All articles by Brian Green – Page 32
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Comment
Why record low interest rates will fail to ease house building woes
The Bank of England's decision to cut interest rates to just 2% today, the lowest in its 300 plus years, will come as a relief to some.But in reality the Bank is near powerless to influence the direction of house prices or the rate of their decline.There will be some ...
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Comment
Shock drop in Halifax house prices index spells more gloom
The Halifax has just recorded its second biggest house price fall in its 25 year history.The average price of a British home fell 2.6% in November according to the mortgage lender's figures.It means house prices have fallen on the Halifax unadjusted measure by 19% since last August and 16.2% on ...
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Comment
Repossessions may be worse than in the 1990s crash
The ubiquitous Robert Peston in his blog suggests that the Council of Mortgage Lenders has advised ministers that repossessions could rise to 75,000 next year.That would mean a return to the bleak days of the early 1990s when repossessions peaked at 75,500 in 1991, according to the CML figures.And in ...
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Comment
Import figures highlight scale of construction slowdown
Data released today showing the level of building materials imports into the UK provides a further indication of the depth of the recession facing construction.Historically the material import figures provide a good gauge for the state of the UK construction market.The data shows that in the third quarter of this ...
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Comment
Planning pipeline shows signs of drying up
A rough and ready way to judge future levels of constrution work is to look at the level of planning applications being submitted.You have got to be a bit careful about drawing conclusions too quickly, as many factors influence the decision to apply for planning consent, not just the state ...
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Comment
Construction's only salvation is for the Government to spend big
A cut in interest rates by the Bank of England at noon this Thursday is being pencilled in by most analysts and economists, the only real question appears to be how big the cut will be.This may help the struggling construction industry - but not that much. The immediate issue ...
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Comment
Construction is sinking deeper into recession
The latest construction survey from the buyers' body CIPS finds the industry plunging to new depths with civils and commercial work rapidly following the path led by the house builders.The Purchasing Managers' Index for November reached a series low of 31.8 against a no change mark of 50. And most ...
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Comment
Hometrack sees London and South East as hardest hit by price falls
Further evidence if more were needed of the fragility of the housing market was provided today by the housing data business Hometrack.The national picture shows prices down 1.1% in November and 8.1% down over the past 12 months and a continued fall in buyers and properties for sale.Sellers are also ...
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Comment
All house price indexes are flawed, but that makes them more useful
There has been a huge fuss over the Land Registry house price index with a lot of people seemingly getting hot under and over the collar.But why? What's the fuss? Is the Land Registry really behaving "criminally".Put simply, the Land Registry has made a set of assumptions on how it ...
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Comment
Prepare for a bleak winter on house prices
On the face of it the steady easing over the past three months in the monthly rate of decline in house prices measured by Nationwide is encouraging to those who want to see the market stabilise.For the policy makers there is growing fear that more and more people will find ...
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Comment
How to save 150,000 construction jobs, earn the Treasury £16 billion and create 200,000 new homes
Imagine that Chancellor Alistair Darling had decided to boost public spending by investing £20 billion of taxpayers' money over the next two years in buying land and building homes earmarked for eventual open market sale.What would be the net result?Well we would have 200,000 more homes to help meet the ...
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Comment
The Chancellor's measures are not exceptional enough
I can but agree with the Chancellor that these are exceptional times and they require exceptional measures.My complaint, as I have said before, is that it took rather too long for the bulk of the political establishment to accept the severity of the economic turmoil we faced.And sadly I do ...
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Comment
Stamp duty down £500 million a month
The latest figures for tax receipts suggest that the Government is down about £500 million a month in stamp duty revenue.Taking the three months to October the revenue trawled in £2,162 million in stamp duty. This compares with £3,926 million over the same period a year earlier.The bulk of the ...
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Comment
Housing figures underline the haemorrhaging of construction workload
The latest starts figures appear to support the view that house building will drop by about a half next year as current projects completed and few if any new sites are opened.That would mean a loss of about £10 billion in construction workload.Put another way that is about half the ...
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Comment
Is the frozen housing market beginning to thaw?
Looking at the most recently released housing market data for October it is tempting to interpret it as showing signs of a thaw in a market that has almost frozen solid.On the month transactions rose according to the revenue figures, lending was up according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders ...
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Comment
How bad will deflation be for UK construction?
The talk now is not of inflation but deflation.The latest inflation figures showed a fall for the first time in 15 months and the Prime Minister chided the opposition with the line that if this year was about inflation next year is about deflation.But what would it mean for construction?Well ...
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Comment
NHBC latest figures show deepening pain for house building in 2009
The NHBC figures for October show private sector house building plumbing new depths.The number of new registrations for the month dropped to just 3,454, compared with 14,698 last year. Taking the three months to the end of October registrations were down by 73%.While private sector completions were a shade perkier ...
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Comment
Are plunging rents a prelude to a mass buy-to-let sell off?
Here are the figures that the buy-to-let critics and cynics have been waiting for. Rents are plunging.Okay, this is only one month's figures from the surveyors' body RICS, but the many buy-to-let critics will see these as heralding a transformation of buy-to-let bulls into buy-to-let rats ready to flee the ...
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Comment
Asking prices crumble as hope of housing market recovery fades
For those who may have held lingering hopes of a lift in the housing market after the various interventions by the Government and the Bank of England of late will be disappointed by the message coming from the latest Rightmove figures.The November data suggests that increasingly desperate sellers are dropping ...
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Comment
A decade of pay growth and shortening hours for the construction workforce
Whatever the current worries facing those working in construction, they can reflect on the past 10 years with satisfaction when it comes to pay and hours worked.Pay has risen far faster than for most other sectors and the number of paid working hours has fallen.Delving into the 2008 Annual Survey ...