Monday, Oct 20, 2008
Hilarious!
FT: Barratt seeks investment partner in land bank
The land bank figures are too vague to gloat about, but this is brilliant: "Barratt also has offered steep reductions on some of its completed homes, particularly ones designed for first-time buyers. These are attracting discounts of up to 43 per cent for buyers who purchase five or more properties at a time." as is this "Barratt is in the process of divesting part of its holding in Wilson Bowden Developments, a division of Wilson Bowden, which Barratt bought last year for £2.2bn. The sale of the portfolio would reduce Barratt's debt by about £200m."
Posted by mark wadsworth @ 02:44 PM (249 views) Add Comment
9 Comments
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1. Will said...
So if first time buyers get the largest discounts, how will they be able to trade up in the future.
2. drewster said...
Mark,
Re LVT and all that jazz, are you a believer in Fred Harrison's 18-year land cycle theory?
Also congrats on having your blog featured in MoneyWeek magazine last week!
3. mark wadsworth said...
Fred is my guru. He even mentioned me in the footnotes in one of his books and we met up and he signed a copy for me. So yes of course I believe in the 18 year cycles, which is why we sold-to-rent last year. I've always been interested in land values, once you understand them properly, LVT seems an obvious solution.
I'll have to track down Moneyweek issue 405.
4. drewster said...
Mark,
I've emailed the page to the email address on your blog.
Fred Harrison's theory was also featured in that issue of MoneyWeek, I get the impression he's popular with the editorial board. However I recently came across this article which, although not entirely debunking his theory, does highlight its flaws and limitations. You might find it of interest.
5. icarus said...
I'm with Gavin Putland. So regular cycle can be identified only by a biased interpretation of history, forcing things to fit the timeframe and making excuses and exceptions when what's supposed to happen doesn't happen.
6. icarus said...
That's 'So regular a cycle'
7. mark wadsworth said...
Of course there are huge variations! The 18 year thing is only a rule of thumb.
In the UK there was a peak in the late forties and the next one wasn't until the early 1970s.
That's the whole point - in those decades we had much more home building (to keep prices down) and we have domestic rates and Schedule A taxation (which keep values down).
8. icarus said...
So we are left with "there's a cycle of boom and bust".
9. str 2007 said...
That's all eminently plausible. But, having explained the missing recession in terms of a radical change in policy, why does Harrison not entertain the idea that the same change in policy could produce a change in the period between recessions - or at least a change in the length of the current cycle? Why does he assume that the mid-cycle recession has been averted and not merely delayed, especially when the housing bubble that should have caused the recession has been allowed to keep on growing? Shouldn't he rather say that the mid-cycle recession is overdue? And if it happens late, might it not have some characteristics of an end-cycle recession, so that one could just as well say that the end-cycle recession has come early?
I also find it incredible that the 18 year cycle hasn't been effected by such huge outside and unpredicted elements.
Just suppose GB had actually kept a lid on house prices as he promissed and had attached stricter rules to BTL, and the market for packaging up debt and reselling it hadn't happened (or had been done properly) would we still be in this situation. I say no. Average house prices would be perhaps around the £120k mark and things would be ticking along just fine. Particularly if we'd been encouraged to invest in our own UK industries.