So, is there a housing crisis in the UK?
Probably.
But is there a housing shortage?
Well, the highly profitable house building industry says so.
And there is no doubt that its lobby has an unusually strong voice into governments, political parties and, indeed, anyone that will listen and whose cause it suits.
We are constantly being bombarded with messages that we are not building anywhere near enough the homes that are needed.
And yet, here’s one commentator saying that recent increases in the number of households have not been as big as recent increases in the number of new homes.
Of course, there is a housing crisis when many people who are renting would rather be buying but can’t afford to (sorry, we really don’t swallow the argument that renting is a lifestyle choice for many tenants – it isn’t).
There is also clearly something wrong when tenants are paying more than owner-occupiers out of their untaxed income on housing costs.
Those who are living in frankly awful accommodation deserve better and for them, of course, there’s a housing crisis (usually along with a crisis of some other sort).
The jury is also still out on Right to Buy and what this has done to the supply of social housing.
But should we simply take it as read that we have a huge housing shortage?
Incidentally, 118,830 new homes were built last year, of which roughly a quarter (28,666) were built under the Help to Buy equity loan scheme.
This is a columnist who many may not agree with. But it’s worth a discussion, surely.
It’s here
In the early days of the coalition, the Govt said that we needed 230,000 plus homes per year over the next 20 years or so just to meet population growth.
We are building half of that year after year so there’s a huge gap between what we need and what we build and it’s getting wider. In fact the last time we built volumes that the Govt says we need was in 1978.
More properties available, especially at the low end of the market, will keep prices in check.
It’s basic supply and demand. When the market crashed, there was a much higher level of supply and that impacted on prices.
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El Burro, I think you have fallen into the trap of just accepting figures which the housing industry spooon feed us … without questioning it. That article is one of the most sensible ones I’ve read in a while. If there is such a massive housing shortage, how do all the people with vested interests in building more houses explain away the fact that there are so many empty properties lying idle. I reckon I’m pretty normal, yet on my books alone there must be at least about 25 empty homes. I’m not convinced there IS a housing shortage – what I think there is, is a shortage of people willing to buy an older character house and spend money doing it up … because it’s too easy to just buy a brand new house. Of course the housing industry isn’t going to admit this, because after all, they will only make money if they can build new houses. If I was in charge, I wouldn’t give planning permission for big new developments until the percentage of empty properties in the same area was very low. It makes no sense to me to build new houses when there are already loads of empty ones.
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