House prices are showing signs of greater stability after the falls in the second half of last year. Today Hometrack released figures showing prices in March were just 0.1% down while Nationwide released a figure of plus 0.5%. But the big question on everyone’s mind is where to from here for the market as homebuyers and sellers adjust to the squeeze within the economy. And among construction folk what does this all mean for house building.
There’s further support for the argument that January wasn’t really as bad as the construction output figures might have us think.
The official weekly fuel prices figures came out today and showed that the price of petrol and diesel fell for the first time in six months. This will provide some relief to those hard-pressed, oil-reliant firms within the construction industry. But the figures show that while the fuel duty was cut by 1p lease petrol prices dropped just 0.67p and diesel by just 0.5p. This will probably provide enough for George Osborne to claim a victory in reducing prices against…
The Panorama programme due to be aired this evening is rightly getting a lot of publicity with figures showing that people’s earnings have fallen in “real” terms by about 5% during the past two years. But you really don’t need particularly detailed analysis to show how hard people’s earnings have been hit. As this blog has shown before, while pay has been hit hard in real terms, construction folk have taken a much heftier hit than most. Using the RPIX…
A shot in the arm, said the Home Builders Federation release sent out after Chancellor George Osborne sat down. And the Budget certainly lifted the already rising share prices of the quoted builders quite nicely. It must be said that comment came as no shock, as this was yet another ask or two or three by house builders that have been favourably answered by the incumbent Government. Putting in a presumption in favour of sustainable development in the planning law…
The first look at the inflation figures provide plenty of room to be very pessimistic if you owe lots of money and are on a tight budget. The jump in the CPI measure of inflation to 4.4% in February was more than many forecasters had expected. It will inevitably add to pressure on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee to raise interest rates – if for no other reason than a perceived need to restore its dented confidence. For the…
Construction job losses are starting once again to mount with a further 9,000 knocked of the number of workforce jobs in the final quarter of last year, as measured by the national statisticians. This means that at the end of 2010 there were about 2,128,000 construction jobs measured compared with 2,180,000 at the end of 2009 – a drop of just over 50,000. That takes the number of jobs lost from peak in September 2008 to 246,000, when numbers peaked…
Research released this week by the think tank ippr painted a gloomy picture of house shortages in England growing disturbingly in the years to 2025, by which time it reckons we could have demand outstripping supply by 750,000 homes. It’s a stab at trying to predict what might happen and there will always be problems with research of this kind. It is, for instance, not inconceivable that if Britain’s economy becomes less attractive we may see a significant rise in…
The latest construction output figures seem to confirm the need to be cautious over divining too much from one month’s data. The figures suggest that less work was done in January than in December, despite the shutdown of sites across the country due to heavy snow late last year. What’s more they are not that much better than the figures for January last year, which was also hit by bad weather. If the data provide an accurate representation of what…
The latest RICS housing market survey took on a decidedly three-speed look, very much in line with what one might expected would result from the current economic realignment being implemented by the Government. Broadly the picture it paints is one that shows prices up in London, down in most Southern regions and down a lot in the North. Naturally it is not that clear cut. Scotland continues to be in the less bad group and the North West seems to…