Has the Government really got a blockbuster growth plan on the stocks?

Has the Government really got a blockbuster growth plan on the stocks?

The Government it seems has found the answer to the shortfall in funding for construction. It’s called “pension funds”. Naturally we didn’t know pension funds existed, other than through vague references to them as joint owners of a black hole. Amazingly we hadn’t already spotted their massive pool of funds that were ripe for the picking and ready to fill the depleting funding pot for infrastructure and housing. So, if I read the press coverage fairly, it’s well done George…

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No sign in the data that construction employment is plunging again – not yet anyway

No sign in the data that construction employment is plunging again – not yet anyway

There is no getting away from the fact that the latest UK jobs figures are depressing. There’ll be plenty of discussion about that in the general news. And it bodes ill for the economy overall and in turn for construction. But for those looking for gloom in the construction jobs figures, the data does not seem to support the view that employment levels are once again plunging. The quarterly workforce jobs figures were not updated this month. But the alternative Labour…

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The first-time buyer trap

The first-time buyer trap

The 360,000 first-time buyers who bought in 2007 are likely to be trapped in their first homes, says a press release dated yesterday from the bank HSBC. The research isn’t brilliant. What makes this story so unusual and, for me, interesting is that despite it being such an obvious and serious problem so little has been written about it. So what’s the story?

Latest ONS construction data point to growth in 2011 – that’s not what the industry thinks

Latest ONS construction data point to growth in 2011 – that’s not what the industry thinks

Expect another row to erupt over the latest set of revisions to the construction output figures. If we accept the latest data, the suggestion now is that construction output in 2011 will be up by about 3% on its 2010 level, in the absence of a catastrophic collapse in the final three months of the year. The revisions added about 1% to official construction output in the first half of 2011. The most notable revision is to growth in output…

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Things may look slightly better in the housing market, but I wouldn’t get too excited

Things may look slightly better in the housing market, but I wouldn’t get too excited

The balance of the news over the past couple of weeks suggests things are getting better rather than worse. But what does it all say about the medium-term prospects of the housing market? To recap. Today Persimmon released a broadly positive interim management statement with the tasty nugget of a 35% increase in first-time buyer visitors over a year ago. Bovis also released its statement today which said private reservations in the 44 weeks to November 4 were up 22%…

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Be prepared for a very different construction industry when we rise from depression

Be prepared for a very different construction industry when we rise from depression

This is no ordinary recession. This is a serious depression, the end of which still looks to be at least a couple of years away and possibly a lot further. If that proves the case it would have lasted longer than the Great Depression of the 1930s, although the recession would not have been as quite as deep. The well respected economist and Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf recently wrote: “The UK is in the midst of what is set…

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If the Government wants to a boost from construction it better be quick about it

If the Government wants to a boost from construction it better be quick about it

The latest official figures on economic growth are not encouraging. They are better than some feared. But the data all point to very weak growth once a host of special factors are taken into account and the general pattern is considered. The official statisticians at ONS suggest it is better to look at the second and third quarter GDP growth figures combined to get a better picture of the economic activity. That would put average quarterly growth of about 0.3%….

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2011 is set to be worst year in decades for UK house sales

2011 is set to be worst year in decades for UK house sales

The latest set of residential property transactions figures from HMRC (the Revenue) make for rather gloomy reading. Without a perking up of sales in the final quarter the number of homes sold in 2011 is set be the lower than the slump in 2009. The seasonally adjusted HMRC data show that the number of homes worth more than £40,000 is continuing to slide. And, given the way things seem to work, that means we should not be surprised if fewer…

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This decade will be the first in more than a century when Britain’s homes become more crowded

This decade will be the first in more than a century when Britain’s homes become more crowded

Prepare for a massive shift in housing standards over the coming decade. That’s what I see when I read the latest UK population estimates released today. In fairness this story line is much the same as when the 2008-based estimates were released, except these figures show a bigger population growth (at 67.2 million in 2020 that’s an extra 700,000) and we now expect far fewer homes to be built over the coming decade than we might have hoped for a couple…

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Forecasters shade down expectations for construction on private sector growth fears

Forecasters shade down expectations for construction on private sector growth fears

The prospects for construction are worsening, that’s the picture painted by the latest set of main industry forecasts. Even the least pessimistic of the forecasts, from Leading Edge, at best suggests the industry now looks to be facing two years of a second dip into recession. Hewes, which remains the most pessimistic of the forecasters, finds little reason to suggest that the industry will still be plunging in 2013, while the Construction Products Association forecasters reckon the industry will not…

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