From an article by a Faux Lib cheerleader in City AM, in short, everything would be fine if it weren't for those pesky councils!*
This a problem that has been decades in the making, largely thanks to our draconian planning laws. The passage of the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947 and the creation of the green belt has slowed the pace of housing development, and resulted in houses being built in the wrong places.
As an example, it is remarkable to me that between 2008 and 2013 twice as many houses were built in the towns of South Yorkshire, where prices were lower in 2014 than they were in 2004, than in Oxford and Cambridge, where property prices almost doubled over the same period.
Population of South Yorkshire, 1.4 million.
It's not clear whether means Oxford/Cambridge *city* or the larger *metropolitan areas* so let's give him the benefit of the doubt:
Population of Cambridge metropolitan area, 280,000.
Population of Oxford metropolitan area, 244,000
It's hardly surprising that more homes were built in South Yorkshire than in the other two towns, there is three times the population to start with. If it was only twice as many new homes, then per capita, more were being built in Oxford and Cambridge.
* NIMBYism and land banking don't exist on Planet Faux Lib. Neither does the acceptance that in pure numbers terms, new supply is more than keeping up with population growth; or that home builders have a profit maximising level and nothing on earth will make them build more. And even if they did, it would not have any marked downward effect on selling prices.
Monday, 23 July 2018
Meaningless Statistic Of The Day
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4 comments:
The IEA is usually OK-ish. But as ever Brits (well the English really) have a complete blind spot when it comes to housing.
Are you sure new build is keeping up with population growth, which is now 500,000 a year, during which new house builds were running about 180,000 a year (including many small flats, I'm guessing)? See here, for example.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/7243/housing/housing-supply-in-uk/
Or from here (just for England)
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/720230/House_Building_Release_March_2018_Final.pdf
"Annual new build dwelling starts totalled 157,480 in the
year to March 2018, down by 3 per cent compared with the
year to March 2017. During the same period, completions
totalled 160,470, an increase of 8 per cent compared with
last year."
With overall average occupancy around 2.6, the situation seems to be getting worse.
L, indeed.
JB, don't look at annual figures, averaged out over the last fifteen years, there's one new build for every two additional people.
2 million extra homes = say 5 million bedrooms. Add to the 25 million empty bedrooms that we already have = 30 million empty rooms.
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