ROOF Blog

Gordon Brown will back a major new programme of rented housing and hint that councils should be allowed to build homes again in a speech today to the annual conference of the general union GMB, reports The Guardian.

English Partnerships has invited expressions of interest in what will be England’s first large-scale zero carbon development. Developers will have to achieve the highest rating in the code for sustainable homes in a 150-home scheme on a former hospital site in Bristol.

A Times analysis of the housing market asks whether there will be a crash and says buy-to-let investors could hold the key.

All six Labour deputy leadership candidates tell today’s Inside Housing (see here too) that they back the ‘fourth option’ of direct investment in council housing.

The three new statutory tenancy deposit schemes have protected the deposits of 66,000 tenants worth £58m in its first two months of operation, according to new figures released yesteday by the DCLG.

The Housing Corporation has published a new guidance note it says will release high-performing housing associations from detailed regulation and a new policy on resident involvement as well as a set of regional reviews.

London is facing a serious shortage of specialist supported accommodation. A joint report by the National Housing Federation, Mayor of London and the Housing Corporation says almost 6,000 places will be needed in the next 10 years for vulnerable and socially-excluded people.

The housing market is clearly softening in the wake of interest rate rises, according to a market commentary published by the CML [downloads PDF] today. The Nationwide said yesterday that house price inflation rose again in May to 10.3% but that the market was weakening.

First-time buyers now account for just 10.3% of sales, according to the National Association of Estate Agents. The April figure was down from 12.6% in March – and 29% in 2000.

Today’s papers, including the Times, interpret the fall in mortgage approvals reported by the Bank of England. as another sign of decline. The Independent weighs up the mixed evidence in a longer feature.

Gordon Brown must look at tax reform to curb the growth in buy to let, says the Guardian in a leader today.

House prices in England and Wales rose 9.1% in the year to April – the fastest rate for two years – according to Land Registry figures released this morning. The rate in April 2006 was just 4.1%. London and Brighton led the way with rises of 15.6%.

Gross mortgage lending rose 12% in the year to April, according to the British Bankers Association yesterday.

The net result? Massive mortgages are turning first-time buyers into the equivalent of bonded labourers, according to the Mail, reporting new research from the universities of Aberdeen and Loughborough. They say the housing crisis is leading to a return to the gross inequality seen at the end of the 19th century.

Landlords are starting to bail out of the buy-to-let market because of rising interest rates, according to the Financial Times, reporting the latest RICS lettings survey. But the Telegraph highlights the fact that rents are soaring as a result.

The Telegraph continues its campaign against flats in an article accusing planners of stacking them on every brownfield site they can find.

The Department of Health has announced a £67m refurbishment fund for care homes.

And finally…as Harrogate draws near, stay calm: a cautionary tale from the Scotsman about what can happen at housing conferences.

House prices have almost trebled during the Blair decade, according to the FT house price index. The paper also predicts another interest rate rise this year.

The Independent reports that more than one in seven people will now struggle to pay their mortgage following last week’s hike in interest rates.

According to The Times, the rise in rates will to accentuate the divide between house prices outside the capital and those in the plusher parts of London.

Has the buy-to-let market reached saturation point, asks the Telegraph?

Gordon Brown receives a vocal welcome in Brighton from the internet-based pressure group Priced Out. The campaigners plan to picket the chancellor when he speaks at Brighton’s Dome to highlight the problem of escalating house prices.

’What about the immense tolerance shown by British families in overcrowded homes who see new social housing given to asylum seekers?’ rails the Express in yet another comment on Blair’s legacy.

Commenting in the Evening Standard, Shelter chief executive Adam Sampson warns that homes in London costing less than £100,000 could soon be a thing of the past.

An increasingly detached underclass are the real victims of our dysfunctional housing market argues the author Mark Braund in today’s Guardian.

Making affordable housing a central part of Gordon Brown’s new agenda offers Labour a great opportunity to reconnect with the rural vote writes Dr Stuart Burgess, in the letters section of the Guardian.

Why are parts of London the most expensive residential areas in the world? Because some of the money swishing round Russia, the Middle East and East Asia has to find a home somewhere, says the Independent.

Most papers cover the news that the Bank of England increased interest rates by 0.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent at noon today. The Times says the move may create more losers in the short term than winners – particularly homeowners with variable-rate mortgages.

In a thundering leader article on rates, the Independent says that ‘housing is a huge problem in much of the country, not just for those trying to buy their first home, but for families needing more room and those whose circumstances change.’

Writing in the Standard Nick Cohen investigates how people are forced to spend a huge percentage of their money on housing costs.

The Daily Mail’s campaign against Eastern European immigrants continues with a report that the number of visitors from Eastern Europe has risen by a quarter since Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU. The paper at least admits that the figures released by the Office for National Statistics quantify visitors from around the world who said their stay in Britain would be temporary.

With Tony Blair’s departure from number 10 imminent, the Mirror reports that Gordon Brown will launch a new era of council house building when he takes over as prime minister.

HIPS come in for flak from a number of papers, including the Guardian, which all cover a critical House of Lords committee report claiming that the packs have been stripped of their original purpose and were opposed by the property industry.

Guardian Society profiles Shaun Bailey, former youth worker and Conservatives’ prospective parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith. ‘I’d love to be able to tell you about an offshore account, a mistress in the Bahamas, a powerboat and dodgy dealings. But I’m sorry, I haven’t done any of that. I’ve been living on an estate,’ he tells the paper.

Bill Bryson, the bestselling American author, is to become the new president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), replacing Sir Max Hastings.

The chief executive of Sunderland Arc, Tom Macartney, tells the Think conference, which ends today, that buy-to-let is jeopardising Britain’s city centres.

Latest data on the housing market from the Land Registry showed house prices rose by 1 per cent in March to stand 8.3 per cent higher than a year earlier, one of the highest annual rises in almost two years. The average price of a home in England and Wales is now £178,423.

Debbie Crew’s award winning campaign against abuses by private landlords continues to gather speed. More signatures are now being sought for an electronic petition to the prime minister to stop a Section 21 Notice being used by landlords to shirk their legal responsibilities.

Papers including the Mail interpret comments by Mervyn King yesterday as a signal that the property boom may be over – though the Bank of England governor also said inflation is set to fall.

But leading buy-to-let lender Bradford and Bingley sees no signs of a slowdown thanks to immigration and students, reports the Financial Times.

The chances of a Lords revolt on home information packs grew after criticism from a select committee, according to the Mail.

The Guardian profiles Debbie Crew, housing advisor and ROOF contributor, who has won a Sheila McKechnie Foundation award for campaign against abuses by private landlords.

The property market in Spain, where UK citizens own up to 250,000 homes, is about to implode, according to economists from Lombard Street Research.

LAST YEAR saw yet another boom in buy to let, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Loans to landlords rose 48% by volume and 57% by value over 2005.

Buy-to-let now makes up 11% of the entire mortgage market – not bad for an idea that has existed for only ten years. After a brief pause for breath at the start of 2005, with a record 177,800 gross advances in the second half of 2006. Overall, the year saw 330,300 worth £38.4 billion.Can the boom go on? So far, public appetite for buy to let seems to be insatiable. While many professional investors may be focussed on long-term rental returns it is hard not to believe that many are looking entirely on capital growth, particularly when gearing can multiply that many times over.

For lenders, buy to let represents a highly profitable new area (see the 20% increased in business in Bradford and Bingley’s results yesterday, for example) with, so far, very little risk. The rate of repossession is marginally higher than in the traditional mortgage market but arrears are lower, and lenders have the option to appoint a court receiver to carry on collecting rents.

The consequences are becoming increasingly clear though. Private renting rose by 20% between 2000 and 2005 whereas the number of people buying with a mortgage fell. Up to half of new-build apartments in big cities are being bought by investors. And an acceleration in the redistribution of wealth to existing home owners.