The UK Peace Index - highlighting the opportunity cost of violent crime
I'm always sightly dubious about statistics and information represented by campaign organisations - I'm left with the reservation that information can presented in any way that you want to prove whatever point that you are trying to make (wasn't it an economist who came up with the phrase 'lies, damned lies and statistics'?). So this fascinating report from an organisation called 'Vision of Humanity' needs to be looked at with an open mind.
However, if you take it at face value, it offers some really interesting information.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Rent Controls - Evaluating Government Intervention
Here is a streamed revision presentation on rent controls in the housing market - designed for AS micro students.
read more...»Unit 2 Macro Building on the Green Belt in a Drive for Growth
Former Labour Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott was once (perhaps) quoted as saying: "The Green Belt is one of Labour's greatest achievements, and we intend to build on it!". Danny Boyle's dramatic and wonderful London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony "Isle's of Beauty" began with an unforgettable rural landscape which was soon to be transformed by an altogether harsher industrial landscape during the pandemonium.
For many years we have regarded our greenbelt protected land as a bulwark against urban sprawl and over-rapid commercial and industrial development. But this is about to change with a change in planning laws and regulations that will make it easier to turn farmland into business parks and new housing?
read more...»Contour Crafting: Automated Construction as a Destructive Technology
Here is a thought-provoking talk by Behrokh Khoshnevis, Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering and is the Director of Manufacturing Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Southern California (USC). He offers ways in which 3D manufacturing can revolutionise the construction industry and make it possible for customised building projects at a fraction of the financial and environmental cost. But what of the risks of a sizeable rise in technological unemployment?
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Revision on Maximum Rents in Housing
The housing sectors of many towns and cities around the world have often been the target for different forms of government intervention including planning regulations, subsidies and direct price controls.
Price controls are legal restrictions on how high or low a market price may go. They can take two forms: a price ceiling, a maximum that price sellers are allowed to charge for a good, or a price floor, a minimum price buyers are required to pay for a good.
Our focus in this blog is the decision by the authorities in New York to extend arrangement for rent controls for a million rent-regulated units in the Big Apple. This provides an opportunity to look at the basic supply and demand analysis for housing rent controls and build a critical evaluation of some of their effects.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Government launches New Buy Loan Guarantee Scheme
Here is a fresh attempt by the British government to breathe life into the moribund housing market. People in England are being offered financial help to climb onto or up the housing ladder as the government’s new mortgage indemnity scheme launches. Under the terms of the scheme, both the construction industry and taxpayers will act as co-guarantors on new homes bought by existing or first-time buyers. Will it work in boosting demand for new build homes? Is this scheme designed to help house-buyers or builders? Or is there a real risk of government failure?
Basics:
* Builders will pay 3.5 per cent of the price of the home
* Taxpayers will provide an additional guarantee of 5.5 per cent that will only be used if there is a major property crash.
* Mortgage lenders will be able to lend up to 95 per cent of the sale price which means new buyers in many instances will only need to find a five per cent deposit or £10,000 on a new £200,000 home. The typical deposit on a mortgage now is closer to £36,000
* The scheme is available on houses and flats valued under £500,000 in England only
Unit 2 Macro: The UK Housing Market in 2011
This blog provides a chart-based overview of developments in the UK housing market in 2011. The housing industry has a big effect on macroeconomic variables such as output, employment and investment. Has there been a marked recovery in property prices, new housing starts and mortgage lending?
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: Empty Housing and Economic Efficiency
Channel 4 recently focused on the causes and effects of the hundreds of thousands of empty homes in the United Kingdom. Why is it given persistent shortages of affordable housing that perhaps a million homes lie empty and unused whilst an estimated two million families are in severe housing needs. New housebuilding has collapsed and in Britain we are building 100,000 fewer new houses every year than we need just to keep up with the changing mix of households and demographic change.
An interesting exercise is to show students some of the Channel 4 Campaign videos and then get them to put together policy ideas as to how to reduce the volume of empty homes and reduce the length of housing waiting lists.
Links to some of the Channel 4 videos can be accessed below:
read more...»Government Plans to boost the Housing Market
The Government has announced today a scheme to help first time buyers on to the property ladder. It has been reported widely in the press with mixed reactions. The BBC article outlines the main proposals (here is the link to The Daily Telegraph). It is interesting from a political point of view that this government should chose to intervene in this market, though perhaps we should not be too surprised as it was the Conservatives that brought in the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation in 1980.
read more...»Unit 1 Micro: FirstBuy, Affordability and Effective Demand in Property
For hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers, getting a solid foothold on the housing ladder has been tough in recent years. Falling prices and lower mortgage interest rates ought to have improved affordability for would-be purchases of a new house or flat but the barrier of having to save up a deposit in order to qualify for a mortgage has become higher causing many to be frozen out of the market. The number of people renting private accommodation in England has increased by 55% in the past six years as first-time buyers struggle to make purchases.
Economists use a term known as effective demand to describe demand that is backed up by a willingness and ability to buy. There are few better case studies in low effective demand than the difficulties facing first time buyers in the UK property market. A new government scheme is designed to offer relief.
read more...»Chinese inward investment in the London property market
In mainland China, authorities have put restrictions on property speculators to dampen the market, while in Hong Kong prices have risen by 70% in less than two years. But the 25% depreciation of sterling over the last two years makes the London property market a real draw for property investors from China. Sky News reports that one in three of buyers of new properties in London come from China and Hong Kong, mainly in the £400,000 - £1mn bracket, either seeking accommodation for their children studying in London or simply an investment. If - or when - the sterling/dollar exchange rate recovers, their return will be enhanced by the increased return they could get when they take their money out of the UK market again.
read more...»AS Macro: Extended House Price Deflation?
A pessimistic forecast for the UK economy produced by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) suggests that the UK housing market is set to remain in the doldrums for some time to come. The NIESR has predicted a 4.5 per cent average fall in house prices in real terms this year, with further falls averaging 1.5 per cent for the following five years. The background to this forecast of house price deflation is that mortgage finance remains hard to come by (there has been a steep fall in the average mortgage loan to house price deal on offer). And mortgage interest rates are set to rise from their current low levels. Weak demand is thus the main driver of falling prices. The NIESR argues that “(housing) supply constraints were less important than is often argued since supply just about kept pace with household formation.”
read more...»Timetric: Mortgage Lending and Mortgage Rates
Want to purchase a property? Chances are that you will need a mortgage to finance the deal and you will also need to find someone prepared to lend you the money. The fallout from the credit crunch continues to haunt the UK mortgage market with monthly loans to property-buyers stuck at very low levels. The average mortgage interest rate on a standard variable rate loan is low but most mortgage lenders have cut the % loan to housing valuation ratio meaning that buyers must find a hefty deposit to clinch the deal. Our Timetric chart (below) is always updated so you can keep up to speed with what is happening to mortgage lending and the cost of home loans in the UK property market.
read more...»House Price Rollercoaster
This is a terrific visualisation of what has happened to US house prices since the late nineteenth century - we ride the rollercoaster based on data from the Case Shiller index.
And if you want the latest Case Shiller data on US house prices - based on the 20 city survey, then click on the Timetric charts below .... hold onto your hats, the Florida property price data in particular looks pretty scary
read more...»Combining monetary and fiscal policy to curb inflation in China
Inflation is rising in China, and many of the reasons are the same as those given by Mervyn King for the rise in the UK - food prices are up 10.3% and the producer price index has risen to 6.6%, giving an annual inflation rate of 4.9% in January.
This is in spite of three interest rate rises in the last four months, and has brought about a further rise from 5.81% to 6.06% by the Central Bank.
The growth of the property owning middle class is recognised as having a role here - the National Bureau of Statistics also announced changes in how it calculates consumer price inflation.
In spite of the fact that there is still a huge proportion of the population who live on a very low income, and poor families spend up to half their incomes on food, housing has now been given a much larger share of the new consumer price index (CPI) basket, and food prices have been given less weight, it said.
read more...»UK House Prices
Our Timetric chart here covers the annual % change in house prices.
read more...»Beware the return of the Gazunderer
The fragility of the UK housing market becomes more apparent with each passing day. And anecdotal evidence of the balance of power shifting towards buyers and away from sellers comes with news of the return of the gazunderer!
read more...»Mortgage equity withdrawal
Mortgage equity is still increasing according to the latest surveys. Homeowners have stopped using their homes as “cash machines” and are still increasing their financial stake in their homes.
Figures from the Bank of England show that homeowners’ equity rose by another £6.2bn in the second quarter of 2010.
From July 1998 to March 2008 homeowners had borrowed an extra £328bn against the rising value of their homes, in a process called mortgage equity withdrawal. This reversal in the trend clearly means adverse affects for consumer spending. Read more here.
Housing market and negative equity
Home owners who bought at the tail-end of the property boom face another four years of negative equity before they recover what they paid, new figures reveal today.
David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said:
“Even though price rises look sluggish for the next few years, affordability is not improving for many low-to-middle income households as banks continue to restrict their mortgage lending and house prices remain historically expensive in relation to salaries. There’s a very real risk that an entire generation will be locked out of the housing market for the foreseeable future and people will increasingly look to buy or rent an affordable home instead.”
read more...»China’s housing market - fantastic interactive resource
The Wall Street Journal has excelled itself with this superb resource providing background on the Chinese housing market (bubble?)
Housing and the British Economy
Here are some charts of recent developments in the UK housing market and some revision notes on the impact of the housing recession on macroeconomic performance
read more...»Revision Presentation - Housing & the UK Economy in 2010
This new revision presentation examines the links between the housing market and the UK economy.
Download printable slide handout
50-year decline in housing affordability
The BBC website has a summary of the key points in a report issued by the Halifax about the housing market over the last 50 years. The main headline is that houses have become less affordable, with the average annual price rise of 2.7% outstripping the 2% annual rise in incomes over the period. There have been 4 periods of boom in house prices: 1971-73, 1977-80, 1985-89, and 1998-2007, with the greatest acceleration in the last decade. In 1959 the average house cost £2,507 (compared with an average price in December 2009 of £162,103 according to Nationwide Building Society) and about 14% of them did not have an indoor toilet (compared with 0.2% in 1996). In 1967 22% of houses did not have a basic hot water supply, and built-in central heating was a rare facility.
read more...»Tentative signs of a pulse in the housing market
Whisper it quietly but there are some signs of a turning point in sentiment, lending, activity and price levels in the UK residential housing market after a very difficult eighteen months. There is a chance that average price levels might end the year slightly higher than they started. Here is a brief selection of charts that offer a modicum of optimism and an incentive for me to spend some of August looking for a good value property on the Northumberland coast!
read more...»Big question: housing
The Big Question in today’s Independent looks at the housing market.
Revision: Deflation in Residential and Commercial Property
Background:
There has been a period of steep and sustained deflation in the average prices of property in the UK. Commercial property is 40% down from the July 2007 peak and residential property is - on average - down by 20% since the peak in the autumn of 2007. Land Securities, Britain’s largest real estate company has just revealed a £4.7bn fall in the value of its investments. It’s retail properties fell in value by 37 per cent and fared only slightly worse than its stock of London offices, which were down by 34 per cent. The commercial property sector is suffering from a slump in demand and sharp rise in vacancy rates. Housebuilders have made big cut-backs to the number of new homes being built. Both commercial and residential property markets are experiencing excess supply.
read more...»
Revision presentation - UK Housing Market 2009
This updated revision presentation profiles the UK housing market considers the links between the housing market and the UK economy. Asset prices have become hugely important in driving macroeconomic activity - although policy makers in the Treasury and the Bank of England have probably made serious errors in allowing the property bubble to go on for too long before that asset price bubble burst in spectacular fashion.
Launch interactive presentation on UK housing market
Official recession figures and graphics
This BBC resource has bang-up-to-date graphs and data for the performance of the macroeconomy – GDP, Unemployment, House prices, Inflation, Repossession and Interest rates – as well as some interesting regional comparisons and the opportunity to check your own personal inflation rate. It should be read by anyone studying macroeconomics, especially those taking AQA Unit 6 next week!
Homeowners step away from equity loans
During the housing boom millions of property-owners in Britain opted to unlock some of the equity in their homes by extending their mortgage and using it as a prop for extra spending such as a new car or other big-ticket consumer durables. Housing equity loans have also been made available by some lenders for older households to maintain their spending during retirement.
The Bank of England’s estimate of mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW) is intended to measure that part of consumer borrowing from mortgage lenders that is not invested in the housing market. It takes the increase in housing finance (net mortgage lending and capital grants) and subtracts households’ investment in housing (purchases of new houses and houses from other sectors, improvements to property, and the transactions costs of moving house).
But as the housing recession deepens and prices fall at an annual rate of more than ten per cent, the pattern of equity borrowing has reversed. For the second quarter in succession, people invested nearly £6 billion into housing equity - in effect thousands of people have taken the decision to scale back on equity loans and focus instead on repaying some of the outstanding mortgage debt as and when funds allow.
This change in borrowing psychology has been accompanied by tighter lending criteria being used by lenders making it more difficult and expensive for people to extend their mortgage. Just as the days of the 95% - 100% mortgage have gone for now, so the steady flow of equity release marketing coming through letter boxes has dried up completely. It is all part of the complex process of de-leveraging - an attempt by financial institutions to cut their lending and rebuild their balance sheets.
For the best part of a decade the booming housing market was a significant crutch for domestic consumer spending. Now that equity withdrawal has gone into reverse and with unemployment expected to rise by up to one million over the next year, there are two major drivers of household spending pointing firmly in a downwards direction. The collapse in equity withdrawal is evidence of greater caution among consumers but is yet more bad news for retailers.
The BBC covers the latest data in this article
Barclays Boss says housing downturn is only half done
The CEO of Barclays Bank John Varley has painted a pessimistic picture of the likely path for UK house prices over the coming year. In an interview with Sky News he forecast that average prices still had a long way to fall with a fifteen per cent decline likely over the next twelve months.
read more...»
