Claims that in London prices are up 3.9% year on year. but this is driven by a handful of sales in the City. The median london borough is down 2.2% year on year, as they well know. They even publish a median series that you have to pay for. nonetheless, in their (average i.e. mean) time series the southeast is down -0.1% year on year.

I had been wondering what the figures are for a long time. It gives an idea of the cost of building a house once land has been obtained and planning permission given. Of course the rebuilding cost wouldn't include things like building a road in front of the house but might have extras like clearing the site.

"Warnings by landlords that taxes on buy-to-let would cripple the property market, driving down supply and pushing up rents, have turned out to be entirely hollow, according to research by campaign group Generation Rent." So satisfying to be proved right. Although of course the long threatened rent rises are always around the corner though! Hopefully this evidence will be noticed by TBTP and recurring taxes on property (second best to land only) can be considered as first choice for rasing much needed revenue

The slicing and dicing of housing is redefining the idea of home. Those forced to live in ever smaller spaces describe how this changes their lives

I think this shows who the Mail thinks their readership is. It only affects 87011 properties. Hopefully it will lead to more council inspections and increased standards.

Carney would prefer to throw the housing market to the wolves instead of raising interest rates. Clearly, if the central bank itself, which has effectively set housing prices and the cost of credit, starts talking about a dramatic crash then nobody will pay. Nobody will take out a mortgage, and Carney will achieved through fear what he refuses to do from market pricing.

Posted by stillthinking @ 03:09 AM 13 Comments

A couple of weeks ago a colleague was discussing Help to Buy with me and I commented that it sounds to be no different from the Shared Equity schemes builders offered in the late 1980s, which ended up badly when prices stopped going up year after year.