Friday, Feb 15, 2008
North of England housing market downturn (non VI info)
nebusiness: Jobs go as housebuilders feel downtown in market
At least two major housebuilders are looking for redundancies in the North East as the slowdown in the housing market starts to bite. Newcastle-based Bellway has sent out redundancy consultation notices to its hundreds of site staff and is considering 66 job cuts, while Taylor Wimpey is understood to be looking for 35 redundancies. Other major players, including industry number two Persimmon, are also reported to be aiming to cut back on front line jobs.
Andrew Miller, head of Barclays Wealth stockbrokers in Newcastle said "There has definitely been a weakness of late, particularly in new-build property. For instance, with so many flats being built, I know there have been problems in Leeds and Manchester on that"
Posted by jack c @ 09:22 AM (343 views) Add Comment
4 Comments
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1. jack c said...
icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/
Just to add to this - a debate was taking place this morning on the BBC for the North East regrding property developers seeing a marked downturn in business and this has had a knock on effect with Solicitors now planning to lay off conveyancers. They also debated the fact that unless the market picks up soon many EA's will simply go bust !
2. sacred contracts said...
“The housing market is very sentiment-led and the media has been very gloomy – it’s not as though things have been dropping off a cliff but there’s a general view that things are weaker than they were 12 months ago.”
I can't help thinking its more than sentiment when people realise that they really will be homeless if they don't keep up the repayments on their mortgages. Or that their "sure thing" investment was in fact built on the upward wave of sentiment, which is now looking so much less promising in the cold light of morning.
3. hpwatcher said...
I heard a conversation between 2 builders the other night at the pub. Seems that their whole team is being made redundant. I haven't heard conversations like that for many, many years.
4. guiriduro said...
And yet there are still some folks who say the UK is undersupplied with property. Can't really square it. Providing that houses fetch more than they cost to build, its still got to be worth doing. Seems to me that housing has to shift towards a car market mentality. Cars are best when new, being at the forefront of technology and not in need of much servicing. As time goes on they wear out, depreciate, need replacements, and fall behind on technology, especially regarding efficiency vis a vis climate change, and therefore their price falls as a necessity. The same is fundamentally true of houses. So why then do houses exhibit an upward curve in price from new build? Surely the latest houses use the latest materials and techniques? The second-hand marketeers have won a massive victory over common sense to convince so many that a depreciating asset is in fact a prime investment, and, perversely, so wide had the misconception become that it in fact turned out to be true (such is the nature of bubbles.) well, not for much longer.