Watch out, folks, we are about to be hit by a snowstorm of economic data. So put on your goggles and look out for the one big hurtling fact that really matters. The key point you need to remember during this week’s spending announcements is that the population of the UK is set to rise by an incredible 10 million over the next 20 years. That is more than the population of Greater London crash-landing on a land mass half the size of France.
Not since industrialisation, not since medieval England recovered from the Black Death, has there been anything like it. Thanks very largely to Labour’s deliberate failure to control immigration, and to higher birth rates, the Big Society is about to get very big indeed.
What jobs will we all do? Where will we all live? And what effect will that extra demand have on the cost of housing?
We already have huge waiting lists for social housing. On the private market the average age of a first-time buyer has now soared to 37 (at the height of the 1980s boom it was down to about 23) and we have desperate problems of overcrowding.
In 1998, about the time Labour let the brakes off immigration, the annual growth in population exceeded new housing supply for the first time, and since then the problem has been getting worse. One answer, I suppose, is to try to create cheaper housing by encouraging existing homes to become more affordable.
Recent pronouncements from the Coalition Government have suggested a new doctrine: that house prices should be flat, or flattish, while earnings rise to meet them. In other words, the British middle classes are being asked to wean themselves off house price inflation, and become more continental, with a higher proportion of rentals.
And a lot of people will say amen to that and are now searching online for realtors near me phrases. Why do we pump all this money into unresponsive bricks and mortar, when we could be investing our capital in stocks and shares and thereby in the flesh-and-blood businesses that add to the GNP of Britain? They will point out – entirely correctly, that this national addiction to house price inflation has bred a kind of financial illiteracy, an apathy about any other investment except the roof over our heads.
And they will point out that it was the house price bubble – the demented practice of giving vast mortgages to people with no incomes and no assets – that led to the crash. Better a stagnant housing market, they will say, than another great boom and another great bust. Which is all very well, in theory so it’s better to know the market by checking this page and learn to avoid common mistakes home buyers make. However if you’re a real estate firm owner you can bring your website plugin to the future to attract more home buyers.
In practice, it looks as if flattening off the housing market is both risky in the short term, and unachievable in the long term. The sad truth is that it is still psychologically essential to the British middle classes to have a sense that our principal asset is gently appreciating in value, or at least that it will over the long term.
For months now we as a nation have talked about cuts and nothing but cuts, with the morbid fascination of an Oprah Winfrey discussion of self-harm. We know we have to go through with the operation. But we don’t know quite how extensive the slicing is going to be, and we have been kept so long in the waiting room while the surgeon counts his scalpels that the foreboding has been allowed to grow.
That is why it is so vital – as soon as the Comprehensive Spending Review is announced – that we stop droning on about cuts, and start talking about the reasons for these cuts. They are not about shrinking the state. They are about growth, growth, growth – creating the conditions for a sustained economic recovery, and an economic recovery is a function above all of confidence.
People will accept that higher-rate taxpayers should not receive child benefit – a point this column has been making for years. They can see that it is necessary to reform university finance. But if you tell them it is a matter of government policy that their house should effectively fall in value, then you will punch that confidence in the solar plexus – and you will make them less likely to invest, to take on new ventures and new staff.
We are already seeing renewed falls in property values in areas outside London, and the real wobbliness of the market may be concealed by the comparative lack of activity. There are normally about 1 million housing transactions a year in this country. That is now down to 600,000, and if the market falls much further there could be big knock-on effects for the whole system. Rental property owners can hire a property management Auckland service to find potential tenants quicker.
The notional assets of banks still depend on housing stocks whose value has yet to be tested, and if the housing market tanks, then the financial system tanks, too. People will be unable to get the mortgages to buy new homes, and developers will be unable to get the finance to build them, and the problem of supply will get even worse.
The last year of the Labour government was the worst for building new housing for 40 years. And when the economy takes off again, as it undoubtedly will, that shortage of new homes will combine with a growing population to produce the most almighty spike in prices – and young people will be less able than ever to buy a home. Which is why the best way to help those millions in search of an affordable home is not to try vainly to ensure that the present stock of housing becomes more affordable – ie falls in value – but to increase the supply of affordable homes. Many people start by searching for Realtors near me when looking for a home similar to those houses for sale at Reali. Check out this great realtor wetaskiwin.
That is what we have done in London, and that is why housing minister Grant Shapps is right to bring forward his new homes bonus, to give communities an incentive to champion new housing.
It’s also a really good idea to check out other areas as there are some brilliant places abroad where you can get much cheaper property and in stunning areas. One such place has to be Marbella (see https://www.propertyoso.com/areas/marbella-golden-mile-property-for-sale/ for the best options) as the place is just a dream!
The Coalition has done well to get to grips with immigration. But we need to cope with the demographic changes that are now inevitable, and that means investing in houses and other vital infrastructure. Otherwise house prices may continue to slide in the recession, but spike more viciously than ever in the recovery.
This is garbage Boris. All markets have peaks and troughs, if you buy on one of the peaks you will be nursing losses until the next one, that’s life I’m afraid.
House prices always go up against pounds sterling in the long run, but that’s because the value of paper money is constantly being eroded.
Now it seems the political classes both sides of the pond wish to speed up this process by printing loads more money. This will just lead to chaos as it all sloshes around the financial system causing bubble after bubble.
The problem is not that we haven’t printed enough money, it’s that we’ve printed too much. The malaise and stagnation will continue until the yanks elect a president with the cajones to reduce the amount of dollars in circulation.
When this happens hold onto your hats, because guess what, the American’s don’t care what happens to the British middle classes and the UK housing market!
Boris’s argument seems to be counter intuitive in that he is saying we should invest in new homes just when there seem to be lots around. Is that the best focus for investment in the future: having more property? And being more ego-centred about owing a home. How about property-sharing and other more imaginative ideas and schemes that might help towards more cohesive societies, communities and families?
I understand that our host has a personal interest in the subject of new homes.
“The sad truth is that it is still psychologically essential to the British middle classes to have a sense that our principal asset is gently appreciating in value, or at least that it will over the long term.”
I think it was Le Corbusier who called the house “a machine for living in”, and – like any machine – it needs maintenance, and it wears out. Why should a house appreciate in value, when machines depreciate? How long it takes for a machine to fail depends on how well it was built and the standard of maintenance it receives – but only the most superb houses deserve to live forever (e.g. Palladio’s villas).
When amateurs become landlords, you’re lucky to get any maintenance at all. I’ve seen silly money paid for houses that were worth less than when they were built, simply due to age and wear, regardless of house price fluctuations. So no, the idea that a house can naturally appreciate in value, just by sitting there, is a delusion in the long term. Careful maintenance might help it retain its value, but that’s it. It’s a machine, not a noble element.
Interesting post. It seems the current economic climate can greatly influence the age at which someone may purchase their first home. Thank you for posting this interesting observation.
Boris is right I’mn sure but why are we still doing nothing to deter people from ploughing their money into second mortgages. There are now over 1 million buy to let mortgages. That’s a million homes removed from the potential ownership market with the attendant evils of people in low paid scenic rural communities who can not get on the housing ladder as the local stock is consumed by part time residents. Why are the tax laws not adjusted to make this kind of unproductive multiple ownership uneconomic. If people with moneyto invest put it into British industry instead, perhaps we would have a more balanced economy. Home ownership by the occupants is not a strange British obsession, it is a perfectly reasonable adult expectation that Gordon Brown and his predecesors have moved out of many people’s reach sentencing them to lives of throwing money down the drain.
Mr Johnson: ” Higher-rate taxpayers should not receive child benefit – a point I have been making for years.” May I ask why they should not receive child benefit like everybody else? They pay their taxes just like everybody else. In fact they pay much more tax than low earners. And this money goes to keep those lazy unemployed-busy-baby-breeding-assholes in comfort, like, sitting at home watching Oprah show on giant flat screen TVs paid for with their social benefits funded by high/low earners.
And at least, those higher-rate taxpayers have real kids. You know why?
Because hundreds of thousands of East Europeans working in the UK are being paid millions in child benefit for families who don’t even live here. In Poland alone, an estimated 40,000 children living in Poland receive British child benefit. So a Pole with one child back home can receive weekly benefit from the UK of £20.30 – instead of the allowance in Warsaw that works out at just £3.36.
Employees from 8 ex-Eastern Bloc nations such as Lithuania and Hungary are cashing in because benefits in their countries are so low.
Because now even the most senior officials at HM Revenue and Customs which is responsible for child benefit, admit they have ” no idea how many children who have never set foot in the UK are receiving our child benefit. ” In other words: they don’t know how many are real children and how many are ghost children. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/2010/10/11/40-000-kids-in-poland-get-uk-child-benefit-115875-22625115/
Owning a 2nd home is selfish, in that it would be unsustainable were we all to do it.
How many homes does Boris Johnson own?
Your Island is too small for that many people. Why not talk to your cousin Uncle Sam? HE has plenty of housing on sale in HIS Big Plantation. The Brits can ship your well educated excessive population over there. I’m sure Uncle Sam will like the idea.
investing in the future…… according to the US unemployment rate just released – Texas is now the new California for entrpreneurship, investors, tech companies and venture capitals. Texas is a right to work state, meaning that workers cannot be compelled to join a union. Texas also has no income tax, which gives its firms a roughly 10% cost advantage over a “progressive” state like California.
Source: Where the new jobs are, Wall Street Journal 27 October