All articles by Brian Green – Page 35
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Are house prices sliding towards a cliff?
A snap survey by RICS has backed up the figures produced by Hometrack that homebuyers are demanding increasingly savage discounts from sellers.Hometrack puts that average discount at 10%, whereas RICS suggests 9%. But either way there will be a spread around that figure, so there will be some pretty deep ...
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Housing market grinding to a standstill, says Hometrack
There is further evidence that the housing market is grinding to a standstill in the latest monthly figures provided by Hometrack.Hometrack figures put the annual drop in average prices at about 6.2%. This is a more modest drop than the figures produced by Nationwide and Halifax, but as I have ...
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Now here's a thing
Might the solution to the Olympic officials' worries over filling the skills gap left by returning Polish workers be staring them in the face?There's a property-led recession in Ireland that is freeing up construction workers at a fair rate of knots?Mind you, perhaps they need look no further than our ...
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Treasury faces £4.5 billion hole as house sales and stamp duty receipts slump
The steady decline in the UK housing market has been underlined by the latest numbers to come out of HM Revenue & Customs. They show sales of homes dropping to 72,000 in August, compared with 164,000 last August.The figures show a continuing slide that not only highlights the collapse in ...
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Why house prices indexes seem insane and short-term forecasts are futile
The Council of Mortgage Lenders is bang on when it says it is futile to try to update its house price forecast.Frankly it is probably sufficient to say that houses are worth less than they were a year ago and in a year's time they will probably be worth a ...
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Parallel universes
Is it me or are you living in a different world than that described by the national statisticians?Today we are asked to accept that retail sales increased in August led by a jump in sales of shoes and clothes.What have we got here? Do we have a consumer addiction problem? ...
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How crisis can liberate thinking
I was speaking earlier this morning to the head of a top 50 house builder, a man with years of experience and someone's who opinions are worthy of respect.He is as baffled as the next person about where things are going. Each week brings a whole new set of uncertainties ...
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Job vacancies in construction drop to decade low
The latest jobless figures showing a leap of 81,000 people unemployed over the past quarter will come as little surprise to most people in the construction industry. They are seeing life getting tougher by the day, especially those with any links to house building.The major house builders have axed about ...
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What we can learn from wrong numbers
Anecdotal evidence is useful, if a bit unreliable. But it can help to substantiate the numbers and provide a context. And sometimes it can lead you to ask questions.Here is an example. I recently moved and have a new work telephone number. Right from the off I started receiving ...
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A lesson from history: realise the pain early when recession looms
I am in the midst of looking at endless numbers on house building and house builders for the annual Housing Market Intelligence report. I'll admit things are a bit slippy at moment. Trying to put meaning to the numbers is a bit like trying to pin a donkey's tail on ...
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Time to price in the cost of losing skills in a housing crash
Until the realisation of the enormity of the task was grasped those at home and those on the way to the front comforted themselves with the line: "It'll be all over by Christmas." That was WW1.How much of this is a myth, I certainly am not qualified to judge. But ...
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Prospects for commercial property market dive in third quarter
The latest consensus forecast from the Investment Property Forum paints a bleak picture of prospects in the commercial sector.This will add to worries that the downward dip in the private commercial construction output figures is increasingly likely to turn into a downward slide.The Forum said the figures for the third ...
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Construction output falls 0.5% - but the drop is probably worse than it looks
So the construction output figures post a fall of 0.5% in the second quarter and recession in construction now looks more of a forgone conclusion than a fear.The first point to note is that was not just the private housing sector that pulled the figures down.But more worrying to me ...
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Average house will be worth £30,000 less in three years time, say investors
Investors in housing futures are still putting their money on a peak to trough fall in house prices of more than 30%, despite the Government's attempts to buoy the market.The Tradition "Futures HPI", which takes it figures from the prevailing prices in the residential property derivatives market and pegs itself ...
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Halifax house price time machine takes us back to the Spring of 2006
More gloom (or joy if you are a potential buyer) from the statisticians at HBOS as the Halifax house price index (not seasonally adjusted) shows a 12.7% annual fall from last August to now.That is getting pretty close to the full 14.7% peak to trough fall measured by Halifax in ...
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Phew - Thank you Evan Davis for restoring some sanity
I freely admit this is an indulgent blog and rather outside what I see as my scope, but I felt an obligation to make some points on the subject of the attacks on Alistair Darling and to record a thank you to Evan Davis of the BBC for saving me ...
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In five years' time we will wish we did more to save the industry
I am currently imagining the collective groans from those in the housing and house building industry as the details of the latest high publicity housing rescue plan were revealed today.Housing rescue plan III was much more widely trumpeted than the first two (see comments on Part I, Part II). This ...
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Industry retains optimism despite the gloomy forecasts
In the face of growing concern and gloom surrounding the construction industry, in particular the house building bit, construction folk in general seem to be keeping their spirits and appear on balance to be optimistic about future prospects.That, as I read it, is the key message from the latest survey ...
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Phew - thank you Mr Darling. Now we can get on and fix the problems
For me tracking the Government's handling of the economic crisis over the past few months has been a bit like watching a sick gag in a sketch show where a child hops into the kitchen with one bloodied leg severed off to be told by his mother: "It'll be alright ...
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Britons £500 billion poorer as house prices fall
I thought it might be interesting to put the latest Nationwide house price data and the recent land write downs made by Taylor Wimpey into a different context. I'd say for fun, but the real consequences are far from funny to a lot of people.So here is a thought to ...