Thursday, Mar 25, 2010
More cold weather fun
BBC: US new home sales hit record low as cold weather bites
"Sales of new homes in the US fell to their lowest level on record in February as the cold weather discouraged buyers, figures have shown. Sales fell by 2.2% to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 308,000, down from a revised rate of 315,000 in January, the Commerce Department said." If you pro-rate that down for the UK's smaller population, that equates to about 60,000 new homes sold per annum, which amazingly enough only a third of what we manage (and our figure is far too low to start off with).
Posted by mark wadsworth @ 11:51 AM (519 views) Add Comment
7 Comments
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1. Neil B said...
mmm I wonder what they will blame ultra low sales figures on in the summer? "Buyers discouraged by high UV levels" ?
2. timmy t said...
All green taxes will be scrapped soon in an effort to kick-start global warming so house buyers are attracted back by the sunny weather... It doesn't matter if the planet explodes and the human race is wiped out, we MUST keep house prices up!
3. luckyjim said...
MW
Do you have the statistics for new builds in the UK last year? Surely if it was 3x the US level - 180000 - we really would have a housing glut.
4. mark wadsworth said...
LuckyJim, according to DCLG, total new homes built in UK (mainly private, some social) has been fairly stable at around 180,000 per annum since the early 1990s. It's tailed off a bit recently, but hey. It was twice that much in the 1950s and 1960s - around 400,000.
5. mark wadsworth said...
DCLG statistics available here.
6. luckyjim said...
Thanks Mark, I expect the 2009/10 figure for completed houses will fall off a cliff.
Most of those 50s and 60s houses would have been genuine additions to the housing stock too. Much of the 90s building that went on was simply to replace the crap from the 70s that had to be pulled down. Thats the heart of the problem right there.
7. mark wadsworth said...
LJ, that's a good point. I happen to remember the new constructions figures because that's the sort of chap I am, but I forgot to minus off demolitions, which would make a lot of difference, i.e. those 180,000 newbuilds minus x,000 demolitions might not be a net increase in housing stock at all (certainly round my way they knocked down the old blocks of flats and built terraces instead).