I wonder if they thought about this before turning on the money hose?

[vetran]

NHS isn't fixable by money (if it's fixable (if it needs fixing)). Not sure we need to 'fix' housing.

NHS needs money and management. You can't overhaul an old lady like the NHS with beans.

Have you any idea how many homeless and people desperately wanting their own houses are out there? we are millions short and the prices reflect it. If we build more dwellings and reduce the growing number of people needing housing the prices will fall.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...e-most-on-rent

Let’s start with the first map, which details the absolute cost of private rents. With an average rent of €902 ($1,009) per month, the U.K. has the highest average rent by a mile. Second position is taken by Ireland, but with a rental figure of €679 ($760), the average Irish renter still has €223 ($249) less to find every month. The next clutch of higher-rent countries—the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, and Belgium—cluster slightly above the €600 ($672) mark, while the E.U.’s lowest rents by far are to be found in Latvia, at just €186 ($208) a month.

[mallisarealperson]

Government has created a nation of have and have-nots

Anyone who does not see an issue with our covid financial support scheme(farce) is a moron, or one of the have's milking the country.


according to my accountant. a lot of his self employed clients are cash rich at the moment.

There needs to be an investigation into furlough/covid support.

Just remember next time there is a pandemic/world melt down/zombie invasion, first thing you need to do is file a tax return

[d000hg]

The NHS has an almost unimaginable amount of money and no matter how much its given, it's not enough. Clearly it needs a lot of money but tossing money at complex problems doesn't fix them. We've been doing that for decades.

I fail to see how covering brown and greenfield sites with millions of horrible houses is going to make the country better. Like arguments for vegetarianism/veganism, it's just a way for more people to live less pleasant lives. This whole 'climate emergency' is fundamentally down to population growth, not fossil fuels. Think how much pollution each new house causes.

[velcro]

For housing costs and the idea that building more will reduce costs, there is an interesting analysis here:
https://housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-con...pply-FINAL.pdf

"It is commonly claimed that we have failed to build enough houses to meet the demand for places to live. But official data suggest this is not the case: since the 1996 nadir of house prices, the English housing stock has grown by 168,000 units per year on average, while growth in the number of households has averaged 147,000 per year. As a result, while there were 660,000 more dwellings than households in England in 1996, this surplus has since grown to over 1.1 million by 2018.
...

If not a shortage of housing, what lies behind the explosion in UK house prices from around 4.5 times median household income in 1996 to a multiple of around 8 today? The established theory of house price formation tells us that changes are determined by a combination of market rents and the cost of capital. So house prices can jump or crash in response to shifts in the main components of the cost of capital: mortgage interest rates, taxes, and expectations of future price growth. Such volatility can occur even when rents are stable.Since the late 1990s, mortgage rates have tumbled, with inflation-adjusted interest rates on five-year fixed-rate mortgages, for example, falling from 8% to around 2% today. Since mortgage interest rates tend to be the dominant element of the cost of capital for home owners, this change can be expected to precipitate a substantial increase in house prices of a similar magnitude to the 160% increase seen since 1996.
...
The growth in house prices in the UK over the past 23 years does not appear to have been the result of inadequate supply, but could greater supply nonetheless be the solution? Hitting the government’s target of 300,000 houses per year would certainly put more downward pressure on prices and rents. But the available academic evidence suggests that no plausible rate of supply would significantly reverse the price growth of the past two decades. Multiple modelling exercises, for the UK and elsewhere, find that a 1% increase in the stock of houses tends to lead to a decline in rents and prices of between 1.5% and 2%, all else equal. This implies that even building 300,000 houses per year in England would only cut house prices by something in the order of 10% over the course of 20 years. This is an order of magnitude smaller than the price rises of recent decades. If we are to create more affordable houses to buy and rent, the solutions lie elsewhere.
...
Consequently, there is little reason to believe that supplying an additional 300,000 houses per year would raise home ownership. This is both because its impact on prices would be limited, and because ownership rates are much less sensitive to prices than they are to mortgage availability."

[Andy2]

if not for the buy to let brigade there will be enough houses for everyone in the UK. An individual buying dozens of BTL properties is not sustainable , no matter how many houses are built. Govt should crackdown on them.

[OwlHoot]

Have you any idea how many homeless and people desperately wanting their own houses are out there? we are millions short and the prices reflect it. If we build more dwellings and reduce the growing number of people needing housing the prices will fall. ...

No, house prices won't fall, because the Government will be delighted to be able to allow another flood of immigration to take up the slack, and we'll be back to square one with even more hundreds of square miles of the UK concreted over.

[mattster]

Since the late 1990s, mortgage rates have tumbled, with inflation-adjusted interest rates on five-year fixed-rate mortgages, for example, falling from 8% to around 2% today. Since mortgage interest rates tend to be the dominant element of the cost of capital for home owners, this change can be expected to precipitate a substantial increase in house prices of a similar magnitude to the 160% increase seen since 1996.

Exactly right - there is no "shortage" of housing, as any trip to an estate agents will tell you. There is a shortage of housing at prices that many people are able to pay, but that is due almost entirely to the cost and availability of credit. In very simple terms, I would suggest that people are willing to spend between a third and a half of their take home pay on housing costs. If credit is available at 2%, then they can "afford" a loan that is perhaps 3x larger than when interest rates are 8%, which leads to inflation of the asset price as people compete to buy with their new found "wealth". A risky proposition, of course, since interest rates can (and probably will) go up, but it doesn't matter how sensisble or cautious you are - if the banks are willing to lend the money, there is somebody out there who will borrow it. The big problem facing current borrowers, is that when you borrow a lot of money with a low interest rate (vs less money, at a higher rate, for previous generations), the risk to mortgage rates is all on the upside and, in a low inflation (implied by low rates) environment, less of your debt is inflated away. Simply, you pay a higher percentage of your income for longer. My parents bought their 5 bedder in London for £6k at the start of the 70's. Maybe it was a struggle at the time, but within a decade they could have cleared the mortgage on their credit card if they had wanted to.

[vetran]

For housing costs and the idea that building more will reduce costs, there is an interesting analysis here:
https://housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-con...pply-FINAL.pdf

"It is commonly claimed that we have failed to build enough houses to meet the demand for places to live. But official data suggest this is not the case: since the 1996 nadir of house prices, the English housing stock has grown by 168,000 units per year on average, while growth in the number of households has averaged 147,000 per year. As a result, while there were 660,000 more dwellings than households in England in 1996, this surplus has since grown to over 1.1 million by 2018.
...

If not a shortage of housing, what lies behind the explosion in UK house prices from around 4.5 times median household income in 1996 to a multiple of around 8 today? The established theory of house price formation tells us that changes are determined by a combination of market rents and the cost of capital. So house prices can jump or crash in response to shifts in the main components of the cost of capital: mortgage interest rates, taxes, and expectations of future price growth. Such volatility can occur even when rents are stable.Since the late 1990s, mortgage rates have tumbled, with inflation-adjusted interest rates on five-year fixed-rate mortgages, for example, falling from 8% to around 2% today. Since mortgage interest rates tend to be the dominant element of the cost of capital for home owners, this change can be expected to precipitate a substantial increase in house prices of a similar magnitude to the 160% increase seen since 1996.
...
The growth in house prices in the UK over the past 23 years does not appear to have been the result of inadequate supply, but could greater supply nonetheless be the solution? Hitting the government’s target of 300,000 houses per year would certainly put more downward pressure on prices and rents. But the available academic evidence suggests that no plausible rate of supply would significantly reverse the price growth of the past two decades. Multiple modelling exercises, for the UK and elsewhere, find that a 1% increase in the stock of houses tends to lead to a decline in rents and prices of between 1.5% and 2%, all else equal. This implies that even building 300,000 houses per year in England would only cut house prices by something in the order of 10% over the course of 20 years. This is an order of magnitude smaller than the price rises of recent decades. If we are to create more affordable houses to buy and rent, the solutions lie elsewhere.
...
Consequently, there is little reason to believe that supplying an additional 300,000 houses per year would raise home ownership. This is both because its impact on prices would be limited, and because ownership rates are much less sensitive to prices than they are to mortgage availability."

Well the government disagrees with you.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk...%2C000%20homes.

the beeb disagree with you.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51605912

even Teresa May disagrees with you.

population growth sort of shows why we might need more properties.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-...uk-population/

[vetran]

Exactly right - there is no "shortage" of housing, as any trip to an estate agents will tell you. There is a shortage of housing at prices that many people are able to pay, but that is due almost entirely to the cost and availability of credit. In very simple terms, I would suggest that people are willing to spend between a third and a half of their take home pay on housing costs. If credit is available at 2%, then they can "afford" a loan that is perhaps 3x larger than when interest rates are 8%, which leads to inflation of the asset price as people compete to buy with their new found "wealth". A risky proposition, of course, since interest rates can (and probably will) go up, but it doesn't matter how sensisble or cautious you are - if the banks are willing to lend the money, there is somebody out there who will borrow it. The big problem facing current borrowers, is that when you borrow a lot of money with a low interest rate (vs less money, at a higher rate, for previous generations), the risk to mortgage rates is all on the upside and, in a low inflation (implied by low rates) environment, less of your debt is inflated away. Simply, you pay a higher percentage of your income for longer. My parents bought their 5 bedder in London for £6k at the start of the 70's. Maybe it was a struggle at the time, but within a decade they could have cleared the mortgage on their credit card if they had wanted to.

Blimey its bad when the Sun sounds more credible than you

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/14543...market-frenzy/

BRITAIN could have no homes left on the market in just two months as the Covid crisis sends the market into a frenzy.

Experts have warned that Brits looking for a new home may have a “problem” finding one, as homes for sale are rapidly running out.

Homes for sale are rapidly running out across the UK

The shortage, which was reported in The Sunday Times, is widespread across the country.

There are less than two months’ worth of homes left to buy across almost a fifth of the UK, according to property data analysts TwentyCi.

[vetran]

if not for the buy to let brigade there will be enough houses for everyone in the UK. An individual buying dozens of BTL properties is not sustainable , no matter how many houses are built. Govt should crackdown on them.

the clue is in the name FFS