Barbed wire
Posted: October 25, 2012 Filed under: Housing market, Mortgages Leave a commentIs it possible to ‘hard-wire common sense’ into a mortgage market that has a track record of irrational excess?
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) launched the final version of its Mortgage Market Review (MMR) this morning after a marathon round of consultation with lenders and consumer groups.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Child’s play
Posted: September 24, 2012 Filed under: Housing market 2 CommentsNick Clegg’s ‘pensions for property’ plan is the most breathtakingly stupid idea since, well, the last time a government proposed something similar.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander put forward the proposal in interviews on Sunday as a way of allowing parents and grandparents to use their pension fund to guarantee a deposit for their children and grandchildren.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Going backwards
Posted: September 11, 2012 Filed under: Housing market Leave a commentThe government is missing the chance to tackle housing market volatility and its damaging consequences for households and the wider economy.
That’s the fear expressed in a progress report out today from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s housing market taskforce that warns that ‘in some ways we are moving further away from this goal’.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Our dysfunctional housing market
Posted: August 27, 2012 Filed under: Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting 5 CommentsAnyone wondering why the housing market is so dysfunctional can find plenty of explanations in figures released over the last few days.
Exhibit one: the Bank of England’s account of the effect its £375 billion (so far) quantitative easing programme. Most of the publicity has gone to the revelation that the richest 5 per cent of the population have gained 40 per cent of the benefits as the result of the way it has inflated the prices of assets like shares. However, it also includes an estimate of the way that borrowers have benefitted at the expense of savers because of record low interest rates. The total impact of lower rates on secured lending (mostly mortgages) is estimated at £94.4 billion since September 2008.
Rise and fall
Posted: August 10, 2012 Filed under: Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting Leave a commentBehind the good news story of falling mortgage repossessions a different tale is starting to emerge of rising possession actions against tenants.
Figures published by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) yesterday showed that its members repossessed 8,500 homes in the three months to June. That was the lowest quarterly total since the final quarter of 2010 and implies that the total for the year is likely to undershoot the CML’s forecast of 45,000.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Buy, buy…rent
Posted: August 10, 2012 Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Mortgages 2 CommentsFour years after it was supposedly killed off by the credit crunch, buy to let continues to go from strength to strength as first-time buyers are squeezed out of the mortgage market.
Figures published by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) yesterday confirm that the total number of buy-to-let mortgages has increased by 45 per cent since the third quarter of 2007 from 978,900 in the third quarter of 2007 to 1,415,000 now. According to CML director general Paul Smee it is ‘growing broadly in line with expectations’. He goes on: ‘The rental sector has grown strongly over the last decade or so, and buy-to-let continues to help deliver a wider choice for tenants.’
Wider choice? I doubt very much that would-be first-time buyers will see it that way when tighter lending criteria mean their only choice is to be a tenant. After all, the same banks who are unwilling to give them a loan against their future income unless they have a sizeable deposit seem quite willing to give an amateur landlord a buy-to-let loan to be repaid from the rents (and therefore the future incomes) of their tenants.
Why every little will not help much
Posted: August 4, 2012 Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Mortgages Leave a commentThe launches of Tesco mortgages and the Funding for Lending scheme have led to some hope at last for the dysfunctional housing market. Here’s why I don’t think they will make much difference.
In the short term at least, most of the benefits look like going (yet again) to existing owners rather than frustrated first-time buyers.
Going for gold
Posted: July 31, 2012 Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing market Leave a commentAs the Olympics gives a daily boost to London’s image as a global city, how long will it be before the government acts on overseas property ownership?
The evidence on the scale of the ‘investment’ and the impact on the rest of the London housing market is mounting steadily. In March, I blogged about a report from the IPPR arguing that London property has become a sort of global reserve currency for the wealthy elite and warned about the effect on housing across the capital as billionaires price out millionaires and the effect works right down the system to priced-out first-time buyers, ripped-off private renters and forced-out housing benefit claimants.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 