Return of the undead
Posted: May 11, 2012 Filed under: Buy to let, Mortgages, Private renting 7 CommentsAnother quarter, another big milestone for buy to let. The latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) reveal some startling facts about the growth of loans to landlords.
The boom in buy to let is usually associated with the mid-2000s: the number of BTL mortgages rose from 120,000 in 2000 to more than a million in 2007. Then lending slumped after the credit crunch and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. By 2010 Fergus and Judith Wilson, the ex-teachers who went on to buy 700 homes, were pronouncing that the sector was ‘absolutely dead and will never return’.
Two years on and the corpse is back to life with a vengeance. BTL lending for house purchase is running 30 per cent ahead of levels seen a year ago (although down 9 per cent on the fourth quarter). As the CML points out, new lending to landlords is still around a third of 2007 levels, but that disguises the underlying trend.
Disenfranchised by the housing system
Posted: May 2, 2012 Filed under: Private renting 4 CommentsAs Britain votes in local elections this week, spare a thought for the people who are effectively disenfranchised by the housing system. The total already runs into millions and the problem is set to get much worse.
It stems from the seemingly unstoppable growth of the housing tenure – private renting – in which people are least likely to register to vote. According to the latest estimate, there are 3.6 million private renting households in England. With an estimated 2.3 people in each of those households that gives a total of 8.3 million people. About a million of those households are couples with children or lone parents, but that still leaves perhaps 6.5 million people of voting age plus perhaps another 1.5 million in Scotland and Wales.
Stat attack
Posted: May 1, 2012 Filed under: Housebuilding, Private renting Leave a commentIt’s Communities and Local Government questions – so it must time for a barrage of contradictory statistics.
I’ve grown used to the trading of numerical insults every few weeks between coalition and opposition over the last year or so. But would a week in which politics has been dominated by a stat (the 0.2 per cent fall in GDP that means the UK is in a double dip recession) make any difference?
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
Stoke-on-Thames: location, location, location
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting 5 CommentsThe news about Newham and Stoke has touched a nerve like few other housing stories this year. I wonder though if the coverage so far has identified the crucial issue.
The story broke on the Today programme on Tuesday morning. Newham had written to 1,179 housing associations around the country asking for help in finding homes for people affected by housing benefit cuts. The reason Stoke is in the headlines is that a housing association there went public with the letter (here). Housing minister Grant Shapps appeared alongside Newham mayor Robin Wales and accused him of ‘playing politics’ with the issue (something that Shapps himself would of course never do). I blogged my initial take on the issue for Inside Housing here but there are excellent blogs out there too from Polly Curtis, Steve Hilditch, Nancy Kelley and Toby Lloyd.
Stoke-on-Thames
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting Leave a commentStoke? Hull? Newham? Croydon? Westminster? Housing benefit cuts are a story in search of a location.
What I mean by that is that the story that dominated this morning’s Today programme could have been about just about any borough in London and any city in the north and midlands. We all know that sooner or later there will be real faces to put to the victims of the housing benefit cuts and real places where the problems will emerge. Up to now, though, and with several of the more draconian cuts still to come, we’ve had largely anecdotal evidence.
Read more on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
See you later, regulator
Posted: April 3, 2012 Filed under: Buy to let, Mortgages, Private renting 2 CommentsAnother day, another consultation and still no prospect of regulating buy to let.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) closed the consultation on its Mortgage Market Review (MMR) on Friday to a chorus of calls from lenders for more flexibility and pleas from organisations like Shelter for no more concessions to the banks. The charity also produced an animation to press its case against reckless mortgage lending.
Read the rest of this entry »
Rhetoric and reality
Posted: March 16, 2012 Filed under: Private renting 2 CommentsThere is rhetoric. David Cameron kicked off this week by declaring that ‘strong families and stable communities are built from good homes’. Grant Shapps added that ‘we want to help everyone achieve their ambitions, and feel the pride of home ownership’.
And then there is reality. Also this week, a report from Shelter looks at the 3.6 million households who are renting privately. They include one million families with children – double the number five years ago. Some may benefit from the NewBuy Guarantee that Cameron and Shapps launched on Monday, others may make it on to the housing ladder in other ways, some will be renting by choice, but almost three million adults expect to be renting privately for five years or more, including 40 per cent of families with children and a third of those in full-time work. With six- and 12-month tenancies the norm in the private rented sector, where are these strong families to find stable communities, good homes and pride?
Jules Birch 