A bunch of statistics about the housing market have been published over the last few days. Housing issues have been hitting the headlines in the mainstream media harder than is usually the case.  A number of the key pressure groups have made the point forceful that current developments in the housing market are by no means entirely positive. It is interesting and welcome to see commentators who usually focus on the economy more broadly also getting in on the act and giving attention to our pressing housing problems.

But the mainstream media does not always have the time, the space, or possibly the inclination, to do justice to the complexity of the issues. In that respect the blogosphere comes into its own.

Without the strict constraints of maximum word counts or limits on the the use of images, expert bloggers can often quickly produce better informed and more indepth analysis than is possible in other media.

This struck me yesterday because three of my favourite bloggers all produced cracking posts on aspects of our current housing problems:

• Jules Birch writing at Inside Housing posted On the rise.
• Brian Green writing at Brickonomics posted Has the Government found a cure for the disease afflicting the housing market?
• Frances Coppola writing at Coppola Comment posted The illusory housing recovery.

If you’re interested in housing and you’ve not read these posts yet then I thoroughly recommend them.

I also scribbled some thoughts on these issues yesterday. They were published over at LSE British Politics and Policy blog today. Later on I’ll post them here also.

Finally, although it didn’t come out yesterday but the day before, I’ll also recommend having a look at Ken Gibb’s post Guaranteed at his blog Brick by Brick. Ken provides a thoughtful discussion of the use of state loan guarantees in housing.

Update (15/08/13)

This morning Glen Bramley has added his thoughts to the debate with his post The story of Goldilocks and the UK housing market at the IHURER blog. As always, Glen’s well worth reading. (H/T to @urbaneprofessor for drawing this post to my attention)