A nation divided by housing tenure
Posted: December 14, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Buy to let, Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting, Social housing | Tags: Census | Leave a commentThis 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.
Open verdict
Posted: November 26, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentThe awful story of Malcolm Frost, who was evicted and found dead in his garden shed 10 days later, has implications that go beyond one individual tragedy.
The details as reported from the inquest by The Sentinel are these. The 61-year-old former painter and decorator was evicted from his home in Alsager, Cheshire in March for not paying the rent. Roy Edwards, a friend and neighbour, had called the council to register concern about his welfare three months before but staff took no action. He told the inquest that he had been buying Mr Frost food every day because he had no money. He found him living in his shed after he was evicted and the locks were changed and when he went to check on him a few days later he was dead.
The house from which Mr Frost was evicted was his childhood home. It emerged at the inquest that he had stopped working a few years before his death and money worries had prompted him to sell his house to a private landlord and pay rent to live there. Then he fell into arrears.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
After the fall
Posted: November 20, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a commentA year ago this week some devastating statistics were published that undermined everything that the government was saying in its housing strategy. Has anything changed 12 months on?
The 97 per cent fall in starts of affordable homes (to just 454 in the whole of England) between April to September 2010 and the same six months in 2011 was published the day after David Cameron and Grant Shapps launched a strategy they claimed was ‘radical and unashamedly ambitious’. Whether the timing was coincidence, cock-up or conspiracy it caused acute embarrassment for the government.
After that, the only way was up. Starts duly picked up in the second half of the year but the acid test was always going to be the number of starts a year later.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Squeezed out
Posted: October 31, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Economics, Labour market, Mortgages, Private renting, Social housing | Leave a commentHousing is the big thing missing from today’s major report on living standards from the Resolution Foundation.
The final report of its Commission on Living Standards looks at the plight of low and middle income families. Things were bad even before the crash with average incomes falling by £570 between 2003 and 2008 as growing inequality meant that prosperity was not shared around. The gap was only made up by a £730 a year increase in tax credits.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Conference calls
Posted: October 4, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a commentAnother week, another party conference that seems longer on talk than action on the housing crisis. Like the Liberal Democrats in Brighton, the Labour party in Manchester made all the right noises. It even advocated many of the same policies – if you can call carefully crafted aspirations policies.
As I noted in my blog for Inside Housing on Monday, the headline commitment by Ed Balls to funding 100,000 affordable homes and a stamp duty holiday from the proceeds of the 4G mobile phone auction is not actually a policy commitment at all, just a call for the government to do something in the next two years. If Labour wins the 2015 election, George Osborne will have already spent the money (almost certainly on something else) and in the absence of another one-off windfall housing will have to take its place in the queue for the zero-based spending review planned by Balls. His speech this week is a promising signal that housing could be a priority but no more than that.
Five-year stretch
Posted: September 28, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Blogging, Economics, Housing market, Social housing | Leave a commentFive years ago this month I started my blog for Inside Housing wondering how I would ever find enough interesting things to say. I needn’t have worried.
Fortunately for me (bad news is always good news for bloggers and journalists) and unfortunately for everyone else, the week before I wrote my first post a small bank called Northern Rock went bust. The consequences of that still dominate my blogging five years later (and hopefully that makes it interesting enough to keep reading).
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Clear yellow water
Posted: September 26, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Social housing | 4 CommentsThere are some fine words on housing this week from the Liberal Democrats but do they amount to any more than just words?
The policy paper they endorsed at their annual conference in Brighton yesterday reads like it has been plucked from the wish list of the housing organisations campaigning jointly under the banner of Homes for Britain. And the Lib Dem rejection of the planning liberalisation proclaimed by what I have now come to think of as the Conservatories differentiates the governing parties still further. I’m not sure I’d want to go too close to it but there is now some clear yellow water.
Yet even as the Lib Dems call for housebuilding to be trebled to 300,000 homes a year it’s hard to forget that they also endorsed the coalition’s 65 per cent cut in affordable housing investment.
Taken for granted
Posted: September 4, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a commentMany people will be celebrating the departure Grant Shapps today. My own feelings are much more mixed.
I’ve disagreed with the housing minister on most of the major policy changes he’s made, from ending security of tenure to affordable rent and from watering down the homelessness legislation to pay to stay, as well as those he hasn’t like greater regulation of the private rented sector.
However, I’ve never agreed with those who regard him as a few sheets short of a ministerial brief: the Stan Laurel to the Oliver Hardy of Eric Pickles. Entertaining as the comparison was at the time, amusing as it may be to play #shappstistics and #shappsbingo on twitter, if he was just a figure of fun would he have been able to deliver the most radical change in social housing policy for 30 years?
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
Economic ally
Posted: August 30, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Economics, Housing finance, Social housing | Leave a commentHousing has gained an unexpected new ally in the battle to convince the government to fund more affordable new homes.
City broker Tullett Prebon is better known for its warnings of financial Armageddon and for shoot-from-the-hip appearances on the Today programme by its chief executive Terry Smith. It has even argued that financial austerity and severe cuts in public spending are a myth spun by the government to the bond markets.
But now a report by its global head of research Tim Morgan argues not only that a house building programme is one the few options left for the government, but also that it must be social housing funded by public investment.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
The road home
Posted: August 22, 2012 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Economics, Housing finance, Social housing | Leave a commentIf the government can change the public borrowing rules for roads, why not for council housing?
The papers this morning (see here and here) have been briefed that the government growth package to be launched when parliament returns next month will include not just a housebuilding stimulus but a radical new plan to boost road building.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 