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Tag: house building

Sticks for the North, carrots for the South in the New Home Bonus handicap race

Sticks for the North, carrots for the South in the New Home Bonus handicap race

Long before he was in office the Housing Minister Grant Shapps evangelised about the New Homes Bonus in a way that suggested it would lead to a new world where local residents badgered their councils to grant permissions for more homes. I’ll confess my initial reactions to the early presentations more than a year ago might fairly be regarded as sceptical, even though I am in favour of incentives to prompt development. Still, in April next year, if all goes…

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Forecasters at Leading Edge see growth after a shallow drop next year

Forecasters at Leading Edge see growth after a shallow drop next year

The latest forecast from Leading Edge may provide some comfort to those who are fretful about the prospects of ever deeper declines in the construction industry as public funds rapidly shrink. Yes, the forecast sees a drop in output next year – 0.9% after 3.2% growth this year. But the Leading Edge team are optimistic that growth in the private sector will accelerate to buoy construction overall and more than compensate for the loss work funded by the public purse….

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House building recovery stalls and a further fall can’t be ruled out

House building recovery stalls and a further fall can’t be ruled out

There is no way that you can look at the latest set of house building figures for England in the third quarter of this year and suggest they look good. Yes it is true that private sector housing completions were up for the second consecutive quarter as the press release points out, but they were lower by 4% than in the same quarter a year ago. Furthermore, the completions we see in the third quarter represent a view taken by…

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Buyers and sellers abandon the housing market – that’s bad news for house building numbers

Buyers and sellers abandon the housing market – that’s bad news for house building numbers

The latest housing market survey released today by the surveyors’ body RICS paints a fascinating picture of the courting process between buyers and sellers of houses. The headline figure taken from the survey was always going to be that the majority of estate agents are now seeing house price falls. The figure for the balance of agents seeing rising prices against those seeing prices fall was -52, which was the lowest since March last year. This figure fits with the general…

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Construction industry is forecast to face a second double-digit decline

Construction industry is forecast to face a second double-digit decline

Construction is heading for a very nasty tumble next year after the current spurt in workload fades. That at least is the assessment of the first major industry forecast released since the Chancellor’s spending review announcements. The construction forecast by Hewes & Associates suggests that after an unexpected 5.6% rise in construction over this year as a whole, the industry will slide sharply by 5.8% next year and 4.8% in 2012. It is worth noting that the forecast by Hewes…

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Why the spending review might prove a turning onto the road to Nirvana for house builders

Why the spending review might prove a turning onto the road to Nirvana for house builders

What do the cuts in the spending review mean for house builders? Who really knows? But having tried to piece together what the implications of the Chancellor’s axe wielding are for housing, house builders, housing associations and contractors who build homes, I can’t help thinking what some might regard as the unthinkable. I may be deluded or befuddled by the blur of jumbled numbers, but far from being bad news, I think there is a possibility that things might pan…

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House building numbers more vulnerable than prices as the market turns

House building numbers more vulnerable than prices as the market turns

The latest monthly housing market survey from the surveyors’ body RICS will come as unwelcome, if expected, bad news to developers, estate agents and potential sellers. The survey shows the fastest increase in the number of agents seeing price falls since the ugly period that followed the credit crunch (see graph sourced from the RICS August survey) and the lowest reading since May 2009. Last month the survey showed the balance between agents seeing prices up and those seeing prices…

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Latest stats pour cold water on construction growth prospects and house building

Latest stats pour cold water on construction growth prospects and house building

For those who read the latest output figures and cheerily saw an industry enjoying boom level growth in the second quarter, here is a bucket of cold water from the national statisticians at the ONS – the new orders figures. The fact that the orders figures are down is not totally unexpected. There was a clear and planned surge in public sector spending – some cynically suggesting that this was connected to the General Election in May. This surge was…

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A double-dip in house prices isn’t really the problem

A double-dip in house prices isn’t really the problem

The Nationwide house price survey showing a drop of 0.9% following a 0.5% drop in July adds yet more weight to the growing view that house prices are sagging and are set to sag further. The Halifax index peaked in March and fell monthly up to a minor rally in July. The Acadmetrics index has been heading south since March, although it similarly saw a gentle uplift of 0.1% in July. Hometrack went 0.1% negative in July and the drop…

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More than 300,000 construction jobs axed so far in this recession

More than 300,000 construction jobs axed so far in this recession

Construction lost 63,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year and has shed more than 300,000 since the recession bit hard after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. The latest employment figures are based on a slightly different assessment of the industry (Standard Industrial Classification 2007 is used) and paint an even gloomy picture of the trajectory of construction jobs than did the previous series (see graph). At peak in September 2008 the statisticians now reckon there were 2,364,000…

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