The decade in housing

Posted: January 10, 2020 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Devolution, Fire safety, Grenfell Tower, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing associations, Housing benefit, Private renting, Social housing, Tenants, Tenure change | Leave a comment

Originally published in Inside Housing on January 10.

It was a decade of four elections, four prime ministers and three referenda. It began in the midst of a Global Financial Crisis and ended with the political crisis of Brexit. It was scarred by the disaster at Grenfell Tower.

All but 15 of the 520 weeks in the 2010s had a Conservative prime minister but four different governments brought four different approaches. David Cameron was all about cuts in coalition followed by radical (but mostly failed) marketising reforms once he had elbowed Nick Clegg aside. Theresa May brought a profound change in rhetoric and some significant changes of substance. Boris Johnson shifted the emphasis back to home ownership.

Here is the decade summed up in 10 headings: Read the rest of this entry »

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A new mindset on decarbonisation

Posted: August 13, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Climate change, Environment, Social housing, Tenure change, Wales, Zero carbon homes | Leave a comment

Originally posted on August 9 on my blog for Inside Housing.

Decarbonisation is set to be one of the biggest housing issues of the next decade but the debate about how to do it and how to pay for it is only just getting started.

If the need for dramatic action has long been clear, so too has a tendency to put off doing anything meaningful – witness the way that England’s ambition to make all new homes zero carbon by 2016 was watered down and then dropped by the self-styled ‘greenest government ever’.

But as extreme weather and Extinction Rebellion bring the climate emergency to the top of the agenda the issue is back with a vengeance.

Read the rest of this entry »

One small step (backwards)

Posted: January 25, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Private renting, Tenure change | Leave a comment

Originally posted on my blog for Inside Housing on January 25.

More of us now rent from a private landlord than at any time since the first man walked on the moon.

Figures in the 2016/17 English Housing Survey published on Thursday show yet another rise in the proportion of households renting from a private landlord and decline in home ownership.

More than 20% of us are now private renters, the highest figure in any year since 1969, the year of Woodstock and one small step for man.

Owner-occupation declined slightly from 62.9% to 62.6% but that overall figure conceals two very different trends.

The proportion of households who own outright rose again to 34.1% while the proportion buying with a mortgage fell to just 28.4%.

To put that second figure in perspective, throughout the 1990s more than 40% of us were buying with a mortgage.

Social renting remained stable at just over 17% of households, but with the local authority share of that falling again.

Read the rest of this entry »

Home ownership: Decline and rise?

Posted: February 18, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Home ownership, Private renting, Social housing, Tenure change | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Originally posted on February 18 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing

At first sight, headline results from the English Housing Survey published on Thursday are very good news for Brandon Lewis.

As the housing minister was quick to point out, the survey shows 2014/15 was the first year since 2003 when the home ownership rate in England did not fall. And, as this graph also shows, private renting fell for the first time since 1999:

tenure

He might also have pointed to this graph showing a surprise turnaround in the tenure prospects of Generation Rent:

graph

The fall in ownership over the last 10 years has been most marked among young people, so this increase in ownership among the 25-34s in 2014/15 and decline in private renting is a marked reversal of that trend.

On the face of it then it’s good news for ministers in their quest to revive the property-owning democracy and bad news for doom-mongers (like me). Perhaps all those dire predictions that we are on course to become a nation of private renters are wrong? Maybe Help to Buy really is working? Did Labour commission the Redfern Review into the decline of home ownership to look at a problem that no longer exists?

Read the rest of this entry »