You don’t need a map, satnav or signposts to drive a car from one place you know to another you don’t. But it helps. A guide is handy. It supports better choices. It saves time. So, too, can good industry statistics. You don’t need them. But a good set of numbers can help to scale your market and provide hints at where it’s heading. Even fairly ropey stats and indicators help. This brings me to the latest ONS release of…
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…
Last Friday the Office for National Statistics released final quarter data for construction output in 2014. It put growth for the year at 7.4%. This, according to the official record, followed slightly anaemic growth in 2013 of 0.4%. The suggestion from these figures is that construction took off rapidly in 2014. 7.4% growth is pretty tasty. But should we believe this version of recent history? My advice would be no. I suspect when the figures are settled later this year we…
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…
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…
Recent surveys of the housing market by the surveyors’ body RICS have become increasingly positive in tone and are finding increasing signs of life. There are some promising signs in the findings for house builders and the construction industry. Inevitably the popular focus falls on price changes, with rises seen as a sign of an improving market. Here the RICS found stability taking the nation as a whole and its members were modestly bullish about the prospect of prices rising…
The National Housing Federation launched its 2012 Home Truths report today. It’s got lots of coverage, probably because it says again what many already know – there’s a housing crisis and it will put even more pressure on the already stressed and strained housing benefit system. We spend more than £20 billion a year on housing benefit in a bid to keep the poorest out of housing squalor. But thousands more working folk are turning to this benefit as rents…
The housing market remains in a weird state of suspended animation. There is the odd flinch or twitch to give commentators (myself included) something to remark on and the Daily Express something to splash on its front page. But in reality things have been flat for about two years. Naturally, with prices more or less flatlining, the reality is that houses in real terms are getting cheaper – that is to say the ones that are being sold are on…
The Bank of England seems to have taken a kicking in the press following the release last week of the Office of National Statistics estimate for inflation in March. The reports seem to fixate on the uptick to CPI inflation from 3.4% in February to 3.5% in March. This rise did not fit, in the view of many economic commentators, the script written by the Bank of England in its latest Inflation Report. Although in fairness the report did point…
Much fuss is made over the monthly ups and downs of housing price indicators. But in reality those released recently suggest the average UK house price remains more or less locked at the steady altitude it has followed for more than a year. Taking a consensus from the plethora of available measures suggests an average home costs you today within 1% (probably 1% less) of what it would have cost a year ago and more or less the same as…