Brickonomics

More news to spoil your breakfast came in today. The latest consumer confidence barometer reading taken by GfK NOP shows consumers expectations of economic prospects in the coming 12 months at the lowest level since the pollster began asking the question in 1982. What does this mean for construction? Well what it suggests is that there is serious cause for concern and yet more evidence that each and every construction firm should look closely at its business, ditch any complacency…

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The latest quarterly national accounts provide yet more worrying reading for the construction industry. Firstly, the revisions made by the statisticians have just made the pretty poor figures originally released look worse. GDP growth in the first quarter is now officially 0.3% compared with 0.4% (to put that in context 0.1% of annual GDP is about 1.4 billion), so expect the assumptions of the forecasts you see to take a downward shift.

For anyone keen to explore the deeper reaches of the effects caused by a slowdown in the housing market here is one for the files. Moneysupermarket.com appears to be seeking to quell investor fears about the impact of “extremely challenging” conditions in its mortgages and loans business.

The National Housing and Planning Advice Unit (NHPAU) set up to provide advice on making homes affordable today released its latest advice on how many homes England needs by 2020. The range of extra homes the unit says are needed by 2020 is between 2,957,000 and 3,475,900. That means an addition to the housing stock of between 240,100 and 297,700 each year to 2016, says the report. That rather begs the question of whether we will have an industry in…

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There is a lot of economic gloom about at the moment. Here, Merryn Somerset Webb, editor of Money Week, puts forward a very good case in defence of being gloomy. Anyone care to put a counter argument?

It is popularly thought and much asserted that the trigger for the house price crash of the early 1990s was rising unemployment. Indeed, the Government, although with decreasing vigour of late, likes to point to the strong UK employment figures and suggest that these will help sustain residential property prices. The trouble is the facts don’t seem to support the argument. If we look at the data from that period we find, as my good friend Martin Hewes regularly reminds…

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What happens in the US housing market is becoming increasingly of interest this side of the Atlantic, as confused pundits scratch around for any clues as to what might be in store for the UK. No longer is there a broad sense of confidence that we are immune to what was being presented, less than a year ago, as local difficulty in the US. On the contrary, there is a growing mood (and some suggestive data) that we may just…

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It is always a worthwhile experience chatting to Hometrack’s Richard Donnell, there are always ideas and sparks of ideas. Having tracked him down this morning we talked, unsurprisingly, about the weirdness of the housing market. He made one particular comment that caught my ear.

The latest transaction figures from HM Revenue & Customs underline the industry fears of a collapse in home sales. They show that sales of property worth more than £40,000 have fallen by more than a third since the credit crunch hit. This May’s figure of 98,000 transactions compares with 155,000 last year. But more worrying is the shape of the trend. It looks linear and stongly down with an average drop of more than 4,000 transaction a month. It may…

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The housing market is getting tougher with 15 homes on sale to every buyer, according to the latest research by the website Rightmove. And although asking prices dipped this month they remain at about the same level as last year. Set this against the usually conservative predictions from the HBOS, which in a recent trading update put the likely fall in houses at 9% this year, and it is clear there is significant mismatch in buyers and sellers expectations. This…

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