Home alone: what Brexit could mean for housing
Posted: June 24, 2016 Filed under: Europe, Help to Buy, Housing associations, Housing market, Starter homes | Tags: EU Referendum Leave a commentOriginally published on June 24 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
As the dust settles on the momentous vote for Brexit, the one certainty seems to be uncertainty.
I blogged last week about what would follow a Leave vote that seemed a possiblity but no more than that. Here’s my updated take on the likely consequences for housing now that it’s a reality.
Housing market
The markets are signalling, no screaming, that they expect huge dislocation. Shares in leading housebuilders led the stock market plunge, with falls of 40% or more at one stage, and banks were not far behind with falls of 25%.
You could read this as a signal that the City expects house prices and land prices to fall with severe impacts for both – or as a reaction to panic and uncertainty.
Either way, there will be short-term consequences. Housebuilders look certain to scale back development, stop opening new sites and hold off on decisions to invest in land. Equally, few people will want to buy in a market that could be about to see prices fall and the wider market will stall.
A right to own?
Posted: June 13, 2016 Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Home ownership, Private renting | Tags: Civitas, Peter Saunders Leave a commentOriginally posted on June 13 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
What should we do if we really want to reverse the decline in home ownership?
That’s the question posed in a new book published by centre right think tank Civitas (downloadable here). The answers are interesting and surprising, not just because of where it sits on the political spectrum, but also because the author is a longstanding evangelist for the home owning society and opponent of ‘Marxist’ housing advocates.
Peter Saunders wrote a seminal book called A Nation of Home Owners in 1990 that made a passionate argument for the expansion of home ownership as the choice of most people and as a force for good in promoting community cohesion and civic participation.
As such, you might have thought he’d be completely in tune with David Cameron, George Osborne and Brandon Lewis and their policies to satisfy the 86 per cent of us who want to be home owners.
In the bag
Posted: June 7, 2016 Filed under: Housing benefit, Starter homes, Supported housing, Uncategorized | Tags: Housing and Planning Act, LHA cap Leave a commentOriginally posted on June 7 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
With the Housing and Planning Act safely in the bag, ministers must be feeling pretty pleased with themselves – and it shows.
Complaints about controversial parts of the act were swatted away again and again at Communities and Local Government (CLG) questions on Monday with a mix of barely concealed contempt and dodgy statistics. But there were also some reminders of issues that may prove more intractable than the legislation assumes and of one big problem that is about to come to a head.
Hitting a million
Posted: May 26, 2016 Filed under: Housebuilding | Tags: Brandon Lewis, Queen's Speech 2 CommentsOriginally published on May 26 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Statistics published on Thursday provide the first clues as to whether the government will be able to deliver a million new homes in this parliament.
Transformed from an ‘aspiration’ into a ‘commitment’ in the Queen’s Speech, the million homes target will be a stretch but not quite as big a leap as it seems at first glance.
The DCLG housebuilding figures show homes built between January and March 2016 and therefore cover year one of this five-year parliament.
Stable door
Posted: May 23, 2016 Filed under: Europe, Help to Buy, Housing market | Tags: George Osborne, Grant Shapps, Referendum 2 CommentsOriginally published on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Back in 2010 a Conservative housing minister mused that a period of stable house prices would be a good thing. Six years later – and in the context of the European referendum – it would apparently be a disaster.
A report today from the Treasury warns that prices could be 10%-18% lower by 2018 if we vote for Brexit next month. It’s part of a message that a leave vote would trigger what David Cameron calls a DIY recession that would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.
I’ll leave the wider economic arguments to others (though note this would be quite a mild recession by comparison with the recent past) and concentrate here on house prices. This may seem a minor point by comparison with the more general impact on the economy but it’s interesting that this was the aspect of today’s Treasury analysis that George Osborne chose to trail last week.
Questions of power
Posted: May 9, 2016 Filed under: Affordable housing, Cornwall, Local government, London, Planning, Right to buy, Scotland, Second homes, Wales | Tags: Bristol, Marvin Rees, Sadiq Khan Leave a commentOriginally posted on May 9 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
The May elections have a common theme when it comes to housing: can the winners really do what they say?
From Sadiq Khan to Marvin Rees, from Nicola Sturgeon to Carwyn Jones and from council leaders all over England to the voters of St Ives, winning the elections last week was the easy bit. The hard work starts now.
I’ll start with the poll closest to me: the referendum in St Ives on a Neighbourhood Plan that will ban the building of new second homes that has brought national attention.
More than 80% of residents supported the plan last Thursday and it’s impossible not to sympathise. Around a quarter of the homes in St Ives are either second homes or holiday lets and the problem is even worse in other Cornish communities. That does not just price out locals it also means a lack of year-round residents that makes it hard to sustain vital services and infrastructure.
Jules Birch 