The latest figures from the Bank of England showing the number of mortgage approvals at a nine month low have caused a bit of a stir and increased talk of a double dip in the housing market. Here’s a few reasons why.
As the Chancellor Alistair Darling puts his final touches to the Budget he will be relieved by the recent spate of comforting data. Last Wednesday we had employment statistics showing that the unemployment was falling. On Thursday the figures on public finances were far healthier than expected, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimating that the level of borrowing for the financial year will come in £12 billion lower than forecast in the last Pre-Budget Report. Today we had the inflation…
In a chat yesterday it was suggested I should make a note of the rapid increase in the number of babies being born and the implications for construction, or not as the case may be. This chimed with me, as I had recently been told that they will need two more classrooms at the primary school my son is at by the time my daughter attends. I noted also that the Daily Mail had screamed about it a few days…
The buyers’ body CIPS has released its first construction statistics of the New Year and they show the industry continuing to decline in December. The construction index finished the year on 47.1, below the 50 no-change mark for the 22nd consecutive month. But there was some good news. The housing index remained positive for the fourth month running and growth appears to be strengthening. Meanwhile optimism among purchasing managers about future activity rose slightly. But as the graph shows the…
It’s the time of the year for reflections, resolutions and prognostications. And what can be more fun than guessing the likely path of house prices? Well I can think of a few things. And I’m also left wondering why anyone would wish to state a house price forecast publicly and put their reputations on the line. Predicting house prices currently is a bit like trying to pin a tail on a bucking donkey while blindfolded and in front of a sneering audience….
Few would argue against the view that this set of Pre-Budget Report announcements has more to do with pre-electioneering that pre-budgeting. That’s fair enough. The Labour Party may not be in power to pursue its plans and, if it is after the next election, we don’t know how keen it will be to stick to them given a further five years to play with. The political desire to put the pain at the start rather than the end of a…
So its official – the construction recession isn’t as bad as we thought. And the even better news is that the sharp fall in output at the start of this year wasn’t anywhere near as sharp as last quarter’s figures had suggested. That at least is how the national statisticians might have us see it. The official figures for construction workload show a jump of 2% between the second and third quarters of this year. Workloads were boosted, the figures…