Filtered by Subscriptions: UK Housing Use setting UK Housing
It is possible that the renewed mood of caution in the housing market might lift once the election has passed. Yet the result will not materially affect the short-term economic growth outlook. And with the impending fiscal squeeze set to dent household …
6th May 2010
March’s mortgage approval figures from the Bank of England confirm that demand is struggling to regain the ground lost at the start of the year. We suspect that the huge gap between house prices and earnings, the still-tight credit conditions and a weak …
4th May 2010
The drop in the Land Registry house price index in March is likely to be reversed in April. Even so, with the economy seeming to have lost a little momentum in the first quarter, the labour market also taking a turn for the worse and household incomes set …
30th April 2010
The contradictory messages offered by the Halifax and Nationwide house price data make it almost impossible to draw clear conclusions about the health of the market. But, at the very least, May’s drop in the Halifax index highlights the fragility of the …
29th April 2010
The weakness of mortgage lending in March seems increasingly hard to explain by one-off or temporary factors. Yet it does fit with evidence that the labour market has begun to weaken again and that the housing market remains overvalued. Given the weak …
27th April 2010
With consumers so far fighting off any preelection nerves, the consumer recovery could gather further momentum in the next month or two. But the second half of the year should look rather different to the first as the recent sweet spot for consumers …
26th April 2010
At a simple level, our view that last year’s house price recovery will be reversed, while gains in commercial property capital values will be sustained seems at odds with the strong historical correlation between the two property sectors. However, …
23rd April 2010
A number of temporary factors such as the snow, the end of last year’s stamp duty holiday and now the election, have all been blamed for the drop in housing market activity in the early part of the year. Yet today’s labour market data serve as a useful …
21st April 2010
The risks that house price falls would take longer to materialise than we had been expecting, and which we flagged in the previous Analyst, have been borne out. We have therefore cut our forecast for house price falls in 2010 from 10% to 5%. … The house …
15th April 2010
The message from March’s RICS survey is that the housing market recovery has stalled. The forward-looking balances, in particular, did nothing to alter our view that 2009’s rise in house prices will ultimately prove to have been a false dawn. … RICS …
13th April 2010
Net migration has been a major contributor to the growth of the private rented sector in recent years but, unless it drops considerably further, the recession-driven drop in migration is unlikely to push residential rents down further this year. However, …
9th April 2010
Surveys of house price expectations, although weakening, are yet to signal the renewed falls that we are forecasting for the second half of this year. However, their record in anticipating price movements is mixed, with consumers’ expectations in …
8th April 2010
Hopes for a strong recovery in the UK economy rest on a decent boost to the external sector from the drop in the pound. But it is looking less and less likely that the exporting sector will manage to offset the continued weakness in the domestic economy. …
7th April 2010
The fact that activity measures showed little, if any, recovery last month suggests that the weather may have been a less significant distortion to January’s data than was initially assumed. Although the end of the previous stamp duty holiday could still …
31st March 2010
February’s surprise drop in the Nationwide house price index was not repeated, suggesting that the recovery in house prices still has some life. However, with mortgage lending remaining subdued in February, the labour market still weakening and …
30th March 2010
29th March 2010
With January’s slump in housing market activity showing little sign of being reversed and both the labour market and affordability deteriorating, February’s fall in the Land Registry house price index is unlikely to be the last this year. … Land Registry …
26th March 2010
This was a clever budget which made the most of very difficult circumstances. The Chancellor largely avoided the temptation to bribe the voters with their own money. There was a package of tax cuts and spending increases amounting to about £2.8bn in …
24th March 2010
While there can be little doubt that they will be popular among aspiring first-time buyers, it is fairly clear that the Chancellor’s stamp duty measures do nothing to resolve the real problems facing the housing market – overvaluation, a lack of mortgage …
We believe that a large pool of rented property will be put up for sale this year. While that might initially result in higher sales, we doubt that the mortgage market will allow demand to keep pace with this rise in supply, meaning that the level of …
Mortgage lending remained in the doldrums in February. While a strong rebound in March cannot be ruled out, the data raise further question marks about whether January’s dip reflected one-off factors, or was further evidence of a lacklustre recovery in …
23rd March 2010
There was good news and bad news in the latest FSA lending data. On a positive note, arrears and possessions both fell in 2009Q4. But the data on mortgage lending criteria offered little encouragement to would-be buyers or those seeking to remortgage. … …
16th March 2010
According to the RICS, downwards pressure on rents is easing thanks to a reduced level of competition for lettings. But, unlike respondents to this survey, we are sceptical that the fall in supply will result in a strong boost to rents this year. … RICS …
The main success of the Bank of England’s policy of quantitative easing (QE) has been the recent rise in asset prices. However, QE appears to have played only an indirect role in the housing market rebound, suggesting that an extension of the policy won’t …
11th March 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … RICS Housing Market Survey (Feb.) …
9th March 2010
We are not convinced that the recent recovery is evidence that long-term supply shortages are underpinning UK house prices. Admittedly, Sweden and Australia also suffer supply shortages and house prices there are rising too. Yet other factors can also …
8th March 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Halifax House Prices (Feb.) …
4th March 2010
It is too soon to draw conclusions from the slump in most measures of housing market activity. But with the economic data still soft and each rise in house prices denting affordability, we think that activity will remain subdued and that house prices will …
3rd March 2010
House prices rose in July, reversing some of the recent falls. But this does not alter our view that prices are set for a period of considerable weakness in the remainder of this year and into 2011. … Mortgage Lending …
1st March 2010
26th February 2010
It is still early days, but our prediction last month that April would be the high water mark for house price inflation appears to have been borne out. For now, house prices continue to rise, but easing supply shortages, overvaluation and, of course, the …
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … BBA Mortgage Lending (Jan.) …
23rd February 2010
Cash buyers have been a key support to housing demand over the past year. But they may have been a less important driver of the recovery in sales than is sometimes suggested. Moreover, if January’s weak mortgage lending data are not just a blip, but a …
18th February 2010
The fact that lenders face a prospective funding gap equivalent to a quarter of the outstanding stock of mortgage debt only strengthens our view that a second leg to the housing market correction lies ahead. Not only does it point to higher mortgage …
15th February 2010
11th February 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Mortgage Arrears and Possessions (Q4) …
Even if official interest rates remain at 0.5% this year as we expect, with lender’s margins under pressure, competition for retail funds still strong and regulatory costs more likely to rise than fall, we suspect that average mortgage interest rates will …
10th February 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … RICS Housing Market Survey (January) …
9th February 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Halifax House Price Index (Jan) …
4th February 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Weak economy will not support sustained house price recovery (Feb 10) …
3rd February 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Mortgage lending (December) …
1st February 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Land Registry house prices (December) …
29th January 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … Nationwide house prices (January) …
Consumer spending could continue to strengthen in the next few months. But this should be short-lived. We still anticipate several years of consumer weakness. … Near-term momentum to fade as the year progresses (Q1 …
27th January 2010
Our forecast that house prices will drop by 10% this year is unchanged. But, in view of the market’s surprising recovery last year, there is clearly risk that the current upward momentum in house prices will last for longer than we are expecting. Thus the …
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … BBA Mortgage Lending (December) …
26th January 2010
Given our views that the labour market shake-out has some way to go, we believe that house prices will suffer a relapse in 2010. Our central forecast is for prices to fall by 10% taking them back to Spring 2009 levels, thus reversing last year’s gains. … …
22nd January 2010
According to the CML, aside from a brief period in 1996, mortgage affordability is the best on record. By contrast, our own measure of affordability is only in line with its long-run average and is no better than it was in 2004. These conflicting messages …
20th January 2010
Scotland’s housing market may have shaken off its reputation as an underperformer compared to the UK in recent years, but its longer term outlook is not so promising. Unfavourable demographics and a heavy reliance on the deteriorating public sector and …
14th January 2010
This report is only available as a PDF. Click to download. … RICS Housing Survey (Dec) & CLG house prices (Nov) …
12th January 2010
