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

Decline and fall

Posted: June 4, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Coalition ministers rarely fail to taunt Labour with the fact that the number of affordable homes fell under the last government.

Conservative housing minister Mark Prisk and Lib Dem junior communities minister Don Foster deployed it yet again at DCLG questions yesterday.

Labour’s Jack Dromey attacked the government’s record on housebuilding and called for a rejection of the ‘economic illiteracy of austerity, which is pushing up the costs of failure through additional borrowing and soaring housing benefit bills’. He asked: ‘Does the housing minister agree that the time has come to invest in badly needed social and affordable homes to rent or buy, creating jobs and apprenticeships, bringing down the costs of failure and getting our economy moving?’

In response Foster was quick to deploy the favourite stat:

‘I think that the whole House will have been somewhat amused by the cheek of the hon. Gentleman, given that under his party’s administration we saw a reduction of 421,000 in the number of affordable homes. This government have introduced measures to reverse that trend, and we hope to announce further measures in the near future.’

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

Help to Build

Posted: June 3, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Social housing | Leave a comment

So, George Osborne, what about some Help to Build to go with all that Help to Buy?

The chancellor’s multi-billion flagship housing policy is under fire from virtually everyone because they can see what the result will be of stoking up demand while doing nothing about supply.

Now the CIH, NHF and g15 are all calling on Osborne to fund an expansion of affordable housing in the spending review for 2015/16 that will be published later this month. That is what they always do ahead of spending reviews of course, but they are deploying some powerful arguments.

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

Going hungry

Posted: May 30, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housing benefit, Poverty | Leave a comment

It’s shocking but sadly not surprising to see the impact of changes to benefits on the soaring number of people relying on food banks.

Shocking because this is happening only two months in to cuts such as the bedroom tax and four weeks into the start of the benefit cap in four London boroughs, not surprising because the pressure has been building for months. This is the start of the ‘decade of destitution’ that Julia Unwin of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has been warning about.

Church Action on Poverty and Oxfam, the two organisations behind the Walking the Breadline report, are calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the relationship between benefit delays and the rising numbers.

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

Sharper focus

Posted: May 29, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Private renting, Social housing, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

Bit by bit the picture of how housing policy would look under a Labour government is becoming clearer but there are still some blurred areas.

In the latest results from its policy review process, the party has published more new ideas on the private rented sector. Following up on earlier proposals on letting agents and their charges and more stable tenancies for families, this one is all about the case for greater regulation of landlords.

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

Renting reform

Posted: May 23, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Civil service, Legal, Private renting, Social housing, Wales | Leave a comment

Wales is set to go where England failed to tread on tenancy reform under plans put forward this week.

The Renting Homes white paper published by the Welsh Government is an updated version of the Law Commission proposals that the previous government in England seemed to like at first, then dithered over and finally allowed to lapse at the last election.

So now Wales is set to reap the benefits of two simple and clearly understood forms of tenancy while England continues to cope with a mess of different ones. These are more than just technical, legal changes. The white paper argues that: ‘The current differences between renting a home from a local authority, housing association or private landlord contribute to weaknesses in the way the whole housing system works. Renting a home is not always seen as a good choice. Indeed, it is sometimes considered to be the last option.’

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

Too close for comfort

Posted: May 20, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market, Mortgages | Leave a comment

Sir Mervyn King’s weekend criticism of Help to Buy leaves George Osborne looking more isolated than ever in his plan for government mortgage guarantees.

King steps down as governor of the Bank of England at the end of June but even so his comments on Murnaghan on Sky News on Sunday are quite a parting shot. Asked how the Bank of England would end a scheme of which it is the ultimate guarantor, he said that:

‘Well I’m sure that there is no place in the long run for a scheme of this kind, this scheme is a little too close for comfort to a general scheme to guarantee mortgages. We had a very healthy mortgage market with competing lenders attracting borrowers before the crisis and we need to get back to that healthy mortgage market. We do not want what the United States have which is a government guaranteed mortgage market and they are desperately trying to find a way out of that position so we mustn’t let this scheme turn into a permanent scheme.’

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

Squeezed out

Posted: May 17, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing market, Private renting | Leave a comment

Here are some thoughts on an event I’ve just chaired for the Resolution Foundation yesterday on the scale of the housing crisis and how to fix it.

Rather like most of my blogs, I thought it would be stronger on the first bit than the second, but the debate revealed a new willingness to look for solutions as well as more reasons to be gloomy.

The centerpiece was a sneak preview of some forthcoming research from the Resolution Foundation and Hometrack on the housing plight of low and middle income households. The foundation is a think tank focused on the 5.6 million people caught in the squeezed middle between stagnating wages and rising costs.

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

Tragic lessons

Posted: May 13, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform | 1 Comment

‘She was fine before this bedroom tax. It was dreamt up in London, by people in offices and big houses. They have no idea the effect it has on people like my mum.’

I’m not sure how the architects of what ministers prefer to call the spare room subsidy will react to the words of Steven Bottrill or the tragic suicide of his mother Stephanie. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) told BBC radio news yesterday that it would be ‘inappropriate to comment’ on an individual case but that did not stop a ‘source’ from adding that the government had made discretionary help available.

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

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