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Tag: house prices

Restructuring stamp duty should provide a boost to housing, interesting timing don’t you think?

Restructuring stamp duty should provide a boost to housing, interesting timing don’t you think?

So the Chancellor’s big idea was a reform of the stamp duty land tax. Excellent. Certainly few people with an appreciation of either taxation systems or the housing market think SDLT is a good tax. The Mirrlees Review: A proposal for systematic tax reform, a highly-regarded document in tax circles, had this to say for it: “There is no sound case for maintaining stamp duty and we believe that it should be abolished.” It recommended it be replaced by a…

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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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Is the deep-seated problem of housing supply really just about planning?

Is the deep-seated problem of housing supply really just about planning?

Does constraint on planning approvals restrict the supply of homes or does the demand for homes determine the level of planning approvals? Perhaps both work in tandem or parallel. These questions have bugged me for years. Here’s some fresh thought prompted by the release of the latest house-building figures and, in part, by concerns expressed over the weekend by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney about “a housing market that has deep, deep structural problems”. The housing market is a…

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Those house building numbers: Joy, reality then annoyance

Those house building numbers: Joy, reality then annoyance

The latest official housing figures provide a bit of a puzzle. The uplift in the actual figures doesn’t look that spectacular when you plot the graphs, so why is there so much fuss? The tale on the street is that house building is booming. Brick shortages, skills shortages, rising prices, it has to be a boom. And picked judiciously the figures are powerful. Private starts were up 29% in the third quarter compared with last year. Housing associations also started…

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Is income inequality screwing up the housing market? I’m curious

Is income inequality screwing up the housing market? I’m curious

For the past few years three questions have bugged me persistently. How could rising income inequality over the past thirty years not have affected the housing market? If it has had significant effects, what are they and how have these come about? Why is so little political and, it seems, academic attention paid to how income inequality might cause dysfunction within the housing market? This is in contrast to the more significant attention paid to how a dysfunctional housing system…

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Latest surveys suggest house price inflation is accelerating. That’s not a good thing

Latest surveys suggest house price inflation is accelerating. That’s not a good thing

The latest batch of statistics on the housing market have all been impressive, suggesting broad and strong growth in house sales and house prices. The RICS survey out today shows that over the past few months there has been a sustained increase in all the main indicators. A hefty majority of estate agents have seen increases in achieved prices, they expect further increases, they have seen rises in enquiries from new buyers and instructions from new sellers, and their level…

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Sustained output growth is just the start of a long recovery for construction

Sustained output growth is just the start of a long recovery for construction

The latest Markit/CIPS survey of construction activity came out yesterday grabbing big headlines and very possibly spectacularly misinforming the general public. The most common interpretation seems to be: “Construction grows at fastest rate for six years.” This is not surprising because it was what the Markit release actually said. I’m not saying this is bonkers, but it would surprise quite a few people if the official construction output figures record the fastest growth in six years in either the third…

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Searching for a Higgs Boson to explain the unsolved problems of the housing market

Searching for a Higgs Boson to explain the unsolved problems of the housing market

Over the past few months, particularly the past few days, I have bathed in data, ideas, business models, policies and blue sky thinking on how we can deliver more housing in the UK. This was the central theme running through yesterday’s Housing Market Intelligence conference. It was the broad thread that tied together the expert analyses in the associated Housing Market Intelligence report, which I edit. It was also the basic question that underpinned an Institute of Economic Development London…

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Non-resi building sector could be hardest hit as house builders suck hard on the supply chain

Non-resi building sector could be hardest hit as house builders suck hard on the supply chain

The resurgence of house building has brought with it fears of a supply chain so stretched that we will see shortages appearing, production held back and costs rising. There’s almost certainly something in this. It seems to be common currency. As I’ve discussed before, there are emerging problems with the supply of bricks and labour. And EC Harris, for example, has picked up early signs that prices of materials associated with house building are rising faster than the average for…

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Has the Government found a cure for the disease afflicting the housing market?

Has the Government found a cure for the disease afflicting the housing market?

The short answer to the question in the headline is no. The slightly longer answer requires a question: It depends what you mean by the housing market? But, as that sounds like obfuscation, the most honest answer I can come up with is that while the housing market may appear to be in remission the disease is spreading. I say this because we’ve had such a welter of “good news” on the housing front recently that you’d could be forgiven…

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