Interesting Facts

According to a report by Deloitte Real Estates, the Houses of Parliament refurbishment could cost between £3.5bn and £5.7bn. (The buildings date from the mid-nineteenth century, after the original Palace of Westminster was all but destroyed by fire in 1834. But now the roof is leaking, paintwork is peeling, stonework crumbling and lifts are creaking to the point that MPs have become trapped, missing key votes in the Commons. Costs of renovation could spiral to as high as £7.1bn (once that has been said, it is bound to be even more. The first time I read about this in 2014 they were quoting  £1bn.) Time to turn it into luxury flats, and move parliament to Manchester?)

According to property experts in London, there are up to 1,000 JCB diggers entombed underground in London. (So, is this because of some great calamity? Mud slides? Earthquakes? No. It's simply  because they are cheaper to bury than lift to street level. In London, new luxury conversions, “sub-basements” are all the rage, because let's face it, there's nowhere else left to build. The basements are dug by diggers, and in the past developers would use a large crane to scoop up the machinery, but when they calculated the cost-benefit equation of this procedure: hiring a crane, closing the street etc. it emerged that simply burying the digger; worth only £5,000 or £6,000, in its own hole was cheaper. I wonder what the future will think of us.) Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/

In the UK you need a professional licence to drive a motorhome. (A motorhome is about  the size of a single-decker bus and powered by a 450-horsepower engine.    The latest models can include ceramic tiled floors, an en-suite bedroom with a king-sized bed, a full sized double-door refrigerator, and six widescreen high-definition TVs, and  one or two RVs are built these days with an on-board garage space at the back, big enough to accommodate a small car.  Think of your house, but with wheels underneath it. Anyone with a normal licence can drive one in the US!)

Before the Victorian era it was not uncommon for married couples in the UK to sleep apart. (The change came during the industrial revolution when we all ended up crammed together in tiny houses. Nowadays, according to research presented at the British Science Festival, couples are reluctant to sleep apart, with only 8% of those in their 40s and 50s sleeping in separate rooms. I don't see why we can't sleep in separate houses.)

According to home insurance firm LV, people in parts of the UK have to wait for up to 40 years for an allotment. (The longest wait was in Camden at 40 years, followed by 30 years at Blyth Valley in Northumberland and 25 years in Islington, north London. So, get your name on the waiting list, otherwise by the time you get one, you'll be too old to dig it.)

Councils in the UK are banning the number 13 from council houses on new developments. (Some people are just reluctant to live in a house with an "unlucky" number. And before you mock British superstition, they are not alone. Seemingly in Japan, hotels, hospitals and apartment blocks often skip the unlucky number four. And in the US, skyscrapers often leave out a 13th floor.)

powered by ODEO According to ING Direct Bank, UK home buyers spend an average of 17 minutes looking at a house before deciding to buy it. (17 minutes! It takes me longer than that to make my mind up about what pair of shoes to buy.)

Eighteen percent of all new homes built in the UK are built on residential land, up from 11% a decade ago. (Homes are springing up in people's gardens as the property boom continues. This is called "garden grabbing", where developers buy a house with a big garden, apply for planning permission to demolish the house and build either flats, or even a mini-estate in its place. Property in the UK has gone crazy, and it's not sustainable.)

A three-bedroom house built today must have at least 38 sockets. (This is more than twice as many as 30 years ago. The number has been set by the National House Building Council's technical standards. They recommend 4 each in the kitchen and utility room, 4 in the living room, 8 in a living/family room with 2 near the TV aerial. Funnily enough they reckon there should be 6 in the main bedroom, and four in other bedrooms. I have no idea why you would need so many sockets in the bedroom. The mind boggles.)