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Tag: housing market

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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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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How the recession changed the pattern of spending on home improvements

How the recession changed the pattern of spending on home improvements

Look at the TV ads that tease you to tart up your home and guess the age of the actors. I’d say from recent ads I’ve seen they tend to be young 30s to young 40s, with a few young-faced 50 and 60 year olds making it into ads promoting replacement windows. They seem a bit older than in ads of a few years ago, but from what I can make out, the message we have drawn from these ads…

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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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Why brick data are still useful in tracking house building – if less so than in the past

Why brick data are still useful in tracking house building – if less so than in the past

The latest Building materials and components statistics were released by the business department BIS today. So I thought it worth having a wee peek at how facing brick deliveries have been going, given the general fuss about house building. I tweeted a few graphs earlier to show how brick deliveries had changed, which as I suggested provides a hint at changes in house-building activity. But it seems wise to add a few words of caution, since, as with all data,…

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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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What really drives planning applications?

What really drives planning applications?

They say: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” That’s certainly true for house builders and developers looking to gain planning permission. If they want to increase their supply of permissioned land on which to build houses they have to put in a residential planning application in the first place, which then may or may not be rejected. So with house building now back on the agenda in a big way we decided to use Barbour ABI data to examine…

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Boom time for construction? The view from Eeyore’s house

Boom time for construction? The view from Eeyore’s house

I feel for pessimists in construction at the moment. It’s really tough times for doom mongers. Every survey is running high, some touting record-breaking numbers. Meanwhile, forecasters are suggesting we are on the threshold of a phase of growth well above the long-term average. My God. It’s boom time. How can you talk that down? Well okay let me have a go. Not because I’m a pessimist (despite the rumours). Things are looking better. And I take a simple view…

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