There is no way that you can look at the latest set of house building figures for England in the third quarter of this year and suggest they look good. Yes it is true that private sector housing completions were up for the second consecutive quarter as the press release points out, but they were lower by 4% than in the same quarter a year ago. Furthermore, the completions we see in the third quarter represent a view taken by…
For those looking for reasons to believe that the second quarter of this year provided some relative cheer, it may be worth taking in the surveys from the FMB, which represents local builders, and the NSCC, which represents specialists. We may not be talking about boom times, but both surveys reported a marked easing in the recessionary pressures that have dogged the smaller firms in construction for more than two years. You have to read through the data to get a…
I have just spent a gruelling chunk of the morning trying to square the GDP figures with the construction output figures, dogged by a mild hangover and a glitch in the numbers. I hadn’t intended to dive into the figures until a bit later, but I took a “have you seen the figures?” call this morning and so was obliged to get the brain in gear a shade earlier than it felt necessary. The thing is that a huge slice…
In the current climate it is encouraging to see construction indicators finally point to growth. And so it is good to welcome the return of the RICS construction workload index into positive territory after two years of slump. Sadly, as is the case with many construction indicators, when they are showing positive results it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are enjoying growth or that growth is coming to construction. So it is I suspect with the latest construction survey from…
As the real business of governing the UK begins to wind up again, the latest employment figures will do little to cheer the incoming government as it prepares to put chalk marks on where deep public sector cuts will be made. The overall figures showed the rise of unemployment continuing above the 2.5 million mark. But equally as worrying is the swelling number of part-time workers that is hiding a bubble of underemployment. Over the first quarter of this year…
How ironic that just as the construction industry is sucking in its tummy and preparing for savage cuts the latest survey by the buyers’ body CIPS shows some of the strongest growth experienced over the past decade. As can be seen from graph on the right the current level of the index suggests a growth rate that would have been well received at most times in the period from 2000 to the credit crunch. The survey suggests that activity in the…
The latest round of forecasting by construction experts paints a picture little changed from three months ago with little hope of significant growth, much uncertainty and the risks to growth heavily weighted on the down side. The general pattern they expect can be seen from the graph (right). It shows that after the biggest recorded annual fall since comparable records began in 1955 the forecasters expect a continued slide this year. There is some variation in views on this, with…
Construction has fallen into a double-dip recession – that is if the preliminary estimates by the statisticians putting together the first quarter 2010 gross domestic product figures are to be believed. The preliminary GDP figures put growth at a pallid 0.2% for the economy as a whole. This low level of growth will be a huge worry for construction if the figure is not revised upward in later estimates. In fairness the chances of a revision upward in this data…
There has been a sharp change of mood among the traders of housing futures who punt large sums on the level of house prices at given years ahead. Traders had turned bullish last autumn and even at the end of the year the Tradition Future HPI was showing a projected one-year out rise of 5% in house prices. That bullish sentiment turned distinctly sheepish by the end of last month and now the market has settled on a 1% rise one year…
Here’s a question I ponder quite a bit. Why do the official figures show that construction grew in the second and third quarters of last year when to everyone else construction has remained mired in the slough of a nasty recession? Puzzling isn’t it. Even more puzzling that the estimates for construction’s contribution to the GDP data suggest the industry’s output was stable in the fourth quarter of 2009. What is even more puzzling for me is that the CIPS/Markit…