Stay or go?

Posted: July 25, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Social housing | Leave a comment

Every time I think I’ve got my head around the pernicious impacts of the bedroom tax something new emerges to make me think again.

The trigger this time is an excellent report from Aragon Housing Association on the first 100 days of what the government calls the spare room subsidy. But that also sent me back to several conversations I had at the CIH conference in Manchester and reports published while I was on holiday from the National Housing Federation (twice), Chartered Institute of Housing and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Even before that the evidence was accumulating from around the country that the effects are at least as bad, and probably worse, than most people expected or feared. From rent arrears in Newcastle and Ayrshire to fears of more suicides in Birmingham to criticism of the Labour leadership’s stance on the issue in Liverpool, the effects of the bedroom tax continue to be felt emotionally, financially and politically.

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Going up

Posted: July 22, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market | Leave a comment

Is it too late to mitigate the impact of the impending disaster that is Help to Buy?

As the government prepares to reveal more details of the mortgage guarantee element of the controversial scheme (probably tomorrow), the evidence is already accumulating of the effect of early impact of Help to Buy plus the boost to mortgages delivered by the Funding for Lending scheme.

Mortgage lending is up, asking prices are up for seven months in a row and reservations under the equity loan part of Help to Buy are up by almost three times on the more limited and targeted FirstBuy scheme that it replaced. So too are forecasts of what will happen to prices over the next few years.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Middle way

Posted: July 19, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Private renting | Leave a comment

A call to force letting agents be upfront about their charges has made all theheadlines but a report published by MPs today is about much more than that.

After complaints from both tenants and landlords about a sector dubbed ‘the property industry’s Wild West’, the cross-party Communities and Local Government committee recommends going further than the government’s plan to require letting agents to belong to an approved redress scheme. They say it should be accompanied by ‘a robust cost of practice that sets out clear standards with which agents are required to comply’ and they recommend that letting and managing agents should be subject to the same regulation – and required to meet the same professional standards – as sales agents.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Missing millions

Posted: July 17, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding | Leave a comment

So where are the 250,000 homes going to come from? And what are the consequences of not building them?

Almost ten years after the Barker review set that benchmark for housing provision in England to keep house price inflation under control, a new report out from Shelter points out that we are already a million homes behind. If we carry on building at today’s miserable levels the shortfall will rise by another million homes every six and a half years.

In Getting Serious About the Housing Shortage, Matt Griffith and Pete Jefferys argue this would mean accepting a continued fall in home ownership and an ever-rising housing benefit bill while increasing individual and national vulnerability to economic shocks.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Leap of faith

Posted: July 15, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

Returning from holiday this morning to hear Iain Duncan Smith mouth half-truths and dodgy stats about benefits on the Today programme it felt like I had never been away.

The work and pensions secretary was speaking as the overall benefit cap was introduced in another 335 local authority areas from today. The remaining 40 most affected areas will follow next month.

In an astonishing interview IDS packed in so many questionable claims that it seemed he was determined to establish a decisive lead in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) game of dodgy stats bingo.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Happy birthday welfare state

Posted: June 29, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Health, History, Welfare state | Leave a comment

This Friday marks the 65th anniversary of one of the greatest moments in British history. With some justification, it has been called ‘our second Finest Hour’.

But as the welfare state and the National Health Service reach retirement age are both of them being pensioned off by a government intent on austerity and endless rounds of welfare and public sector ‘reform’?

Monday, July 5, 1948 was known as The Appointed Day. It marked not just the start of the NHS but also full implementation of the Beveridge plan for social security. A comprehensive system of national insurance now complemented earlier measures including family allowances and industrial injuries compensation.

NHS-Launch-Leaflet

The NHS launch leaflet, July 1948

Personal testimonies of the time range from the touching to the gruesome and the comical to the romantic. One young GP remembered going to see a family where he’d left medicine for a sick child. As he was leaving he heard coughing and asked the mother if she wanted him to go up. ‘I’m sorry, doctor, we can’t afford it,’ she said, explaining that it was another child who was ill. ‘Today, July 5th, it’ll cost you nothing, I was able to tell her,’ he said. ‘And I’ve never forgotten it.’

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Facing the future

Posted: June 28, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing benefit, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

So now we know: 10 years of certainty on rents, five years on grant and who knows how many more years of welfare ‘reform’.

The future has come into much clearer focus this week following the spending round on Wednesday and the investment announcement on Thursday. And, as luck would have it, all of this coincided with the biggest housing conference of the year.

Read the rest of my thoughts on the implications of the spending round for housing on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Sold short

Posted: June 24, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Energy efficiency, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

A stark warning of the consequences of market failure in the housing system comes from an independent commission today.

The broad-based group set up by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors(RICS) is chaired by Michael Newey, RICS president elect and chief executive of Broadland Housing Group, and also includes Mark Clare of Barratt, Nick Jopling of Grainger, James Pargeter of Deloitte Real Estate, Paul Tennant of Orbit and Duncan Maclennan of University of St Andrews.

They argue that: ‘High house prices, complemented with high levels of housing unaffordability are the greatest signs of market failure. This in turn has an adverse effect on labour mobility, commuting, productivity and job creation. This commission recognises the negative impact that a poor housing system has on the wider economy and hopes to see it elevated still higher on government agendas.

In other words, what the commission argues are ‘clear signs of market failure’ include negative externalities that go far beyond housing and require a switch away from the ‘short-termism’ that has characterised policy for the last 50 years.

However, in an illustration of just how difficult it is to break away from a short-term approach, the commission seems to face both ways on current government policies.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Own goal

Posted: June 17, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market, Mortgages | Leave a comment

As average asking prices pass £250,000 for the first time, two-thirds of the under-45s seem to have given up on the idea of ever owning a home.

Two surveys out today underline the point that what’s ‘good news’ for existing owners is exactly the opposite for people struggling to get on to the housing ladder.

Rightmove says that the market in the ‘under-priced’ (its word not mine) South East has ‘lifted off’ with asking prices rising by 14.8 per cent in the first six months of 2013 alone. However, the average increase across England and Wales is 10.4 per cent and the increase is even 5.8 per cent in the least buoyant region, the East Midlands.

If anything like that was repeated across the whole 12 months, 2013 would be appear to be set for a boom unlike anything seen since the credit crunch hit in 2007. True these are asking prices and prices actually achieved are still in the relative doldrums but they indicate that existing owners are reacting predictably to the start of Help to Buy by ramping up their demands.

Contrast that with another survey out today from the Halifax.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

The big switch

Posted: June 6, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housing benefit, Housing finance, Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

Ed Miliband has ended three decades of political consensus that it’s better to subsidise rents than new homes but changing course will not be easy.

The Labour leader’s speech in Newham this morning is significant in all kinds of ways: for the party’s positioning ahead of the next election; for the implied switch to contributory benefits and ‘something for something’; for tackling low pay; and for the careful use of ‘social security’ to avoid the loaded term ‘welfare’.

Even the setting – Newham Dockside – is significant since it looks very much like an endorsement of the more proactive but harsher approach to benefit claimants adopted by its mayor Sir Robin Wales.

All of those things could have major implications for housing but none so much as the plan to shift spending back from housing benefit to bricks and mortar – the end of ‘letting housing benefit take the strain’ and admitting the failure over decades to build enough homes.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my post for Inside Housing

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