Housing - getting the market moving

The National Housing Federation, which represents Housebuilders, has expressed concern about the rate at which new homes are being built.
 
This is an issue: Britain does need more homes.
 
The housing market which the present coalition government inherited from Labour in 2010 had house building at its lowest peacetime levels since the 1920s.
 
Three years later rents are falling in real terms, 360,000 homes have been built, and house building is growing at its fastest rates for 10 years. And the government's strategy to reduce the deficit has kept interest rates, and therefore mortgage rates, lower than they would otherwise have been. A rise of 1 per cent in interest rates would see typical mortgage bills rise by £1,000 a year, and adding that blow to the burdens which many hardworking families are facing at that time would not be a good idea. Yet another reason Britain cannot afford to let Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, whose policy of borrwing more would drive up market interest rates and therefore mortgages, anywhere near Downing Street.
 
We want to see an economy and housing market built on stability that works for all hardworking people and which encourages higher standards and investment.

Comments

Jim said…
Its fine stating that rents are falling in real terms, however, most people are also facing wage cuts in real terms and have been for the last few years (very few people have been offered 11% you see).

So as a percentage of a persons monthly income rents are not falling, they are actually taking a larger and larger slice of the persons income.

Many taxes are increased due to inflation, but they are increased at a much higher rate than the reported "CPI" figure governments love so much.

an example that immediatly springs to mind is road tax.

this year my 12 month disk cost me £130, last year it was £125 (i actually have a back log of them behind the current one, as i am too lazy to walk back to the house and bin the old one)

Any way that is an increase of 4% even if CPI is quoted at 2%, my pay rise last year was 1%, so we can see the road tax took a larger chunk of my income.

Same story for those paying rent.

As it happens a rise in interest rates would not be a bad thing to be fair. when i bought my house in 2007 i fixed the rate for 5 years at 6.5% (oops) so yeah it was me who lost out for the next 4 years or so when base rate plummeted. the thing is now its a tracking rate its 0.9 above base, so my current rate is 1.4%, though when it did fall (after fixed term ended) i kept on paying the same cash amount (thus overpaying) I was used to that amount going out each month, right now it means i am paying my mortgage off much faster, and all "over payments" of course are payments from the mortage amount (no interest there)

the point here is though i wont lose much sleep until base rate raises to 5.5% whilst it would mean I'm not paying my mortgage off as quick, it wont increase my mortgage payments. I think there are plenty of others in this situation, and those who are worried about interest rates raising by 1% are clearly those who have bought a home they cant afford and i find it hard to find sympathy for that. Though governments pushing up house prices does not help, help to buy schemes and things, i mean.

houses are overpriced so a lot of people cant afford one.

Government answer - lets give them some cheap money at taxpayer expense for a deposit, thus increasing their ability to offer a higher price. Which of course leads the seller to see people have more money to chase houses with, which pushes up the price of houses even higher.

whilst you would probably disagree with me that a conservative government would be bad for Britain.

I think I can can agree with you that a Labour government lead by Milliband and Balls would be an absolute disaster

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