Housing

On turning 50, I realised I’d never own my own home. What bank would agree to give a mortgage to someone with no regular source of income? Even if I did somehow hold down a job, I would have just 15 years until retirement age. For a while, I was depressed. Owning your own home is the British dream. Why else would all those property shows I drool over be so popular? I won’t have anything to hand down to my kids. What sort of loser am I? Then I remembered: I live in a five-bedroom Victorian terrace in Islington, which is owned by the council. At £650 per month,

King’s Cross station at 10.30 p.m. is not a happy place. Most commuters have long returned to their centrally heated homes, leaving the concourse free for the homeless to roam randomly in search of a few coins from stragglers. I was there to catch a late train to Potters Bar last week and almost missed my Cambridge–bound service due to the numerous men and women who approached and asked for money. Some looked dishevelled, disturbed, miserable; others were polite and seemed resigned to rejection. I keep thinking about one man in particular. He said he was an ex-soldier — a ‘veteran of conflict’, as he put it — and that

Imagine a world where employers judged applicants solely on their dress. Anyone in frayed clothes or scuffed shoes would never get a job. This would be unfair to poorer applicants so, in the name of equality, the government might offer favourable loans up to £1,000 to buy interview clothing. At first glance this would seem a wonderful way to promote fairness. Yet if the number of jobs remained constant, such a policy would have the opposite effect: it would merely ratchet up the level of wasteful, zero-sum competition for what limited chances exist. Soon, anyone not sporting Savile Row tailoring and handmade shoes would be written off. Rather than widening

The National Housing Federation isn’t used to Prime Ministers attending its annual conference. In fact, it’s not used to getting to know the same housing minister from year to year, as the job is the subject of so many reshuffles. Today Theresa May proudly told the body that represents housing associations that she was the first Prime Minister in history to speak at this event, adding: ‘To me, that speaks volumes about the way in which social housing has, for too long and under successive governments, been pushed to the edge of the political debate.’ Her speech then went on to say that she had made it her ‘personal mission

In Britain today, home ownership rates stand at a 30-year low. More and more families with young children are renting, while recent research from the Resolution Foundation found that one in three millennials are unlikely to ever own their own home. At the same time, Britain ranks fifth on infrastructure spending when compared to its G7 counterparts. How can the government solve problems in housing and infrastructure, and how can the private sector help in the fix? M&G Prudential brought together a group of politicians, economists and fund managers to determine the strategy, going ahead, at a recent Spectator roundtable. Fraser Nelson, Editor of the Spectator, chaired the roundtable. He

It is generally agreed that Britain is suffering from a housing crisis, with big cities such as London being particular flashpoints. This year in the capital, the number of renters exceeded the number of homeowners for the first time. In the country, home ownership rates stand at a 30-year-low. And the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds who are renters has almost doubled in the last 10 years. At the same time, 1.8 million families with children live in rented homes with tenancies shorter than a year. Homelessness is also on the rise and house building has consistently fallen below the government’s target. But what is the policy solution to all

Much rot is spoken about how the young have it so bad. In fact, this generation is healthier, richer and better-educated than any before — as well as being better-behaved and more conscientious than their parents were. But the one area where they do struggle is in buying a house. The asset boom of recent years has disfigured the economy, sending property prices soaring and conferring vast wealth on pensioners while giving the young a mountain to climb. Home ownership rates stand at a 30-year low. And the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds in private rented accommodation has almost doubled in the last ten years. This marks not just a

It’s often said that Britain has a housing crisis. But actually, it’s much more of a London housing crisis. Despite notable improvements under the current Government, we are still building 70,000 fewer homes per year than is required by the level of household demand. But when you break those figures down by region, it turns out that 40,000 of those homes are in London. In a new report for the Centre for Policy Studies, ‘Homes for Everyone’, I analysed up the total cumulative shortfall in housing demand since 2000, region by region. The gap in London is an eye-watering 343,436 homes – more than three times higher than the 95,957

We could have given them free Spotify subscriptions. Or Just Eat vouchers. Instead, the government’s pitch to Jezza-loving twenty-somethings was a cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers. The levy on buying a home will be abolished completely up to £300,000, and, for the trainee bankers and tech moguls buying in the better parts of London, the first three hundred grand when you are spending half a million will be let off the tax. On the surface, that might seem like a good wheeze. If young people are angry that they can’t get a first foot on the housing ladder, then it will now be a little easier for them.

You’re probably sick of hearing that Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis – we’ve all heard it said so many times. Over the last few months, Theresa May has been focusing on the topic; claiming that our housing market is ‘broken’, promising to take ‘personal charge’ of the problem. ‘We must get back into the business of building the good quality new homes for people who need them most,’ she said yesterday. On the face of it, the latest figures released by the ONS seem positive. They show that housing supply in England saw a net increase of 217,350 last year; a 15% increase on the previous