The JRF report What will the housing market look like in 2040?, released yesterday, provided an eye-catching and headline-grabbing answer to the question that acts as its title. Presumably grabbing the headlines was the point. The answer is that under plausible assumptions about future trajectories on tenure, costs and […]
The council tax is unlovely and unloved. It was rushed into being as a replacement for the hated poll tax. Its structure has always been an uncomfortable compromise, somewhere between a charge for services and a genuinely progressive property tax. The property values upon which it is based […]
It seems that with each passing week the news on the housing front gets gloomier. A week ago the NHF published its latest Home Truths report which extrapolated current trends and concluded that if things carry on as they are then affordability – or rather unaffordability – will […]
Since they entered office the blue-tinged contingent of the Coalition has been engaged in a systematic process of stigmatising those in receipt of social security benefits. Great emphasis has been placed upon the undeserving and the fraudulent. There is support for the hard working strivers, but condemnation for […]
A few months ago the Building and Social Housing Foundation argued that one in five households could be living in the private rented sector by 2020, if current trends continue. Last week the estate agents Savills suggested that we could reach that situation by 2016. Is the housing […]
It does not take great insight to realise the UK housing market is in a mess. Recently we’ve witnessed significant nominal house price declines and consequent negative equity, a massive contraction in the supply of credit, a private sector construction collapse, and social house building as a victim […]
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