House Prices Now 30% Higher Than Pre-2008 Crisis Peak

UK house prices hit a new high in June and are 30% higher than the peak they reached before the 2008 financial crisis, according to the latest snapshot of the market. The property website Zoopla said the average price of a home was £230,700 – as much as 5.4% higher than the same month a year ago. It said the sharp increase had come as the number of homes being put on the market for sale had dropped by 25% in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2020. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/27/uk-house-prices-now-30-higher-than-pre-2008-crisis-peak 

How Homes Have Got Less – And More – Affordable Since The Financial Crisis

Ten years ago, the financial crisis upended the housing market. Prices went into freefall, and many areas of the country have still not recovered – while others have seen prices soar. In the intervening years the gap between the least and most affordable areas of Britain has almost doubled, according to new research by the Yorkshire Building Society. Perhaps more surprisingly, homes in 54pc of local authorities in Britain are now more affordable than they were in 2007. This is despite the fact that the average house price in Britain has risen 21pc in the same period. Read more on the Daily Telegraph website.

Calls For Universal Credit Rollout To Be Paused

The rollout of Universal Credit should be paused until significant problems with it are fixed, says Citizens Advice. In a major new report - Delivering on Universal Credit - the charity reveals that the requirement to wait for six weeks to receive any payment means people face serious financial insecurity, with many being forced into debt. The research also identifies a wide range of administrative challenges, including problems with the online system and long waits to get help over the phone, which can make the initial six week wait even longer. Download the report from the CAB website.

House-Building At Highest For A Decade

The number of new homes being built in England is at its highest level for ten years, according to government figures. The CLG said 162,880 homes were started in 2016/17, with 147,960 completed. Both numbers represent the highest number of new builds since the start of the financial crisis in 2007/08. However, housing charity Shelter said the numbers were still about 100,000 short of what was needed. Read more on the BBC.

Property Prices - Biggest Quarterly Fall In Five Years

House prices in six British regions still haven't climbed past their pre-crisis peak, a new index from IHS Markit and Halifax shows. Property values in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire and Humber, the North and North West are still below levels reached in 2007, before the financial crisis struck. The quarterly data also show that property values have suffered their biggest fall for five years in the period between June and September, the aftermath of the EU referendum decision. In the period between April and June 2016, prices were up 1.6 per cent, the data shows. The current average property price sits at £214,140 compared to £215,168 in the previous quarter, a £1,028 drop. Read more on the thisismoney website.

The Housing Market Is Too Big To Fail!

As British taxpayers discovered to their cost during the financial crisis, big banks were simply too big to fail. The banks are no longer the biggest domestic threat facing the UK economy, that dubious honour now belongs to the housing market. At the start of this year UK homes were worth £5.75 trillion in total, around 2.7 times GDP, according to Savills. The UK property sector is too big to fail and the regulators are partly to blame, because their easy money policies have ramped up house prices to today's crazy levels. The property market is now a Ponzi scheme. It can only be kept going by sucking in new blood at the bottom, and banks are happily obliging by opening up a new front in the mortgage price war, with a blitz of cheap deals aimed at young buyers borrowing 95% of their property's value. Precisely the ones who are most vulnerable to a crash. Read more on Yahoo News.

“We Need 300,000 New Homes Each Year”

Britain needs to build up to 300,000 new houses every year so that young families can afford their own homes, a senior Treasury minister has said. Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury said a radical building programme was necessary over the “longer term” because the country had failed to construct enough properties to house a growing population in recent decades. It comes after figures showed the numbers of younger people being forced to rent because they cannot afford to buy a home rose sharply since the financial crisis of 2008. Last week, government figures showed the proportion of under-35s owning their own home fell from 21 per cent in 2008-09 to 18 per cent by 2012-13. Read more on the Daily Telegraph website.