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Tag: house building

Construction recovery stalls, but the forecasts remain bright

Construction recovery stalls, but the forecasts remain bright

The latest official output data from the Office for National Statistics show growth apparently stalling in the second quarter. This may seem at odds with trade surveys and media commentary which tend to point to construction booming. It’s not really. Despite the zero growth recorded by ONS for output in the second quarter of this year, at the risk of doing a Michael Fish, I think we can be confident that the industry is pretty much set on an upward…

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Government must plan and act as if in the longer-term construction matters

Government must plan and act as if in the longer-term construction matters

In business certainty is a good thing. It may be less exciting for the crisis-management junkies we seem to be in Britain, but it helps us be more efficient. There is however one certainty that is painful to experience. This is the certainty that an action or lack of action will lead to an unnecessarily destructive outcome. Today the RICS launched its quarterly construction market survey. Its headline: “Private sector continues to provide forward momentum.” It’s all pretty predictable stuff….

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Are we witnessing the start of another housing problem?

Are we witnessing the start of another housing problem?

There’s something, no lots of things, desperately disturbing about today’s stories (examples here and here) telling of Government panic over potentially unflattering house-building figures released just before the General Election. Where to start? Let’s start with “starts”. These seem to be the housing figures in question. On 20 February I tweeted: “For those not familiar with the terminology: you live in a housing completion, you don’t live in a housing start” It was a jibe in response to a press…

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Instead of drop-kicking the planners, shouldn’t we really half-nelson the rich?

Instead of drop-kicking the planners, shouldn’t we really half-nelson the rich?

The blame game over who’s responsible for England’s housing crisis and silver-bullet “here’s-the-answer” approaches to solving it is growing into a national sport. Various interest groups, professions, political parties, social classes, business groups and their mouthpieces come under fire. Meanwhile, each fires back their silver bullet, with a crowd of suitably-armed commentators joining in. With this kind of entertainment the lobby to encourage ITV to re-run World of Sport wrestling must be flagging. With that sad image in mind, I…

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More a house-building recovery than a construction recovery – so far at least

More a house-building recovery than a construction recovery – so far at least

Construction output grew 0.6% in the first quarter of this year. That’s up on an earlier estimate of 0.3% in the first release of the GDP figures. Work done in the first three month was 5.4% more than in the same period a year earlier. That’s the very encouraging headline story from the latest ONS construction output data. And we can be more encouraged given the iffier-than-normal weather at the start of this year. This provides reasons to think that…

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Cracks are already appearing in the Government strategy on the building materials trade gap

Cracks are already appearing in the Government strategy on the building materials trade gap

The construction industry imports about 10% of its output value in building materials and seems to have done all my adult life at least. Admittedly the figures are a bit ropey, but the pattern looks pretty clear from the top graph. This is important, because the Government’s rather suspect industrial strategy (pdf) for construction has as one of its big targets a 50% cut in the building materials trade gap by 2025. Looking at the current data I reckon that means,…

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What brick and block shortage? What house-building boom?

What brick and block shortage? What house-building boom?

House building is enjoying its fastest growth for a decade or more and this is leading to shortages in the supply chain that threaten growth. That at least has become a widely accepted narrative that in many ways is characterising the current state of the construction industry. But is this really the case? The latest release by the business department BIS of the Monthly Bulletin of Building Materials and Components prompted me to scrutinise the data and various comments and…

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Don’t panic over construction output drop. The industry remains on a growth path

Don’t panic over construction output drop. The industry remains on a growth path

Don’t panic. Construction is still growing. The first estimate of gross domestic product may show that quarter on quarter construction output was down 0.3%. But there’s no reason to suggest underlying growth has stalled. Getting obsessed with a single quarter’s figures, let alone a single month’s figures in construction is a bit… well… obsessive. The graph shows clearly how erratic monthly data are and how, even averaged over three months, the figures still bounce quite a bit. Looking at this…

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More optimism, some caution, as all main industry forecasts see construction bounce back

More optimism, some caution, as all main industry forecasts see construction bounce back

Two more construction forecasts came out over the past week that added to the consensus that suggests construction is set for strong growth up to the General Election. Indeed, with the exception of the Hewes forecast, the view is that strong growth will continue well after 2015. The Hewes forecast tends to embrace more of the downside risks and in that respect charts a more cautious approach to potential growth. On that basis it seems reasonable to assume that it…

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Forecasters see strong growth for construction – but, then again, the General Election is coming…

Forecasters see strong growth for construction – but, then again, the General Election is coming…

The latest industry forecast will put a smile on the face of the UK construction folk. The recovery is now expected to move faster having arrived earlier than forecasters expected just three months ago. The Construction Products Association now expects to see growth in 2013 of 1% instead of the slight decline it forecast three months ago. It has also raised its forecast for 2014 to 3.4% against 2.7%. Its 2015 forecast was raised from 4.6% to very strong 5.2%….

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