Child’s play
Posted: September 24, 2012 Filed under: Housing market 2 CommentsNick Clegg’s ‘pensions for property’ plan is the most breathtakingly stupid idea since, well, the last time a government proposed something similar.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander put forward the proposal in interviews on Sunday as a way of allowing parents and grandparents to use their pension fund to guarantee a deposit for their children and grandchildren.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Runaway train
Posted: September 17, 2012 Filed under: Welfare reform Leave a commentThe universal credit was meant to be the great prize that would make up for all the pain of welfare cuts but what if it just adds to it?
A range of evidence about the past, present and future of welfare is published today and the results suggest a system that is cracking under the strain even before the big wave of cuts due next April and the phased introduction of the universal credit starting at the same time.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Going backwards
Posted: September 11, 2012 Filed under: Housing market Leave a commentThe government is missing the chance to tackle housing market volatility and its damaging consequences for households and the wider economy.
That’s the fear expressed in a progress report out today from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s housing market taskforce that warns that ‘in some ways we are moving further away from this goal’.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
A lot of quid, not much quo
Posted: September 10, 2012 Filed under: Housebuilding 9 CommentsThe bail-out of the banks quite rightly led to calls for them to do something in return. Why is nobody saying the same about the bail-out of the big housebuilders?
Each new scheme for the banks has come with strings attached designed to ensure that they make more loans. None have worked so far but a quid pro quo is seen as a political necessity every time a new scheme is suggested. Under the latest wheeze, the Bank of England’s Funding for Lending scheme, banks can borrow money at just 0.25 per cent for four years but if their lending falls between now and 2013 the rate on the loan will be steadily increased.
Contrast that with what has happened with the major housebuilders. Just as with the banks, the credit crunch triggered a crisis for the industry, this one caused by having paid too much for land that fell in value and sites full of homes they could not sell. Just as with the banks they have been bailed out by the taxpayer – and, just to be clear, we are not talking about tens or hundreds of millions but several billion pounds.
Third time lucky?
Posted: September 6, 2012 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding Leave a commentSo here it is: what by my reckoning the coalition government’s third housing strategy in two and a half years.
Mark one was the assumption that implementing the coalition’s programme for government would do the trick. The ‘powerful new incentive’ of the new homes bonus would persuade local authorities to approve more homes and get housebuilding moving. The Localism Act would turn help turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs. And FirstBuy would give a time-limited kick-start to the housing market with equity loans for first-time buyers.
When that didn’t work, Mark two came last November. The big idea was NewBuy, a government-backed mortgage indemnity scheme to give 95 per cent mortgages on new homes to up to 100,000 buyers. That was backed up by funds for custom homes and empty homes, a consultation on right to buy 2 and another review of investment in the private rented sector.
Home delivery
Posted: September 5, 2012 Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning, Private renting Leave a commentIt’s still very early days but the appointments of the new ministerial team at the DCLG team are already raising some questions for me.
According the line being spun by the new Conservative chair Grant Shapps on the Today programme this morning, the government is now at the delivery stage. Within that context, new housing minister Mark Prisk’s previous job as construction minister should bode well for the top priority of building more homes. Meanwhile the appointment of Nick Boles as planning minister looks to signal a fresh emphasis on reforming the planning system to boost the economy.
However, a brief look at their track record suggests some intriguing possibilities on policy – as well as some potential tensions. Here are three initial questions that occur to me about the green belt, private rented sector regulation and housebuilding.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
My criminal past
Posted: August 31, 2012 Filed under: Empty homes, Legal, Squatting 5 CommentsBack in the early 80s I did what many people arriving in London did: I squatted in a house that had been left empty. Anyone doing the same after Saturday will be a criminal.
The house in question was owned by the Greater London Council (GLC) and like many others owned by local authorities all over London it had been left empty for years because of a road scheme that never was or a slum clearance scheme that was never finished. Nobody was living there and, given the big hole in the floor of one of the bedrooms and the water streaming down the walls of most of the others, that was understandable. So when we squatted it we were not denying anybody else a home, we were simply fixing it up and creating one for ourselves in what became one more squat in a whole street of squats. Given that we were all on the dole (this was 1981, the worst time to be a graduate until now) we were probably even saving the taxpayer money.
Our dysfunctional housing market
Posted: August 27, 2012 Filed under: Housing market, Mortgages, Private renting 5 CommentsAnyone wondering why the housing market is so dysfunctional can find plenty of explanations in figures released over the last few days.
Exhibit one: the Bank of England’s account of the effect its £375 billion (so far) quantitative easing programme. Most of the publicity has gone to the revelation that the richest 5 per cent of the population have gained 40 per cent of the benefits as the result of the way it has inflated the prices of assets like shares. However, it also includes an estimate of the way that borrowers have benefitted at the expense of savers because of record low interest rates. The total impact of lower rates on secured lending (mostly mortgages) is estimated at £94.4 billion since September 2008.
