My wife is from upstate New York and every home is made from wood, I don’t think I’ve seen a wooden house in the UK. Maybe one or two grade 1 listed pubs.
I get the proximity to cheaper materials, the availability of brick, local resources etc.. But I also see it reflected in the price £400k, for a 4 bed in East Greenbush (outside Albany), vs £700k for a 4-bedroom brick house outside Chester (I thought roughly equivalent, if not weighted in favor of NY).
Surely there’s a market for cheaper wooden houses in the UK? What’s the deal?
In: 15
It’s hard to overstate how rare wood was in great Britain and Ireland for the past few hundred years. In 1600 Ireland had 20% Forest cover (which was significantly more than Britain), its natural resources are one of the main reasons the British colonised it.
The rebuilding of London after the great fire, barrels for goods and a huge portion of the ships that crossed the Atlantic were built using Irish wood, and by the end of the 19th century Ireland had less than 1% forest cover by area.
This didn’t start to go back up until after Irish independence 100 years ago when the state invested in reforestation both to increase self-sufficiency and create jobs, and forest cover now stands at 11% with an aim of 18% by 2030.
[source: Irish agricultural development agency ](https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/history-of-forestry-in-ireland/)
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