ROOF Blog

Fifty years ago, the average home cost £2,507 and one in seven had the loo outside. A half century on, the average home costs £162,085 but spare a thought for the two in every 1,000 households that still rely on an outside loo, according to research published by Halifax. The decade-by-decade data paints a picture of Britain today more divided than ever by regional house price differences. Halifax found that the region with the lowest prices in 1960 – Yorkshire and Humberside – remains the lowest, but said that every region in Britain has fallen further and further behind London. It said the difference was down to the rise in real earnings, which have increased more in Greater London than in any other region. However, incomes have failed to keep pace with rampant property prices everywhere. Halifax found that prices rose by 273 per cent in real terms between 1959 and 2009. Over the same period, the growth in real earnings was 169 per cent.

Figures from Communities and Local Government show that house prices fell 12.5 per cent in May. London saw the biggest decline in England with prices falling 16.3 per cent, while Northern Ireland suffered the largest drop with prices down 23.2 per cent between April and May. Howard Archer, an economist at HIS Global Insight, said he believed a further decline of 10 per cent was possible.

However, the government has confirmed it has dropped its affordable house building target from 70,000 to 55,000 a year in the next two years, despite the additional funding, as it is now paying ‘more of the cost per house’ due to the huge reduction in section 106 agreements and other forms of private investment. The government expects to complete 55,500 affordable homes this year and 56,450 in 2010/11, but only 13,500 a year will be for social rent rather than the 45,000 out of 70,000 homes originally planned. Communities and Local Government refused to provide a regional breakdown of the reduced targets.

Communities secretary John Denham has announced a £70 million migration impact fund, funded by a levy on migrants, that will be used to tackle illegal working practices and reduce local pressure on public services. Nearly 200 projects will receive funding with every region benefitting, but the amounts each receives will be weighted towards areas where migrants have had the greatest short-term impact. Funding in housing is being targeted on cracking down on rogue landlords.

New research from the National Housing Federation reveals north England’s rural population has been ‘overlooked’ by policy makers, while facing the dual challenge of ‘staggeringly’ high house prices and ‘crippling’ low incomes. The research found that 86 per cent of the north’s most expensive house price districts are predominantly rural and almost 66 per cent of England’s most deprived rural areas are in the north. The federation has called for the government to create a ‘northern rural way initiative’ to combat the current economic crisis.

Two housing associations have merged to create one of the UK’s largest housing groups with more than 30,000 homes across the South and South West. Sovereign housing group and Wessex housing partnership became the first group amalgamation since the Tenant Services Authority was formed.

Around 20 per cent of people view properties they have no intention of buying or possibility of affording, just to have a look around other people’s homes a survey from propertylive.co.uk has found. People in London were the most likely to have a snoop, with 27 per cent admitting to it, while those in Liverpool were the least nosey with only 6 per cent viewing homes out of curiosity.

Planning regulations designed to cut red tape and save money on planning application fees are having the opposite effect, according to research by a national loft builder, Econoloft. It argues that the easing in planning restrictions on some extensions has not clarified the rules, as every council is interpreting the guidance in a different way, with councils in the south seeming to be ‘particularly belligerent’.

The north-south divide in the housing market will worsen this year according to house builder Bellway. The third largest house builder in the country said that its business in the south of England had become ‘marginally stronger’ with prices beginning to stabilise and predicted that by the year end its turnover in the south would be ‘much higher’ than the north. The northern market, particularly the Midlands, Yorkshire and north west England would remain fragile and the market in general would slow down over the summer.

A survey of more than 2,000 homeowners found that they estimated the value of their homes on average at £190,175 – an overestimation of at least £35,000 on the real average value. The difference between perceived prices and what is actually paid, based on figures from the Land Registry, are widest in the East and South East of the UK – with an average difference between asking price and actual sale price of around £50,000.