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Tag: housing market

Why structural demographic challenges threaten house-building numbers

Why structural demographic challenges threaten house-building numbers

Much has been made of the latest English Housing Survey that shows homeownership among the young dwindling still further. It’s a corker for the media. It has generated reams of copy in the press and numerous discussions on TV broadcasts and radio phone-ins. But it ain’t news. A bit like the “ageing population problem”, the decline in youngsters owning their own homes was evident decades ago if you cared to look at the statistics. A favoured quip is that Margaret…

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Bright prospects ahead for construction. That’s the forecasters’ view

Bright prospects ahead for construction. That’s the forecasters’ view

UK construction by 2018 will have witnessed a five-year growth spurt not seen since the 1980s. That’s what is suggested by the majority verdict among the latest batch of industry forecasts. Taking Construction Products Association forecast numbers, from 2013 to 2018 the industry output will have expanded by a quarter. Only in the post-War era up to the 1960s and in the late 1980s did construction enjoy growth of that magnitude over a five-year period. This will, if it happens,…

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George, if you are dredging dodgy policy ideas from old blogs, get the timing right

George, if you are dredging dodgy policy ideas from old blogs, get the timing right

“20% discount on your first home announces PM” reads the press release headline describing one of David Cameron and George Osborne’s latest moves to keep their mitts on the tiller of power. Ostensibly it’s a new bold initiative to give a leg up to 100,000 wannabe first-time buyers. Desirable, you might think. In reality we all know it’s yet another policy aimed at a key but unsettled element of the electorate to ease fears about their potential or the potential…

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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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Northstowe and why I am so angry with George Osborne

Northstowe and why I am so angry with George Osborne

The Government’s plan to commission, build and sell 10,000 homes at Northstowe just north of Cambridge have been heralded by some in the media as radical. It hasn’t been done since the 1970s. That anyway is a line taken by a slice of the media as it absorbs carefully-crafted press releases that complement the thin detail in the National Infrastructure Plan 2014. Unsurprisingly as we head deeper into the run-up to a General Election, the media was duly given some…

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Where I dream that Lyons are taming a political jungle strangling housing… and wake up

Where I dream that Lyons are taming a political jungle strangling housing… and wake up

The Lyons Housing Review was published today. After a speed read, I’m left pretty impressed with its analysis of the problems facing housing in England. Indeed, my spirits were lifted even as I read the contents pages by phrases such as “positive planning”, “greater transparency about the land market”, “proactive land assembly”. This is not yet another report where planning is portrayed as some evil dead hand restricting activity, but rather as it should be – a tool to get…

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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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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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Forecasters see spring in the step of construction with fewer dark clouds on the horizon

Forecasters see spring in the step of construction with fewer dark clouds on the horizon

The latest set of construction forecasts from Experian, the Construction Products Association and Hewes all exude greater confidence than those released at the start of the year. There were few radical changes to the expected numbers above adjustments that would naturally be made to accommodate new data. But the sentiment is more encouraging, with concerns over downside risks easing. Indeed Experian suggest that the balance of risk within its forecast has probably shifted to the upside. The downside risks of…

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