Experts in the property field are celebrating the fact that prices are on the rise. Well, the online newsletter property expert is. It quoted ONS figures and data from the website SmartNewHomes.
Ominously, the analysis appears to partially bear out the fears expressed by Ed Balls that the Government’s flagship Help to Buy programme could create another bubble, a fear echoed by the OECD on 29 May.
According to Steven Lees, director of SmartNewHomes: “It has been a very positive spring for developers. The launch of the Help to Buy scheme in April has boosted confidence in the new homes market, reflected in positive monthly, quarterly and annual price growth.”
The trend is more marked in London, where a YouGov survey found that most people expect prices to just keep on rising.
It seems perverse that the property market is the only one where inflation is seen as a good thing. However, one person who doesn't seem to espouse that view is Boris Johnson. The Mayor of London recently threatened so-called land bankers with compulsory purchase if they didn’t begin building on land with planning permission. He described the pushing up of prices as “against the economic interests of this city”.
• Getting Britain building is also the ambition of planning minister Nick Boles. In an interview with the Daily Mail he said: “The sum of human happiness that is created by the houses that are being built is vastly greater than the economic, social and environmental value of a field that was growing wheat or rape.”
He described the lack of new housing as pushing the country “back to the 19th century”, when only the wealthy could afford their own home, according to the Mail report.
Mr Boles doesn't, however, seem to have quite as much a problem as Boris with developers sitting on land. In a speech made to Policy Exchange in January he said: “I do understand why it riles people that their local councils have to find new sites for development, when the major house-builders are sitting on land with permission to build hundreds of thousands of new homes? But, this concern is also misplaced, resting on a misunderstanding about how the British house-building industry works.”
So that’s it – we just don’t understand.
Another of his ideas is to compensate homeowners whose properties lose value as a result of new housing being built nearby.
• Hopefully those seeking such compensation wouldn’t need to have their claim underwritten by legal aid, because it wouldn’t happen. Following on from the almost total withdrawal of legal aid from civil cases is an even more worrying move to remove it from criminal cases.
Those cuts have been universally condemned by the legal profession as potentially denying justice to – well, pretty well everybody. A recent poll carried out by Populus for the bar circuits and the Bar Association reveal that four-fifths of the population would be unable to afford to defend themselves against criminal charges under the proposals. They would either have to defend themselves or re-mortgage their homes – if they had one. That includes large numbers of ‘Middle England’ who voted for the present Government.
Chris Stokes