After exchanges between the government and OBR they settled for a compromise. The government was credited with an expansion of housebuilding up to 2029 adding 0.2% to growth, whilst accepting they would not build 1.5 million homes this Parliament as promised.
All the debate has been about solving a housing shortage and dear housing by building more, not by reducing demand. If the government carries on with an additional 750,000 legal and illegal migrants a year or anything like that they will need most or all the new homes just to house the new arrivals.The last government did tighten conditions for legals before leaving office so that should have some effect, but the new government is putting up the numbers of illegals and not showing signs yet of wanting to clamp legal numbers or make sure legal entrants leave when a limited time visa expires.
The government wrongly thinks the shortfall in build rate compared to migrant rate is about planning permissions. There are plenty of unused permits to build homes available. The shortfall in build rates is because homes are too dear and mortgage rates and rents too high, limiting effective demand. The construction sector lacks sufficient trained staff and sufficient plant to build many more. Housing Associations have limited money to invest in additional homes
The OBR thinks house prices will go up over the next few years, keeping them too dear for many people who would like a home of their own, The government needs to reduce the large movement of people wanting subsidised or free accommodation from the state so we can price young people back into the market to buy their first home.
March 31, 2025
Remove all the incentives offered to illegal economic migrants, replacing them with immediate incarceration on arrival.
Build high qualty homes in factories at volume. Use the building industry to build the services and create the bases, be they concrete slabs or well sealed cellars. The houses on such foundations could arrive on trucks and be assembled in days. For this and the next Parliament it should be largely for first time buyers, which will require reassignement of existing building permissions. Confine the existing building industry to erecting services such as schools and medical centres, though these could be designed for factory production as standard bolt together modules.
If government can find/create money for none profitable blots on the landscape like HS2, then it can do so to provide affordable mortgages and rents which will have a payback income stream from buyers and renters.
Such activity should have a possitive effect on GDP, and employment, while releasing more plumbers, electricians and carpenters for self employed work on the existing building stock.
Only the dimest socialists and consocialists fail to understand the basic requisites of a dynamic economy that grows personal GDP annually. So until swamp clearing becomes possible we are stuck in a no growth economy. Awaiting this, the enterprising can train in the black economy as is the norm in parts of the EU , or move offshore.
March 31, 2025
Yes, houses can be erected quickly, and well, if there is the will. The problem is location – proximity to jobs, transportation and services. Where I live most building is going on at sites on the outskirts of towns, requiring residents to travel, usually by private car, to both place of work and food purchase. These are old towns, (as most are!) not built for current road requirements let alone a few thousand new residents. The cost of railway station parking, if available, is exorbitant. At some stations I pass the railway parking is near empty but the surrounding roads are full of commuter cars!
Joined up thinking please…
March 31, 2025
SW trains I use are rubbish with delays and cancellations and packed trains all the time. And then you have to pay a fortune to park there. These people have no idea how capitalism works.
They can reduce crowded trains by just adding on carriages (which are there) but lack the kudos to make that happen. And make parking free (they’re copping hospitals which charge for car parks but difference is people always need hospitals – no choice – and way, way more expensive to run – where as people can choose to travel by car or do something else rather than travel by train)
March 31, 2025
EM,
SW railway( no longer SW trains) have new stock sitting in sidings at Clapham Junction because the drivers have not been ‘trained’ to drive them.
I heard today that, since their pay rise, drivers are reluctant to work weekends. Hence the poor service on Saturday & Sunday.
Don’t forget four carriage trains are cheaper than eight or ten carriage trains to run. It is cheaper still to run a rail replacement service.
I got to Wimbledon once and the replacement bus to Surbiton(a major destination in the service) was an hour later. The company couldn’t care less about passengers.
As regards housing, travelling on the Elizabeth line to Reading today I noticed the proliferation of high rise flats along the line after Ealing Broadway (queen of the suburbs in the old days). Elizabeth line trains to Reading were once an hour. 9.26 was outside the time for the London Freedom pass. So 10:26 was the first train available.
Reading has got worse. I used to occasionally visit the Oracle business park. Reading station is not the mess it was during development but there are bland high rises all over the town.
Slough has always been a dump.
March 31, 2025
We have a no (or negative growth in GDP per cap terms) economy due to Net Zero, vast but incompetent government, vast over taxation, vast over regulation and vast low skilled immigration levels.
House building is further deterred by excessive cost taxes and over regulation. EV connection OTT insulation rules, stamp duty, the increases in NI, planning costs and delays, English Nature, crime and insurance costs, disabled access rules, new address registration costs, excessive costs for water, electricity and utility costs, heat pump rules, excessive building control fees, council tax on empty homes…
As usual the government are the problem!
March 31, 2025
If the government carries on with an additional 750,000 legal and illegal migrants a year or anything like that they will need most or all the new homes just to house the new arrivals.
Simple solution just stop housing them , stuff the bleeding heart brigade and do what most countries do in Europe and stick them in tents on some baron ground then watch the numbers start to come down
March 31, 2025
Only the relatively wealthy migrants can afford to ‘migrate’ to UK and then get their free house and benefits whilst they rent out their own house back home. Charity is essential in life and good for the soul. But this isn’t charity. But virtue-signallying with other people’s (tax payers) money whilst the recipients of that ‘charity’ are largely laughing to the bank and back.
March 31, 2025
Also, people allowing migrants to flood in don’t really love their country. It’s not just virtue signally but also lack of patriotism. Lastly, we’re spending billions and billions on migrants. If s fraction of that had been saved that money could have made a huge difference on real charity abroad helping the real poor to become more self-sufficient etc. So real charity is lovely out hugely from false charity and costing us way, way, way more in terms of ‘charity.’
March 31, 2025
Mick
Why house them at all, if you arrive with no papers or identification of any sort, then simply hold and return within 24 hours.
The excuse of, “I lost my documents” does not hold good because they managed to keep their phone in many cases, they could have photographed them and kept them on their phone “before they lost their documentation.”
Many of us do such when we go on Holiday simply to save carrying the originals around which could be stolen, photographic evidence usually satisfies most security organisations abroad as to who you are, other than perhaps on initial entry where originals are expected, but where a photograph helps.
March 31, 2025
Supply and demand. Another concept alien to governments. There is no housing shortage just a population explosion.
There is not a cat in hells chance of them getting anywhere near their target because of materials, labour and demand. The houses being built aren’t selling because people are wary of spending.
With the latest tax grab, particularly council tax, there is less money to spend. It’s almost as if the government is trying to engineer a recession.
March 31, 2025
Ian
Your first line says it all. “it’s a population problem”
When you import 1,000,000 people a year, for many years, you will have a shortage of all services !
March 31, 2025
I don’t want southern England, because that’s what we’re talking about here, concreted over and carpeted with little boxes made of ticky-tacky to house immigrants; whether they’re legal or not.
Over 50% of our social housing and as high as 75% in some places, is occupied by immigrants, many of whom are not working and/or are in receipt of welfare. The Westminster Uni-Party has been importing poverty, and thousands of people who are basically parasites on our welfare state, for decades.
We can’t build our way out of the problem caused by mass immigration.
March 31, 2025
Yet no government has done a single thing to end it, why?
March 31, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
@Donna, bang on the money.
Our useless Uni-Party will do nothing, of course, other than fiddle around the edges and oversee the decline of our country. They do not have any idea what to do now because they have allowed things to deteriorate too far. All options to improve matters involve taking radical steps and implementing measures of which they are afraid. They talk about change but do not have the political will to change anything. They have given up. They exist merely to cling on from one electoral cycle to the next.
March 31, 2025
This weekend POTUS Donald Trump threatened Iran with being bombed, unless they comply with his demands that they cease development of their nuclear weapon. Iran now has a large stock of highly enriched uranium with which they could quickly build such a bomb
To reinforce US military threats, the Americans have been undertaking a massive build-up on Diego Garcia, involving at least 7 B-2 bombers and aerial refuelling assets. There are now three carrier groups in the region – one in the Mediterranean, one in the Red Sea and one in the northern Indian Ocean.
The Israelis are bombing the Palestinians again, the war criminal Putin is still bombing Ukrainian civilians and the Americans are bombing the Houthis
All this alpha male geopolitical warfare has propelled the spot gold price to $3120/oz in Asian trade last night, a new record. The ride is not going to stop anytime soon
March 31, 2025
SG
Don’t you think it’s about time the west stood up to these idiots
Our way of life is worth protecting and Trump is right that Europe should pay it’s way
Germany for one has played both sides against the middle and now the payback is due
March 31, 2025
It seems there is an insatiable demand for bombs of all types, perhaps except landmines.
Growth might be achieved by increasing production in such an immoral industry.
What else is there.
March 31, 2025
Its a plan !
March 31, 2025
Yup, all that bombing is a real problem for housing.
March 31, 2025
Alpha males are FAKE males (a form of machismo to cover-up childlike insecurity).
A real man is a (benevolent) KING. In history we have Cyrus the Great. And in Jungian psychology (that incorporates the philosophy of the great and ancient cultures, civilisations and religions), King incorporates being a benevolent leader, protector, provider (including supporting strong economy), as well as the Warrior / Greek-like hero, and confidence not arrogance or being a wimp, humour, Lover of Life, Peacemaker, empathy, competence, wisdom, courage, a lover of the arts and culture and sports and patriotism as well as humility and love (both tough and soft), and religion / the spiritual and the prophets (often uncanny people like the fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear but with pearls of wisdom to uncover).
March 31, 2025
SG,
Trump’s claim was to be the peace president.
However, he is now threatening to bomb Iran. Actions similar to his predecessors.
Trump is a deal maker. So realpolitik is the name of the game and the White House, since Lyndon Johnson, has long been Israeli Occupied Territory.
You get better information reading the Israeli newspapers,like Haaretz, rather than the UK press.
April 1, 2025
On the Israeli media, you’re right. I noticed that during the Covid crisis.
April 1, 2025
Peace should be based on geo-politics not the businessman’s art of the deal. Business is not geo-politics. Fundamental category error.
March 31, 2025
Good morning.
Can someone please teach those supposedly running the country (into the ground) the basics of DEMAND and SUPPLY.
Oh ! And what is a PONZI SCHEME and what happens in the end ?
Cheers
March 31, 2025
Nop, no teacher on earth can get that through these particular heads.
We need to change the Heads of nearly everything.
March 31, 2025
We need more houses!
Really? Why not fewer people.
Social housing should not be given to anyone who isn’t working except a minority of buildings adapted for the mobility disabled and their carers.
Government can not keep paying for people to live their lives, that is the job of work.
The worthies will point to a breakdown on law and order if people can’t afford to live (pitchforks) I posit in that case why are we importing people who would increase lawlessness?
March 31, 2025
Correct – Look at the number of people sleeping rough on the street the whole night ….thats the number of people who need accomodation
The media/politicians don’t understand the difference between need and want ?
”Of the 1,507,100 unoccupied dwellings in England in 2021, it is estimated that 89.7% were truly vacant and 10.3% were second homes” https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/numberofvacantandsecondhomesenglandandwales/census2021
That’s a million and a half empty houses
April 2, 2025
The total is about 6% of the housing stock. Homes become vacant when the last occupant dies or moves into institutional care, and can take a good while to sell. The may also be unoccupied during major renovation, or because they have fallen into disrepair. Sales by landlords exiting renting also tend to be slow, and with vacant possession I.e. unoccupied. Somes homes for rent or sale also stay on the market because they are unattractive as properties or locations. That particularly applies when a major local employer shuts down and people move elsewhere for work.
There needs to be a lot more analysis of the data.
March 31, 2025
Why has Universal credit been increased by £14 per week (over 15%).
It is time that the contributors were considered, not just the takers.
April 2, 2025
Possibly because for a time UC increased by less than the inflation rate?
I am no expert but the amount people on UC seem to receive is derisory. This is based on an acquaintance who needed UC for two years a few years ago, after his business failed, his partner left him and he lost the house to the bank. I couldn’t live on so little.
I suggest some anomalies at the top end (like the higher rate tax relief available on private pension contributions to the very rich, and the reduced 2% national insurance rate) are ironed out so that those right at the bottom do not have to live in penury.
March 31, 2025
“The shortfall in build rates is because homes are too dear and mortgage rates and rents too high, limiting effective demand”.
So if demand for houses is limited how come prices haven’t fallen ?
Reply Latent demand far exceeds supply. Many who want a home cannot afford one. The scarce homes are bid up by those who can afford them and by landlords letting out less and less space per person for high rents, underpinning the enhanced capital values.
March 31, 2025
And the pool of people with the capacity to buy is not big. Try selling a house and see if you agree that there is ‘high demand’ to purchase or just high demand for free everything, including houses.
March 31, 2025
Builders do not build when the market does not repay their costs. Until they are ready to build most of their site pipeline is held as options to buy the land at a pre-agreed price for which they have paid a modest option premium. Provided prices keep escalating, the cost of the land being fixed by the option no longer looks expensive and allows a profit margin. If prices fall the options remain unexercised. They have to expire before land prices can reset through fresh options at lower prices.
March 31, 2025
Here’s an option that might help, considering that most of the immigrants are single young men.
We know they don’t respect whatever benefits or property they get, so why give them the best available that could go to indigenous families.
We should build basic single purpose accommodation to hold the newcomers – they don’t need to be fancy, and if they resemble cold war Russian apartment blocks so be it – we must stop giving them our best!
Ultimately we have to repatriate so many that have come here seeking their fortune, as well as putting a block on new ones joining them.
I won’t say that our islands are full because that would be nonsense – there is still plenty of space to build special accommodation but that would take initative from HMG and that is in short supply along with adequate infrastructure and services.
March 31, 2025
Our island cannot afford to support this huge new influx of capital consuming people. There may be ‘space’ but there is no capacity. When the workers (producers) are less well off than those who don’t work (consumers) it’s just a matter of time before the producers join the consumers – then there is no production, and the State collapses.
That might be the only way to get rid of the aliens.
March 31, 2025
If these young men are really escaping wars and personal risk would they think twice in having the ‘snip’ to get a time limited work visa? Most are not escaping but are economic migrants and are very likely to have families later, another cost to the UK economy.
March 31, 2025
”Most are not escaping but are economic migrants”
ALL are not escaping but are economic migrants …..I’ve corrected it for you ‘you’re welcome’
March 31, 2025
Growth for the Taxpayer Funded criminal invasion – yes. It has nothing to do with anything else
March 31, 2025
+1
March 31, 2025
So nine months is sufficient time for the government to learn “…. they would not build 1.5 million homes this Parliament as promised”! And Angela Rayner has acquiesed to that!
Would this have been different at all had we a prime minister whose priorities and engagement were more on housing and less on Ukraine?
March 31, 2025
Good for Ukraine – it might save us! Is that what you are saying?
March 31, 2025
Todays MsM joke… “Sir Keir Starmer is ready to deploy “sharp teeth” against the US if Donald Trump hits the UK with tariffs this week.”
So why does Starmer and his Government already permit a 400% tariff up lift on the USA’s own tariffs if it is not to punish and keep the USA out of the UK. That is not reciprocity that is punishment.
Or in plain English he is keeping the UK in lock-step with his beloved EU’s using their unequal punishment of the USA. He wants back in at any and all cost, he doesn’t like being in charge and having to make decisions
If everything was plain and simple like for like there would be no discussion. Trump tried to solve the situation last time he was in power, the EU along with the UK just wanted to talk and keep talking – is it a surprise a sledge hammer has been brought into play to resolve the issue?
March 31, 2025
+1.
March 31, 2025
I have some observations on this subject but I might be arrested if I made them.
March 31, 2025
And that is not a joke. We are a long way from what we were when this was our island,
March 31, 2025
You are guilty of sowing wicked thoughts in our minds! Expect the Thought Police any time soon.,
March 31, 2025
Housebuilding will boost growth – but not UK growth !
Revamp and new builds are constructed using 80% foreign labour
Investment in new builds are mainly foreign investors
Purchasers are mainly foreign buyers or immigrants
Sub-lets are uncontrolled
Building new houses doesn’t help the indigenous nor the taxpayers of the UK
March 31, 2025
“”not UK growth”
Agreed to a point, but if it employed Uk labour, and added value, then it does.
We have been making factory made houses for decades, Remember the Prefab chalet types just after the second World War, then we went on to timber frame housing which had a nasty reputation in its early years, as unfamiliar requirements, regulations and poor site supervision lead to many very expensive errors.
The Germans (no surprise) are good at it, and use their own skilled and fully trained factory labour to erect on site, their houses also sell at a premium, as does a specialist Oak Frame system UK manufacturer/supplier.
The problem with factory made, is always the quality of the site supervision and the labour.
Supply and erect by the manufacturer is the only product I would even consider, have seen too many bodge jobs (with unskilled labour) on site to contemplate anything else.
March 31, 2025
Can I ask you to loo at the social housing subletting scandal. The subletting at market rates of free social housing then allows the notional resident to live abroad while they reap the rewards of our social lunacy. This is an issue that has been common place in London for decades. Nothing is ever done.
March 31, 2025
+1
March 31, 2025
Indeed and social housing is unfair competition for the private rented sector. Why should two families earning the same income, one in social housing the other in private sector housing on the same street have hugely different disposable incomes perhaps £1,000 PCM more. Plus the private landlord get attacked with osborne’s interest double taxation, the threat of not being able to evict, CGT without indexation and IHT tax.
March 31, 2025
As long as land is scarce in this country, house prices will be high. We are a small country with a population density of 280/Km2 and a population of 68 million, which is increasing year on year. France, Europe’s largest country, has a similar population but a lower density of 118/Km2. As France has more room, perhaps the Government can ship out all unwanted immigrants across the channel, thus reducing the demand for housing and cutting the price of a home.
March 31, 2025
But James, whereas the illegals used to be engineers and doctors they are now barbers and we can see in numerous towns and cities how productive they are.
March 31, 2025
Spot on …our highstreet has too many engineers making kebabs and doctors painting fingernails
April 1, 2025
Not forgetting the Asian taxi drivers who were Doctors in their own country. A place where their qualification for a GP was to hold a valid driving licence.
March 31, 2025
Population has been estimated at nearer 75m.
March 31, 2025
The responsibility for our housing problems rest entirely with both central and local government.
Firstly, for decades, insufficient planning permissions have been granted in places where people want to live.
Governments have done little or nothing to encourage businesses to be situated in places where there is room for more housing at affordable prices.
We all know about the ridiculous number of legal migrants that have been allowed to come and live in our country.
We have been constantly lied too over the value of net inward migration to the country. Critics were not listened too because they have been accused of racism by most politicians, particularly from Labour and the Lib-Dims.
As things have run totally out of control under recent Conservative administrations, sensible critics, like our host and many others, have at last been listened too and it is now generally accepted that net inward migration is extremely costly to us. The fixation with GDP, rather than GDP per capita, has been used to disguise the fact that our indigenous population has been made poorer because of the influx of unskilled immigrants, many of whom lack education and cannot even speak our language.
As a landlord, I resent the accusation that rents are too high. They are, but successive governments have piled costs on landlords that would have destroyed the whole sector had rents not been allowed to rise. The worst culprit has been Osborne with his taking away tax relief on mortgage interest, a legitimate business expense, and allowing councils to charge full council tax on properties as soon as they become unoccupied. These two measures alone are costing us up to £10,000 a year.
Yet the country needs private landlords, otherwise we would have people living in cars and tents !
March 31, 2025
Do we need “growth”? How is “growth” defined? Growth of what? The Government, the Civil Service, quangos, lawyers, police, prisons and judiciary?
Or simply population growth? Housebuilding to house the import of 1m+ immigrants per year is not going to increase our prosperity (GDP/capita) and as these migrants bring with them their religions, laws, cultures, practices, grievances and politics the UK will change to look like the countries from which they claim to be fleeing.
Do our governments want to fill the country with the global majority? Is this why PM May signed the UN Migration Pact?
March 31, 2025
PS :
If immigrants to the UK do not have the necessary language, knowledge and skills to pay their own way to afford housing etc. then they should not be coming the UK. We are not a country in need of population growth. We already have a very high population density.
If immigrants do have these skills and they are coming from a country poorer than the UK it is absolutely immoral for the UK to take these people for they should remain in their countries. Firstly because they should be assisting with their own country’s development and not absconding after the money spent on training them and secondly because our government should be spending the money to train our own people for all the jobs we need to be filled.
March 31, 2025
Don’t fall for the lie that the government wants growth of GDP/capita with talk of housebuilding to accommodate migrants. Net Zero is specifically designed to de-industrialise and impoverish. The latest news is a further £8bn, in addition to the £22bn already given for CC(U)S, put aside for compensation if the CC(U)S project fails….CO2 does not cause global warming as shown by Shula & Ott. There is no climate crisis. They’re relying on the idea that if you tell a big enough lie often enough people will believe it. Or, rather, enable them to continue as long as possible with their economic destruction until they are forcibly stopped.
March 31, 2025
I’ve heard around 250k houses are built a year in the UK, so the government commitment would only be an additional 250k houses over the 5 years and they have already rowed back on that by 100k. Still 1.5 million sounds so much better than 150k. These people care more about dishonest bragging than meeting their responsibilities.
The majority of social housing is now given the immigrants yet these numbers will still be too little to satisfy the largess of our corrupt government towards uninvited guests.
A question should be asked in the house whether full identification including DNA evidence is taken and held on all illegal immigrants, whatever method of entry they used, so that they can be identified and deported when a proper government is constituted that actually gives a damn for it’s duty and responsibility towards the legal population.
March 31, 2025
Labour’s plan to insist that a greater percentage of homes are ‘affordable’ (that is loss making for construction companies) is also very damaging, especially at a time when labour costs are rising considerably due to a shortage of building workers. Labour seem too stupid to realise that construction companies won’t build any homes unless they can see a good prospect of making a profit out of it.
March 31, 2025
Building little boxes on agricultural land to accommodate an unprecedented influx of immigrants and the overflow of English people whose traditional areas have become criminal jungles is unsustainable. For one thing every other country has understood long ago that building upwards is less expensive, wastes less land, and brings residents closer to essential services. Yet UK builders want to build houses that could have been designed three hundred years ago when labour was cheap and plentiful. People also have been led to believe that living in a well-designed apartment is the same as living in Ronan Point on a patch of grass somewhere without any consideration for essential infrastructure.
Building Poundburys or adding more houses to existing conurbations is wrong because it inevitably consumes agricultural land without solving the housing crisis. Building residential accommodation is work for civil engineers not jobbing builders if we are to avoid wasting space unnecessarily for ever and solve our housing deficit assuming the deliberate flood of aliens orchestrated by the Tories and now Labour can be stemmed by a patriotic party in the future.
March 31, 2025
The stupidity of the PM is breathtaking. He is going to send troops to Ukraine to protect their new borders when a peace deal is signed, but he can’t protect our own borders! The PM has written an article today about a 40-nation conference to smash the gangs and stop illegal immigration. Every word is a joke; the only nation he needs to talk to is France, and he should bluntly tell them that if they don’t stop the boats, they will lose one fishing license for every illegal immigrant who lands in the UK.
Agree with other comments on the need to build cheap, affordable, pre-fabricated houses and stop the demand by stopping immigration, both legal and illegal. But there is no hope of this dire government doing either!
March 31, 2025
There’s something strange going on with politics across europe, Turkey stopping the opposition from standing and now France …we’re losing democracy
Politicians ignore everyones call for less immigration & more freedom
March 31, 2025
More in the MsM in relation to our absentee 2TK, he has found another International Audience as he calls them to deliver a speech (another speech another lecture) saying he is ‘angry’. Yet as the UK PM, as always the problem he sees is nothing to do with him – it’s the ‘others’. At least he didn’t call them ‘right-wing’, this time.
The UK criminal invasion and their need for housing, benefits and NHS support is not him its others.
Will this major Internation speech achieve anything? If he was worried about the UK or its people we would have seen action, real action months if not years ago under this one-party Socialist regime.
2TK thinks that as when you step up in Court and make a speech someone steps in and remedies the imbalance or injustices. It hasn’t dawned on him yet that he is now supposed to be the one doing things, not ducking and diving and hiding from responsibility, his endless stream of foreign jaunts, international speeches to people that have no interest in the UK, don’t vote in the UK. Do nothing other than confirm his real inexperience if not incompetence – then when you look a Parliament what else is there?
March 31, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
@Ian B
You know when ‘management’ have a problem and haven’t a clue what to do – well, they often call a meeting and ask staff for suggestions. A member of staff comes up with a whizzo solution and management takes the credit.
T2K’s international migration conference is quite similar. It is an admission of failure on his part; he has no solutions. Therefore, he seeks to spread the problem to as wide an audience as possible by calling it a global or an international matter.
If the international community comes up with measures that reduce illegal migration, well, he could take some credit. However, but much more importantly from his point of view, if illegal migration continues and even gets worse he can say to voters we can’t do anything about it on our own because it’s an international problem so you’re just going to have to lump it.
April 1, 2025
@Alan Paul Joyce – or as others have pointed out, 2TK is at sea, lost, and is seeking refuge with the use of deflection
March 31, 2025
The Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) produced an interesting chart of the history of housing starts in England over the past decade based on ONS data (which is unfortunately somewhat in arrears, only covering up to Q3 2024).
https://bcis-production-2021.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/2025/02/PD-England-started-by-sector.png
It shows that in Q2 2023 there was an enormous spike in spade in the ground starts, followed by a more than offsetting dip afterwards. This was caused by the commencement of new building regulations aimed at making new homes more net zero compliant. When similar measures were legislated by Huhne in the coalition years builders found that buyers did not want the designs or the added costs, and so Cameron ditched it before it became mandatory. I suspect we are seeing a similar market reaction now – potentially made worse by an overzealous Miliband who is already trying to force people out of houseboats by not permitting diesel motors and generators and log and briquette fires.
Builders will not build homes they cannot sell, nor homes that cannot be profitable.
March 31, 2025
What profit do you think a house builder company make on a £300k house? Answer this with proper reference please.
March 31, 2025
You sound more and more like a school or FE teacher hefner
You’ll be giving grades for replies next.
April 1, 2025
For the year ended June 2024 Bloor Homes reported turnover of £1.252bn for the sales of 4,004 homes – near enough to your £300,000 figure – and a profit after tax of £149m. They sold fewer homes and made less profit (and less profit per home) than in the previous year.
April 1, 2025
Thanks a lot, Mark. That’s a profit after tax of a bit less than 12%.
April 1, 2025
A very low level of return for the risks they take and the capital employed.
They could put cash into a savings account and get 5% with no risk.
Did you think it would be much higher hefner?
April 2, 2025
Are you serious Sam? 12% after tax for the building company, 5% on a saving account likely taxable at least at 20%. And you are/were a businessman? No surprise the country is in a mess with ‘businessmen’ like you.
April 2, 2025
Are you serious hefner
a) its before before tax
b) would you invest and risk millions in assets and employ thousands of people in a huge business for a return of just 12% ?
c) 5% I mentioned is just an standard market rate ofreturn.
With millions to invest good money managers can get double figures per annum.
d) You exhibit all the signs of someone who has never been involved in running a private sector business.
April 2, 2025
sorry typo it is after tax.
April 2, 2025
Consider this…you could sit relaxed in say a very nice French holiday home and collect a six figure
( net of tax) risk free income on your capital or you could work long hours all through the year and risk all the money you have to make a higher return.
Public sector people just don’t understand the entrepreneur mindset.
12% after tax is OK and those millions made will be re invested to create further growth, success and increases in employment.
Plus the company will pay more in tax to the government.
You just don’t get it hefner.
March 31, 2025
Some people think flats and retirement flats are the answer, yet there are a group of companies who are ripping the heart out of the people who bought these homes; one retirement home complex near me (very popular when first built) has put its management fee up to £9000 pa in a ward of social deprivation, with a % of the flats gone to social tenants, there is council tax to pay on top of that Band B and the flats have dropped in value from £120,000 to £60,000 and they can’t re-sell. Nice flats, too, in a nicely done complex, although the bannister rails have already rusted, so they’re not even getting their money’s worth from the management fees.
Young people have been buying flats at a % of ownership; they are too dear for them now to rent/buy and can’t get out. Management fees near £3000 pa plus council tax + mortgage + rent. We are allowing flat-building associations to cripple people that can’t afford it.
March 31, 2025
Indeed my advice is to only buy freeholds (preferably ones with room to extend or develop) and never shared ownerships or flats – otherwise you spend a fortune on service charges and often also on lawyers arguing about these charges!
March 31, 2025
Is this the PM lying to us?
The Home Office has posted a video on X, showing people being escorted onto planes by immigration enforcement officials, with the words: “we have removed more than 24,000 people”.
But the claim is misleading.
The government’s latest figures show that only 6,339 of these were “enforced returns”., external .
The majority were “voluntary returns” – and a significant number of these happen without the government’s direct involvement or even knowledge.
April 1, 2025
Also, what kind of world do we want to bring our kids up in? My nieces talk about how scary London is now for knives and crime in general for children and adults. Compare this to the world of The Railway Children. When children were zillions of times safer and much more loved by their community and where they had real maternal, feminine love and real paternal, masculine love and yes the opportunity for adventure and to see wonder in their surroundings. I know things were not perfect then either. But I think these people would be shocked if they saw the UK / Western World today.
April 1, 2025
Sir John
Houses are too expensive because of a change that happened whilst (if I recall correctly), you would’ve been a member of the government.
Mortgages for houses were only available from building societies. They could lend only the amount of money they had deposited by savers.
Then your government decided to allow banks to provide such mortgages. Banks are different to building societies, because they print their own money at will. They can loan out many times what they hold in deposits.
Is it any wonder that prices exploded as a result ?