May’s mix of good intentions and unfinished business

Posted: June 27, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Council housing, Housebuilding, Section 21, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally published on June 27 on my blog for Inside Housing. 

You wait more than 100 years for a prime minister to address your conference and you get one with less than a month left in the job.

It’s tempting to dismiss Wednesday’s speech by Theresa May to the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) conference on the basis that it was made by a lame duck leader whose decisions could all be overturned by her successor on July 24.

Even the sight of a premier hot-footing it straight from prime minister’s questions in London to the conference in Manchester can be seen less as a reflection of housing’s importance than of how much time she has on her hands during the Tory leadership contest.

As she said herself, even the venue was a reminder of one of her worst moments: the disastrous leader’s speech in the same hall at the Conservative conference in 2017 that ended with her losing her voice and the set falling apart around her.

Yet that same conference saw her dedicate her premiership to fixing housing and it was part of a journey since Grenfell that has seen May’s government move away from the policies of David Cameron, George Osborne and Policy Exchange and re-embrace the ‘our first social service’ traditions of Churchill and Macmillan.

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Housing in the Tory leadership contest

Posted: June 21, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Land, New towns, Right to buy, Section 21, Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Originally posted as a blog for Inside Housing on June 19 – updated June 21. 

Beneath the surface of a Conservative leadership battle dominated by Brexit and Boris Johnson there is a battle of ideas about the future direction of Conservative housing policy.

Put at its simplest, the battle is about whether to continue in the pragmatic direction signalled by Theresa May since 2016 or go back to the more ideological one taken by David Cameron before then.

But scratch a little deeper there are more fundamental debates going on about how far to go in fixing a housing market that most Tories agree has turned into an electoral liability for them.

Key questions such as how far the government should go in borrowing to invest in new homes and intervening in the private rented sector and the land market are back on the Conservative agenda.

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The long-term cost of Help to Buy

Posted: June 13, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Uncategorized | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally posted on June 13 on my blog for Inside Housing. 

Whatever you love it or hate it, Thursday’s report from the National Audit Office (NAO) will probably not do much to change your mind about Help to Buy.

If you think that the equity loan scheme first launched in 2013 has boosted housebuilding and helped more people to buy their first home, you will find evidence to support that view: new-build  property sales increased from 61,000 a year in 2012/13 to 104,000 in 2017/18; and around 81% of people using the scheme have been first-time buyers.

If you think the scheme has mainly benefited housebuilders and the benefits for buyers have been more limited, you’ll find backing for that too: 63% of borrowers could have afforded to buy anyway; many of them have used the scheme to buy a bigger house than they could previously have afforded; and 10% of buyers had incomes higher than the £80,000 (£90,000 in London) limit for eligibility for shared ownership.

The report does reject one common allegation made against Help to Buy by estimating that homes sold under the scheme have cost just 1% more than similar new-build homes. Previous estimates ranging from 5% to 20% have not compared similar properties, says the NAO.

However, that is just part of a much bigger new-build premium (the difference between prices of new and second-hand homes) and the NAO seems to accept the high figure of a premium of 15-20% as a given rather than the product of market conditions that Help to Buy helped to create.

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Two years on from Grenfell but still ‘only a matter of time’

Posted: June 10, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Construction industry, Fire safety, Grenfell Tower | Tags: | 1 Comment

Originally published as a blog for Inside Housing on June 10.

Almost two years on from Grenfell, Sunday’s huge fire at a block of flats in Barking is a horrifying reminder of how much there is still to do to keep residents safe.

Thankfully, everyone seems to have got out but the parallels are all too clear in the terrifying speed at which the fire spread and previous safety concerns raised by residents of the mixed-tenure block that appear to have been brushed aside.

Attention will inevitably focus on the safety of timber balconies and the apparent failure of fire retardant treatment of the materials used as well as the actions of those responsible for the block.

More broadly it underlines a whole series of questions about regulation and the construction industry and relationships between developers, freeholders and leaseholders that have still not had adequate answers.

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Pensions for property is still a bad idea

Posted: June 4, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Pensions, Uncategorized | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally published on June 4 as a blog for Inside Housing.

Every seven years or so, it seems, a senior politician will be tempted by the alluring idea of linking pension savings to home ownership.

When James Brokenshire said on Monday that young people should be allowed to use some of their pension pot to buy their first home, he was following in the footsteps of Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander in 2012 and Gordon Brown in 2005.

He told a meeting organised by Policy Exchange:

‘It seems rather obtuse that we would deny people the opportunity to do this, given that we know those who own their own home by retirement are on average a) wealthier and b) do not have the burden of the largest expense in retirement – accommodation.’

This was one of several what he described as ‘personal ideas’ to ‘help empower consumers in the housing market’ and it’s one that seems superficially attractive given the size of deposit required by many first-time buyers.

And it was an indication of what the housing secretary really thinks about a brief that he could well lose once we have a result from the contest to be the new prime minister and Conservative leader (he ruled himself out).

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