The rise of the property-owning plutocracy

Posted: March 8, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Labour market, Private renting, Right to buy | 12 Comments

If you had to think of one article of faith for the Conservative Party, a property-owning democracy would come pretty close to the top of the list.

David Cameron reached back to the idea in his ‘magic money tree’ speech yesterday:

‘It is important that people who work hard and do the right thing are able to buy a home. As I said in my party conference speech – it is a rebuke to those of us who believe in property owning democracy that the average age for someone buying their first home today, without any help from their parents is 33 years old. And we are determined to tackle that.’

The prime minister was clearly hinting at something to come either in the Budget or the housing announcement he’s planning just before it. Whether that’s a new stamp duty holiday, or an extension to FirstBuy or even perhaps making existing homes eligible for NewBuy remains to be seen.

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Dynamic duo

Posted: March 6, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting | Leave a comment

So will the next big housing announcement from David Cameron and Nick Clegg amount to any more than the last three?

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the coalition double act are ‘drawing up schemes to revive the flatlining housebuilding industry and help people get on the housing ladder’. On the eve of the Budget on March 20 they will make a series of announcements including measures on shared equity schemes, social housing and support for first-time buyers.

Despite the scoop, even the FT admits that this ‘may be treated with some scepticism given that such announcements on housebuilding have become a regular feature of the coalition – while the industry has continued to stagnate’.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Owning fall-out

Posted: March 4, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Private renting | Leave a comment

Should we simply be accepting the continuing shift from home ownership to private renting as somehow inevitable?

That’s one of the many housing questions posed in the latest edition of the UK Housing Review. Now in its 21st edition and published by the Chartered Institute of Housing, the review has long been the bible for housing nerds but it is the best source of authoritative information on tenure and any other aspect of housing you care to think of.

The CIH has press released the story that home ownership has slumped among the young: from 39 to 14 per cent for the 16-24s and 67 to 43 per cent among the 25-34s. However, the rate is falling for older people too.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Sales pitch

Posted: February 26, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing market, Right to buy, Social housing | Leave a comment

So how is it going so far for two ‘ambitious schemes’ that we were told would ‘unlock the aspirations of a new generation of home buyers’?

It was March 2012 when David Cameron and Grant Shapps launched NewBuy and the ‘reinvigorated’ Right to Buy 2. ‘This government doesn’t just talk about expanding home ownership: we’re making it happen,’ said the prime minister.

Even as he was speaking it all seemed a tad ambitious. No wonder, when theEnglish Housing Survey has just shown that home ownership fell again in 2011/12.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

One-way street

Posted: February 14, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting | Leave a comment

Repossessions are at their lowest and loans to first-time buyers are at their highest since 2007. Has the housing market finally turned the corner?

That’s certainly one interpretation of stats released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) this week showing big improvements since the year the credit crunch hit.

On Tuesday it revealed that 216,200 first-time buyers became homeowners in 2012. That was a 12 per cent rise on 2011 and it’s the first time since 2007 that the annual total has exceeded 200,000.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Capital crisis

Posted: February 13, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Homelessness, Housing market | Leave a comment

The scale of the housing crisis facing London is hitting home with both Londoners and their political leaders.

In an opinion poll in the Evening Standard published today, half of people in the city say they fear being driven out of their neighbourhood by the cost of housing and six out of ten say there is a crisis in their area.

At one end of the housing scale, soaring demand from global investors is threatening to push house prices even further out of reach of ordinary Londoners. According to a report yesterday from the Home Builders Federation, it now takes the average first-time buyer 24 years to raise a deposit in London.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

10 things about 2012 – part 2

Posted: December 31, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing market, Social housing | Leave a comment

The conclusion of my two-part review of the issues and people I was blogging about in 2012 looks at bullding, owning and affording homes – and a year of anniversaries.

6) Housebuilding: talking a good game

If you measure the importance of an issue by its media profile, 2012 was certainly the year of housebuilding. The first half of the year saw momentum building behind the idea that investment in new homes would be good for the economy as well as people who need a roof over their heads. Support came from economists and politicians (increasingly from the Lib Dem side of the coalition) and even the director-general of the DCLG was talking about a ‘decade of housebuilding’ at the CIH conference in June. Hopes were genuinely high that the case for housing was winning support at the highest levels of government and David Cameron’s party conference speech in October was heavy on anti-nimby rhetotric.

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A housing timebomb

Posted: December 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Buy to let, Housing benefit, Housing market, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

The big shift from owning to renting revealed in the Census has potentially massive implications for government spending on housing costs.

The headline results revealed by the Office for National Statistics last week were that home ownership fell from 68.3 per cent of households if England and Wales in 2001 to 63.5 per cent in 2011. Private renting increased from 9 per cent to 15 per cent and social renting fell from 19.3 per cent to 17.6 per cent.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

A nation divided by housing tenure

Posted: December 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

This week’s Census reveals a historic shift from owning to renting as the nation adjusts to new housing realities. That much is obvious but there are some significant trends behind that headline number too.

The results for England and Wales show private renting has risen from 9 per cent of households in 2001 to 15 per cent in 2011 and that home ownership has fallen from 68 per cent to 64 per cent over the same period.

However, that simple two-way split misses what has happened beneath the surface. Tenure is now split roughly three ways between outright ownership, owning with a mortgage and renting (itself split evenly between social and private renting). Many people were watching to see whether private renting would overtake social renting (for the first time since 1961) but this did not happen unless you include all forms of private renting, including those who rent from an employer or live rent-free.

So the more significant change for me is the fact that there are now more renters (private and social) than people buying with a mortgage. Between 2001 and 2011, mortgaged home ownership fell from 39 per cent of all tenure to 33 per cent. The total number of households buying with a mortgage has fallen by 749,000 over the last ten years from 8.4 million to 7.6 million. However, if mortgaged ownership had maintained its 2001 share of a rising number of households, there would now be 1.4 million more home owners on the housing ladder.

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Running a red light

Posted: November 15, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing market | Leave a comment

Halfway through the parliament and one year in to the housing strategy and the traffic lights seem to be taking for ever to change from red to green for housing.

It also looks like a good time to judge the record of this government and a time to stand back and admit that whoever had been in charge over the last two and a half years would have struggled against the grim backdrop of austerity.

Those are points well made by the CIH, NHF and Shelter in their third Housing Report. The good news is that ministers are at last making the right noises about the positive effects of housing investment but, as the report says, pledges and policies are not proof of progress.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

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