Almost 800,000 Fewer Homes Zero-Carbon Due To Tory Planning Deregulation

Around 800,000 homes have been built to lower emissions standards or without carbon offsets because the government scrapped tough environmental rules six years ago, it can be revealed. Ministers were accused of wasting "years of vital progress" in the fight against the climate emergency, baking in high-carbon housing stock for decades, and driving up energy bills for families. The last Labour government introduced a legal requirement for new homes to be made net zero carbon by 2016, but in 2015 the Conservative government scrapped the plan at the last minute. Read more on Yahoo News.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/almost-800-000-fewer-homes-211700911.html?guccounter=1 

Stamp Duty Having ‘Stifling’ Impact On Housing Market

The “stifling” effect of stamp duty on the housing market means an extra 146,000 property sales could have taken place over the last five years if home movers had not been faced with the tax, a report has estimated. Despite reforms to stamp duty in recent years, it remains “inefficient”, fuelling housing shortages, making homes less affordable and putting people off moving to more suitable properties – from those taking early steps on the housing ladder to older home owners. It also hampers social and economic flexibility by making it harder for families to live near their desired schools or places that could provide particular job opportunities. Read more on Yahoo.

Builders Turn To Bolt-Together Homes

The prospect of Brexit choking off the supply of EU workers is reshaping Britain's homebuilding industry, with big companies increasingly looking to factory-manufacture houses in sections that can be slotted together on-site with minimal labour. Many of Britain's leading housebuilders, including Berkeley, Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon and Your Housing, told Reuters they were either planning new developments of prefabricated homes or considering doing so. This represents something of a turnaround in a country where "prefabs" have borne a strong and lingering stigma dating back to the 1940s when Winston Churchill ordered tens of thousands of cheap, flimsy, ugly units to be built to address a shortage housing after World War II. Read more on Yahoo News.

Downturn Threatens After £16,000 Rise In Prices Over Year

House prices increased strongly by £16,000 on average over the year to May - but experts warned the market is now at serious risk of a downturn. Across the UK, the typical property value was £211,000 in May, marking an 8.1% increase compared with a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. The average UK house price was £16,000 higher than in May 2015 and £2,400 higher than a month earlier, the ONS said. The annual rate of house price growth was unchanged compared with April - "continuing the strong growth seen since the end of 2013," the report said. Read more on the Yahoo website.

Housing Supply Is Going To Get A Lot Worse

Britain's housing crisis could get much worse because there aren't enough builders to supply the homes needed to address the country's supply and demand balance, according to a survey conducted by estate agent Knight Frank. Questioning a number of Britain's biggest housebuilders, the survey found that 73% thought "the cost and availability of labour will have a negative impact on future housing supply." There was also a general concern that a Brexit — Britain voting to leave the EU — will only make the acquisition of skilled builders harder thanks to the "impaired" movement of labour. Read more on the Yahoo! News website.

Britain's Property Market Is Going To Implode As Housing Nears Peak Affordability

Property prices in Britain may be surging due to a horrendous imbalance of supply and demand — but the market is poised to implode. Why? Because Britons are not earning enough money to either get on the housing ladder or are spending such a large portion of their wages on mortgages that may not be sustainable. That's the assumption in the latest figures from think tank Resolution Foundation, which show that lower- and middle-income households are spending 26% of their salaries on housing, compared to 18% back in 1995. In London, households spend 28% of their income on housing. The think tank said this is the equivalent to adding 10 percentage points onto income tax. Read more on Yahoo News.

Bid To Rein In Buy-To-Let Lending

Amateur landlords will face tighter borrowing rules and stricter affordability tests under plans by the Bank of England to crack down on buy-to-let lending. The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) - the arm of the Bank that regulates banks and the financial sector - said it wants lenders to make income checks more stringent for buy-to-let investors and test whether they can still afford their regular repayments at higher interest rates. The PRA said while most lenders already met minimum requirements for lending to buy-to-let borrowers, it found some had weaker underwriting standards. Read more on Yahoo! News.

'Generation Rent' Have Given Up Hope Of Buying Own Home, Says Shelter

Three-quarters of people in Britain fear it will be impossible for future generations to have a home to settle down in. The majority of Britons want to own their own home, but "generation rent" is giving up on getting on the property ladder. Shelter branded the findings "alarming" and warned the country is at the "mercy of the housing crisis" which has left millions facing a "lifetime of instability". The survey found that for recent generations the chance to have a "forever home" has been slipping increasingly out of reach. The poll of 1,906 people found 74% of people in younger Generation X and Y said it is harder for them to get a home to settle down in than it was for their parents' generation. This compares with 44% of people born in the baby boomer or pre-war years. Read more on Yahoo News.

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.

First Time Home Buyers Fall Sharply

Home sales to first-time buyers continue to decline, according to the latest market report. This is in spite of an increase in the housing supply in July and the number of house hunters reaching its highest point in 11 years. The number of first-time buyers entering the market fell from 29% of all sales being made in May to just 23% in July, according to a National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) July Housing Market Report. Throughout the UK the average price for a home rose £3,000 in value in June, bringing the average total to £277,000 from £274,000 where it stood in May. The government data also show that in June 2015, on average, first-time buyers were paying 5.1% more than they were just a year before. Read more on Yahoo News.

Number of New Homes Registrations 'At Strongest Level since 2007'

The number of new homes being registered is at its strongest levels since 2007, an industry body has reported. Some 41,268 new homes were registered across the UK over the last three months, marking the highest quarterly figure seen since winter 2007, the National House Building Council (NHBC) said. The latest quarterly figure also marks a 12% uplift compared with the same period in 2014, according to the NHBC, a warranty and insurance provider. The NHBC's registration figures are taken from builders who are responsible for around 80% of homes constructed in the UK. Builders are required to register a house with the NHBC before starting work, which means its figures represent homes that are to be built in the months ahead. Read more on the Yahoo! News website.

Britain Leans On Consumers as Mortgage Approvals, Loans Surge

British mortgage approvals surged by the most in six years in April and lending to individuals also rose sharply. Data from the Bank of England supported expectations that the pace of the broader economic recovery will pick up again by mid-year after slowing at the start of 2015, giving a nudge to a long-running debate about when interest rates might rise. Mortgage approvals for house purchases hit their highest level in 14 months, reaching 68,076 from 61,945 in March. The rise consumer lending was not far off March's seven-year record monthly jump. The figures were a reminder of the lopsidedness of Britain's recovery, with weak manufacturing and trade unlikely to contribute much to growth in the coming months. Read more on Yahoo News.

If House Price Forecasts Are Correct It Will Become "Unaffordable" In Britain

If house prices surge again without a radical increase in new homes it will become "unaffordable to exist" in parts of Britain for the young, the property group JLL has warned. The cost of the average house in the UK will rise by 22.8pc over the next five years, according to the company's latest forecast, while prices in the supply-stricken Greater London are predicted to climb 29.4pc. Adam Challis, head of residential research at JLL, has issued a stark warning that the long term squeeze on affordability, created by a lack of supply of new homes and a burgeoning population, could have a direct impact on the UK economy. Read more on Yahoo!

Politicians Urged To Tackle Housing

The problems faced by Generation Rent have been laid bare by a new poll of prospective MPs. The survey found nine out of 10 politicians expected to clinch seats at the General Election are worried that most under-30s in their constituency would not be able to afford to buy a home in a decade's time.  Many young people face the prospect for renting for life as house prices continue to rise and the deposit required to buy soars to almost 10 times what was required in the 1980s, and home ownership falls to its lowest level for 30 years. Over the past two decades, the private rented sector has almost doubled, and now one in five households (18%) is rented from a private landlord. Read more on the Yahoo News website.

Renting Your Way to Poverty: Welcome to the Future of Housing

The housing crisis is already out of control, and no one in politics wants to help.

George Osborne’s latest budget continued the trend of all his other budgets: introduce new measures that will further inflate house prices. This time it was "help to buy" ISA’s . Prices have risen because the government has been trying to get them to rise. At the end of 2014 Priced Out calculated that the Help to Buy programme had helped raise average prices by £46,000 in 18 months resulting in an additional 258,000 renters being priced-out of buying a home as compared to the 31,000 buyers helped by the scheme. Some 3.5 million people who would have normally been able to buy a home are now trapped in private renting. Read more on the Yahoo News website.

Labour Rent Cap Fears Halt Buy-To-Lets

Many landlords have halted plans to invest further in buy-to-let property ahead of May’s general election, amid concerns that a change in Government could lead to rent controls. Fears over the introduction of rent capping under a Labour government have stalled the private housing rental market, exacerbating Britain’s chronic housing supply shortage. A study of more than 500 landlords revealed that 40pc won’t expand their property empire with the election looming, and 26pc were anxious that a Labour win could knock house prices. Read more on Yahoo news.

Labour Unveils Home Building Scheme

Labour has unveiled a package of measures designed to help boost home construction by small building firms and give more young people the chance of getting on to the housing ladder. The party's housing spokeswoman Emma Reynolds said Labour would introduce a Help to Build scheme to allow small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to access lower-cost bank lending backed by Treasury guarantees, as well as fast-track planning for small sites of fewer than 10 homes and a requirement for councils to include a higher proportion of smaller sites for housing in their five-year plans. Read more on Yahoo News.

Poll Shows Tenants' Dissatisfaction

The vast majority of social housing tenants do not feel listened to or cared about by their landlords, a survey has found. The Big Tenant Survey of 61,000 tenants found only 32% of people were satisfied that their landlord "listens to them and acts upon their views", while just 22% feel that their landlord "cares about them and their family".  More than half of the survey respondents would not currently recommend their landlord to a friend or relative. The survey found that 25% of the people surveyed fully understand the current welfare changes, and 42% of those receiving full housing benefit are highly anxious about having their rent paid directly to them instead of straight to their landlords. About a third (33.8%) of survey respondents believe that direct payments will make it difficult for them to budget.  Read more on Yahoo News.

Inflation Gauge for Housing Costs Loses 'Official Statistic' Status

A measure of inflation launched to better reflect housing costs will no longer be treated as an official national statistic while it is being improved, the statistics authority has said. The CPIH index was introduced in March 2013 and had been touted as a future price stability benchmark for the Bank of England. The bank currently uses the consumer price index (CPI). The new measure was designed to address the fact that CPI does not include most housing costs faced by people who own their homes, including mortgage payments and maintenance. Last year the UK Statistics Authority upgraded CPIH from an experimental statistic - defined as being in the testing phase and not yet fully developed - to an official national statistic. But it has now said statisticians had found ways to improve CPIH and that the measure will revert to experimental status, suggesting its use as a benchmark for the BoE could be a long way off. Read more on Yahoo News.

Housing Shortage Sees More Tenants Evicted

Increasing numbers of private tenants are being evicted or exploited by landlords cashing in on the increase in house prices and the shortage of rented accommodation, according to latest figures. Citizens Advice (CAB) saw a 38% rise in the number of people turning to the charity for help with eviction notices served on them, despite being up to date with their rent. CAB recorded 5,000 cases across the country in 2013/2014 where tenants complained about being forced from their homes, even though they were not in arrears. That figure is up from 3,750 the previous year. Read more on Yahoo News.