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Tag: housing starts

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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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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Figures show we are just not building enough homes. It is that simple.

Figures show we are just not building enough homes. It is that simple.

The latest official house building statistics to emerge underline the massive task ahead for the Government if it is to meet its promise of boosting English house building rates to a level above that achieved before the recession. It was in September 2010 that Grant Shapps ambitiously announced this “Gold Standard” against which he, as housing minister, would be judged.

Serendipity, timber statistics and the search for a better understanding of construction output

Serendipity, timber statistics and the search for a better understanding of construction output

Serendipity led me from some UNECE Timber Committee forecasts released today to some timber usage data I wasn’t all that familiar with, more of which later. First the forecasts. It’s important to know that UK construction accounts (on the last count) for about 84% of imported softwood. This proportion is up on earlier years when the share tended to be in the low 70s as a percentage. Either way any forecast for imported softwood will be heavily influenced by the…

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Don’t read scare stories into the housing figures – we already know things are bad

Don’t read scare stories into the housing figures – we already know things are bad

The latest CLG house building figures for the second quarter of this year seem to be consistent with the view that activity is settling down to a new post-recession lower level. Much has been and is made of the jumps up and down each quarter in the starts and completions figures. But this volatility should be and should have been expected. No more significance should be given to the latest drop in starts than to the buoyancy in the numbers in…

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England sees 102,830 new homes built in 2010 – we built more in 1875

England sees 102,830 new homes built in 2010 – we built more in 1875

Well there we have it. 2010 was another awful year for building new private homes in England with fewer than 81,000 completed, compared with almost 154,000 in the peak year of 2007. And look closer into the latest official house building figures and we see than in many of the English regions, particularly in the North, the level of private house building is now running well below half of what it was in 2007. When you add in the homes…

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Private housing completions in England have dropped by more than half since the credit crunch

Private housing completions in England have dropped by more than half since the credit crunch

We all know it’s been bad in house building, but sometimes you have to look at the figures again to remind yourself just how bad things have been. The release of the latest housing figures provides that reality check, as the graph below so clearly illustrates. It’s been carnage and it is a long way back even to meet pre-credit crunch levels of building. In the first quarter of 2007 the industry was beginning to motor as is clear from…

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