The 360,000 first-time buyers who bought in 2007 are likely to be trapped in their first homes, says a press release dated yesterday from the bank HSBC. The research isn’t brilliant. What makes this story so unusual and, for me, interesting is that despite it being such an obvious and serious problem so little has been written about it. So what’s the story?
The balance of the news over the past couple of weeks suggests things are getting better rather than worse. But what does it all say about the medium-term prospects of the housing market? To recap. Today Persimmon released a broadly positive interim management statement with the tasty nugget of a 35% increase in first-time buyer visitors over a year ago. Bovis also released its statement today which said private reservations in the 44 weeks to November 4 were up 22%…
The latest set of residential property transactions figures from HMRC (the Revenue) make for rather gloomy reading. Without a perking up of sales in the final quarter the number of homes sold in 2011 is set be the lower than the slump in 2009. The seasonally adjusted HMRC data show that the number of homes worth more than £40,000 is continuing to slide. And, given the way things seem to work, that means we should not be surprised if fewer…
The latest batch of housing market indicators show no real sign that the UK market overall is either collapsing through concerns over the economy and jobs or rising on lack of supply. The pattern continues of house prices gently sliding nationally. But as the latest report released today by the surveyors’ body RICS shows London remains, in the eyes of estate agents at least, a completely different market to the rest of the UK. In London a positive balance of 25%…
The housing market survey released today by the surveyors’ body RICS adds to other recently released data that all seems to points to a slide in prices everywhere except London – which in housing terms is another country. The RICS data show a negative balance of 23% of those questioned suggesting prices were falling rather over the past three months above those that saw prices rising. This fits with most other house price indicies which suggest that prices are tracking…
The battle over planning between the build-more-homes lobby and the forces for countryside conservation is extremely important. It will define, at least in part, where people can live and what our treasured land looks like in the future. It is essential that we have a planning system that efficiently, effectively and more importantly fairly balances the conflicts between development and conservation. But right now the debate over planning is a massive distraction from the real and immediate issue – money. There…
The two best words to sum up the picture that emerges from the latest housing market data would probably be fragile and flatlining. The surveys may have slight differences, but they all point to a market in a state of uneasy equilibrium. So, with a steady flow of disappointing economic data of late, this leaves wide open the question of whether the market has the resilience to avoid being tipped again into decline. The graph probably shows you all you…
Technically you can buy a house in five years’ time at less than you’d pay today. That’s if you have enough cash to trade in the residential derivatives market. Future HPI, an index of residential derivatives trades put together by Peter Sceats & Associates, puts the average price of a house in May 2016 at £161,498, measured against the Halifax non-seasonally adjusted average price. That average price in May this year was put at £162,344. But between then and now those…
The latest survey of the residential rental market by the surveyors’ body RICS is likely to wind up the pressure on the housing minister Grant Shapps to promote more house building. The survey suggests that rents are rising ever faster, driven by rising demand in a market where supply is constrained, as the graph taken from the RICS survey shows.
My patience runs thin when listening to the reasons why young folk can’t buy homes. And today I’ve had to listen to and read various interpretations of why they can’t, prompted by the release of the interesting Halifax sponsored research “The Reality of Generation Rent: Perceptions of the first time buyer market”. Call me unnecessarily reductive, but there is one simple over-riding reason why young folk struggle to buy a home, so simple it seems to be the most often…