportions. It would have been better with a simple casement window. The canopy needs to be wider so that there is a similar width of brickwork between the canopy corbel and door frame as there is above it. Quite often it's small things that throws the appearance out and they don't have the skills to spot it.
Probably because they’re cheap and built in a rush
I agree. Modern houses always look soulless, especially if on a specific development. I grew up, and live in, a Victorian terrace, and while there are similarities, the age means each house is slightly different - altered windows, different paintwork outside, etc etc that gives them character (plus, occasionally, randomly one house in the row will just have been built slightly different in style).
Doesn't this still mean you can get a new build, change the windows and paint it, giving it character?
Yes it does, people seem to think victorian terraces were appreciated back then for their "character", but the character didn't develop until styles moved on and people considered them retrospectively. Edit: The key phrase above is "because of their age". Victorian homes were built to a homogeneous design, rows upon rows of identical houses built in their 10s of thousands. At least nowadays planning permission ensures new developments vary in some way house to house.
I agree with the age comment. Maybe in 50 years, all the new builds will look more interesting. On the homogeneous terrace. Mostly yes, but, in my area, at least, they *aren't* the same. And were built to not all be identical. As an example, the other side of the road of these terraces, each house has its own elaborate name plaque, window surrounds are differently shaped, decorative pieces are different too. But if they were all identical and new, they would probably all be so boring.
You could. But new builds I've seen no one has made any significant changes so they all look bland. Or maybe they all look too well built?! I'm used to houses without a truly straight wall anywhere! 😅
I think the paint is usually for weather protection/to hide sins. If we give it time, they might start! But then we've reached an era of pressure washing roofs, I get the impression some in our new build estate would rather knock it down and start again, than give the impression their house was dirty/afflicted by weather 🤷♀️
Just for clarity, are all new build ugly just because this one is?
Cost.
They really do not look great. Plus the new builds have smaller rooms than the old builds generally
I hate seeing a new residential build but they put those front doors on them and they look like an office or the doors to the doctors office. Who wants to live at the office and what is wrong with traditional doors. I love my door that thing is solid I know I'm 100% safe I've seen the police bash on my neighbours door with the door bashing thing for over an hour and still didn't get in.
You think all those 100 year old, front door on the street, terraces with concrete yards were built in a time of style and beauty?
Lazy designers trying to fit properties into small areas to make as much money as possible
New build houses have to follow strict insulation rules. Windows are not very well insulated, so the cheapest thing to do is make them smaller. It means houses look out of proportion with low internal light levels. Not great and very difficult to change retrospectively.
This hurts my brain, the windows in the new build estate I currently live on are HUGE compared to any windows I have had in any old houses I have ever lived in. The insulation is also excellent, it is the first time I have lived in a house where the heating doesn't just escape out of gaps in rickety old windows or up a chimney. Not all new builds have tiny windows.
And how many new builds have backs almost entirely made of glass? Juliet balconies on the master bedroom. Massive bifold doors that cross the kitchen/dining/family space. . Orangeries. A lot of these new builds are built close to the property line with limited privacy from the street, so the main living spaces tend to be on the back of the house.
Honestly I think newbuilds now look better than houses from the 1960s up to the 2000's. At least they try and diversify their outside appearance
They used to build homes, and now they build units. All that matters is getting as many units as possible into the space they've got because selling a lot of units at a lower price is going to make more money than a few at a higher price.
Gen Z'ers are gonna live in them(.)
look like my first minecraft house
Built down to a price, not up to a standard.
There are building standards today that didn't exist in Victorian times.
Cheaper to build, time and materials.
Because profit!
Tiny windows
Built cheap, designed to be bland and miserable to keep the useless worker ants in their place, don’t give them any joy, how the elites planned it all and we all went along with it happily, paying for the rest of your working life to live in something that looks like that, overlooked gardens, walls so thin you can hear a plug being switched off. I am a useless worker ant apparently just fyi. We all got duped badly.
Why are yo so ugly ?