House building figures show huge jump in starts and completions
There were two big boosts in the numbers released today for house builders.
First, the latest Government data on homes built in England are by far the best for more than a year with a massive leap in the quarter to June.
Second, gross mortgage lending in July was up 26% on June, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.
These figures suggest a continued and reasonably strong improvement in both the housing market and in house building.
But, as I am sure will be in the minds of most house builders, we are a long way from out of the woods.
And the figures, particularly those for house building, should be treated with great caution. Here’s why…
The June quarter figures for homes completed in England show a massive upswing, as do the figures for homes started. On the face of it the graph suggests a rapid bounce back in workload in house building.
If you just take the completions figures you could be forgiven for thinking activity was back to the levels seen in the boom years of the mid noughties.
Certainly if the number of completions is at the same level in the second half of the year as in the first then the forecasters will have been unduly pessimistic.
Once you add in Scotland and Wales we would be looking at completions in the range of 160,000 plus. That is about 20% more than the Construction Products Association is looking at.
But before we get too carried away, house building is the bit that happens between the starts and the completions. And here is where things start to get a bit more complicated.
The figure for completions in the second quarter, set on its own, looks rather odd. How come when starts had been so low do we have completions so high? Why had we not noticed a surge in workload in the house building sector?
The likely explanation is that mothballed schemes, many of them nearly finished flats, were completed in the quarter, having stood pretty much idle for some months. This would require relatively little work for each completion.
However, the pipeline is now running rather dry. Work in progress will have been run down quite markedly as house builders destocked. And starts are just beginning to rise.
This rather points to a reduction in the numbers of completions in the third quarter, and perhaps a pretty flat set of final quarter figures.
It is hard to know exactly where they will end up but 160,000 may still be rather optimistic. Who knows?
It is definitely not time to “party on”, though it may be time to enjoy the breathing space granted.
And perhaps it is also worth reflecting on the how much worse it might have been in the house building world had piles of cash not been thrown at the problem.
But for all that there is need for caution, I stick by the view I have held since the spring that if it is growth you want it is worth taking another look at house building.
One thought on “House building figures show huge jump in starts and completions”
Brian
That’s a sensible view of cautious optimism.
I would add that:
– The effect of the Building Regulations revisions in three stages identified in the Code for Sustainable Homes, 2010, 2013, and 2106 will probably cause some cautious experimentation among house builders as they restructure their supply chains and reinvent their pattern books.
– The House Builders are largely managers, and they can deal with a reduced level of annual production far easier than can the materials manufacturers
– The market for homes is being changed to one of eco-homes. That might suggest that House builders are less interested in volume and are happy to hover around the 100,000 a year for a more luxury suburban product, rather than continue with the 200,000 urban market they had got into between 1997 and 2007
– That means a PERMANENT reduction in demand for construction materials for new build housing, although units completed may sell handsomely
– The sales prices should be good, because housebuilding will be running well behind the demographic demand of 290,000 for new households (NHPAU) and the ignored need to replace the existing housing stock at a rate of 1% per year, or another 260,000 (audacity)
– The existing housing market is already inflating because if the failure to produce over 500,000 homes a year for more than the decade of the “Brown Bubble”. The CML will be really pleased about this of course
– The money that you say has been thrown at quantative easing of the mortgage market has averted a collapse in house prices to anything that could be called affordable in low wage Britain. From here a second “Brown Bubble” is ensured. House price inflation on EXISTING housing stock will mean that House Builders can reinvent their production to make a fewer number of luxury eco-homes for the equity rich cashing in their inflated existing home. They will also take what they can get from the HCA and subsidised “affordable” housing, perhaps as a leasehold offer with the HCA retaining the land.
– So welcome to a two track house building sector. perhaps around 30,000 heavily subsidised eco-homes for the low paid, built more as a middle class job creation scheme for housing association managers. The remainder of around 100,000 total as privately built luxury eco-homes up to and beyond the realisation of the Zero-Carbon policy of the CSH in 2016.
– And of course an electoral victory for Brown’s New Labour, paid for by quantative easing, and paid for by everyone both politically and economically after the election. The Conservatives have muffed their proposed “new localist” planning policies, and they will find little support from anyone when the time comes to vote.
Regards
Ian
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