Here’s a question that goes right to the heart of current housing policy: Should we be using incentives as readily as we are to encourage first-time buyers onto the property ladder? However iconoclastic or contrary this question may seem, it needs to be asked. There is so much at stake.
Inflation is now on the way up. That was to be expected. As Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, keeps reminding us, we should expect inflation to be very volatile for some while. But, is it me or do the forecasts for inflation reaching a mini-peak at about 3% in the early part of next year seem to be a little timid? The reason I am a bit unsettled is that if expectations for inflation prove to be…
I am not sure about you, but I sometimes have to go to the back numbers to make sense of the statistics that get thrown at me. I have been for some months a bit curious as to why the brightest brains (well some seriously well paid experts) among the UK economists have consistently been wrong in their prediction of inflation, each time overstating the fall in the headline figure. Again this month, they expected the Consumer Price Index to…
I can tell you the price of a house in 2020. I’ll even let you into the secret of how I do it. What I do is lick my finger and stick it into the wind. Works every time, especially on those with no memory and little understanding, and I have the power to send them home comforted or worried, depending on which I choose. It’s a gift I have. And here’s a bonus, as a regular reader of this…
The Guardian yesterday reported that traders were pricing in a 50% drop in house prices over the next four years. Firstly and personally, I think prices may fall quite deeply. But I don’t think they will drop by 50% in “real” terms, unless the economy takes a pretty freaky turn for the worse. Then all bets are off. I’ll come to why a 50% drop in “real” house prices is unlikely later, but first (and I seek help here if…