Housing

City life

In its pomp, they used to say that what was good for General Motors, Detroit’s Medici, was good for America. Detroit was imperial. Like Rome, it stood for the whole. Michigan Avenue was like something from a Roman urbs: a decumanus maximus of this planned city that created and was enriched by the automobile. Then, like all empires, it began to collapse. By the time of my first visit 30 years ago, there were already clusters of youths on street corners picking their teeth with switchblades. All the signs of decay were present: boarded-up shops and discount stores. The Renaissance Center, a mirror-glass tubular tower whose form suggested a car’s

The right-to-buy scheme is already causing problems for the government

New communities secretary Greg Clark has the least enviable job in the cabinet: justifying the policy of extending the right-to-buy to housing association tenants. The policy, hastily put together in the early stages of the election campaign, was roundly condemned from across the political spectrum. Dominic Lawson, not a noted socialist, for example pointed out that unlike council homes the state does not own housing association properties and therefore has no right to sell them. It will, in effect, require compulsory purchase – and for the purpose of private gain. After 24 hours in the sunshine, the right-to-buy policy was hardly mentioned by the Conservatives for the rest of the

Election podcast special: 10 days to go

The general election campaign has entered the final stretch and each day between now and polling day, we’ll be producing a short lunchtime podcast looking at the day’s campaign developments. Today, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss Labour’s new housing pledges, the 5,000 small businesses backing the Tories, the hysterical talk of the SNP threat — as well as the unfathomable state of the opinion polls. You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer or iPhone every week, or you can use the player below:

Campaign kick-off: 10 days to go

With just under two weeks to go until polling day, the promises, threats and reassurances will kick up a notch as we enter the final stretch of the campaign. The Tories have another 5,000 businesses to back up their case for reelection, while Labour is turning to its favourite weapon of market intervention towards housing. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Building for Britain The Tories have tried to paint themselves as the party of home ownership throughout this campaign. But Labour is attempting to seize that mantle with several new policies on housing today.

Osborne and Miliband compete to see who has the worst housing policy

So who is talking more nonsense about the housing market: George Osborne or Ed Miliband? From today’s newspapers, it’s hard to tell. The problem: the era of low interest rates has fuelled an asset boom. Perhaps an asset bubble. Property prices are soaring to ridiculous levels, unaffordable for anyone without money in their family. This causes real despair for young people. So what to do? Ed Miliband’s solution: he’ll ‘harness’ (by which he means ‘divert’) money put into first-time buyer ISAs into housebuilding. This policy could only have been devised by a bunch of academics who don’t understand markets. The whole point of ISAs is that people can invest money wherever they like:

The perils of planespotting

A dangerous hobby Three men from Greater Manchester were arrested and held in the UAE after being seen writing down the numbers of aircraft. — Plane-spotting can be risky. In 2001 14 Britons were arrested in Greece after allegedly taking photos at an air base in Kalamata. Eight were sentenced to three years; imprisonment for spying and the other six were given suspended sentences. (All were overturned on appeal.) — In 2010 two British men were arrested at Delhi airport after being seen taking photos of planes from a hotel room. — Trainspotters have had problems too. In 2008 a 15-year-old boy was held under terror legislation after taking photographs

Suburban legends: Why London’s property boom seems set to help Labour win seats

Economists have for some time spoken of a ‘great inversion’ of London, whereby property price hikes in inner London, often linked to gentrification, has made suburbia comparatively more affordable. These changes, marked in the five years since David Cameron became Prime Minister, could have a profound effect on how the general election result pans out in the city. This is especially the case given the ability of such changes to affect the social and demographic makeup of London, as people from poorer backgrounds, the young and ethnic minorities are more likely to be susceptible to price increases in the private rental market. In some ways, this is nothing new, with

Immigration threatens to overshadow Tory housing week

It’s supposed to be the Tory housing week, with David Cameron setting out plans to double the number of discounted starter homes to 200,000. It’s an important, salient issue to make election promises on. But more salient is immigration, and somehow the Tories are having to talk about that again today. Today’s Times contains a plea by Ken Clarke that Cameron drop the Tory target to drive net migration into the ‘tens of thousands’, given its failure in this parliament. Ministers have oscillated between blaming the Lib Dems and blaming Europe for missing the target (they could also blame the growing economy, as Fraser explains here) and David Cameron did closely

The myth of the housing crisis

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/the-snp-threat-to-westminster/media.mp3″ title=”Simon Jenkins vs James Forsyth on the housebuilding myth” startat=1215] Listen [/audioplayer]There is no such thing as the English countryside. There is my countryside, your countryside and everyone else’s. Most people fight just for theirs. When David Cameron told the BBC’s Countryfile he would defend the countryside ‘as I would my own family’, many of its defenders wondered which one he meant. In the past five years a national asset that public opinion ranks with the royal family, Shakespeare and the NHS, has slid into trench warfare. Parish churches fill with protest groups. Websites seethe with fury. Planning lawyers have never been busier. The culprit has been planning

A bold idea that might just help the Tories win a majority

Iain Duncan Smith has come up with a bold idea that might just enable the Tories to break out of the inch by inch, trench warfare of current British politics. The Work and Pensions Secretary wants to see the right to buy extended to those living in Housing Association properties. At present, housing association tenants are offered very limited discounts and can only buy properties that their association has acquired since 1997. An even more radical version of this scheme would see all housing association tenants who have been in work for a year given their homes. When these properties were sold, the state would take a significant chunk in

A radical plan to ease Britain’s housing shortage – double the population of London

Roger Scruton writes in today’s Daily Telegraph, a sentence that in itself fills me with a sense of Wa – harmony, order. He writes: ‘Whether or not our political class has the ability or the will to control immigration, we have to accept that many of the millions who have come to this country in the last two decades are here to stay, and will need to be housed. Without a massive expansion of the housing stock, prices will continue to rise and the pressure on planning laws and infrastructure will become increasingly difficult to manage. As a result we face a question that concerns every resident of Britain, and

Why both the Tories and Labour now want a fight on the economy

Tomorrow, in a sign of how keen the Tories are to keep the political debate focused on it, both David Cameron and George Osborne will give speeches on the economy. Cameron will announce that he is bringing forward a scheme to offer first-time buyers under 40 a 20% discount on 100,000 new home. This scheme had originally been slated for the Tory manifesto but will now be up and running before May. Inside Number 10, they hope that this scheme will help demonstrate that there are tangible benefits for voters to sticking with the Tories and their long term economic plan.   Later on, Osborne will use an address in

Portrait of the week | 4 December 2014

Home The government spent days announcing how the Autumn Statement would allocate funds. ‘Frontline’ parts of the National Health Service would get an extra £2 billion for the time being, £750 million of it diverted from elsewhere in the Department of Health budget. Another £1.1 billion from bankers’ fines would go to support GPs. Labour said it would give the NHS twice as much. Out of the £15 billion already set aside by the government for roads, a tunnel would be built for the A303 past Stonehenge. Of £2.3 billion (over six years) earmarked for flood prevention, only £4.3 million was set aside for the Somerset Levels, but £196 million for the

The hotels trying to turn Cornwall into Kensington

Mousehole is a charming name; it is almost a charming place. It is a fishing village on Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, beyond the railway line, which stops at Penzance, in an improbable shed; I love that what begins at Paddington, the most grandiose and insane of London stations, ends in a shed. The Spanish invaded Mousehole in 1595 but Drake’s fleet came from Plymouth and chased them away; nothing so interesting has happened since; just fishing, tourism and decline. Now there are galleries and restaurants and what the Cornish call ‘incomers’ buying cottages, in which they place ornamental fishing nets after painting everything white. (For something more ‘authentic’, you can visit

My generation can’t afford to buy a house in London; so what?

The UK Land Registry today released its latest report on house prises, showing the ticket-cost of an average home in England and Wales down 2.2 per cent to £177,299 in September from a peak of £181,324 in November 2007. No, that still doesn’t mean that underpaid Westminster interns can afford to buy a home in central London. Per the Land Registry, average house prices in the capital rose 18.4 per cent since this time last year. Cue the New York Times with an opinion article composed by a young writer, cavilling about the matter: ‘Without capital, those of us who do not own property resign ourselves to running in an

Why prefabs really were fab

Sir Winston Churchill did not invent the prefab, but on 26 March 1944 he made an important broadcast promising to manufacture half a million of them to ease the new housing emergency caused by enemy bombs and the continued growth of inner-city slums. He went on to claim that these easy-to-assemble, factory-made bungalows would be ‘far superior to the ordinary cottage’. Readers of this richly illustrated, hard-hitting little book will find that Churchill was right. The new prefab — an early prototype immediately went on show at the Tate Gallery, of all places — did not meet the approval of George Bernard Shaw, who called it ‘Heartbreak House’ and that

Tory planning changes ‘perverse’ and creating ‘unbalanced development’ warns Cable

One of the most striking things about the Lib Dem conference is not that the party has decided to be mean about the Tories in a mildly obsessive and weird way, but that Nick Clegg and colleagues have also been softening the red lines that could really stop them returning into coalition with the Conservatives. At a fringe meeting today, even Vince Cable managed to say a number of nice things about his coalition partners on housebuilding. Asked whether the Tories and Lib Dems had started to disagree over new housebuilding so much that they’d really run out of road to share after 2015, Cable replied: ‘No, there are some

Tories to offer discounted homes to first-time buyers

The Tories have begun to roll out their conference offer to voters. Today, they’ve announced that if re-elected, first time buyers under 40 will be offered properties to buy at a 20 percent discount. There will be a 100,000 houses available under this scheme, all built on brownfield land. The discount will be achieved by exempting the construction of these homes from various taxes and levies.   Tories win elections when they extend home ownership and this idea will have some resonance with aspirational voters worried about how they’ll ever afford a home There will, though, be those on the right who worry about this extension of Help to Buy,

Government loses ‘bedroom tax’ vote

The government has just lost a vote in the House of Commons on the ‘bedroom tax’/removal of the spare-room subsidy/underoccupancy penalty/Size Criteria for People Renting in the Social Rented Sector (the correct, if rather clunky, name). There was a three-line whip from the Tories on the vote, but the Lib Dems had decided they would support their colleague Andrew George’s bill to exempt those who cannot move to a smaller home, or who are disabled and live in an adapted property. The Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons today, and passed 306 votes to 231. Jacob Rees-Mogg moved an amendment that the Bill should be considered

Housebuilding is up: is that good news?

Good news on housing: this government is building more homes. New figures from the Communities and Local Government department show housing starts in the second quarter of 2014 increased by 18 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier and now stand at 36,230. Housing starts are the best picture we can get of how healthy housebuilding is right now. Completions, which naturally reflect an earlier situation but can also be affected by sudden changes in the economy that leave homes half-built (as in Ireland’s ghost estates) are also up by 7 per cent on the same quarter last year and up by 6 per cent from the previous