Beyond the bubble
I’m very pleased to be delivering the MSc Sustainable Urban Development public lecture for Oxford University and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors on 7th November.
I’ll be exploring the failure of the housing market, the threat it poses to the economy and how a secondary, cost price housing market can fix the problem.
Not only is everyone welcome but it’s also free to attend. I hoe you will come along and heckle wittily. But please do rsvp to David Howard at [email protected]
Many thanks,
Alex
Landlords waver on national register
Landlord representatives this week signalled they are ready to back down on their long standing opposition to the creation of a national register of landlords.
Getting on the housing ladder is murder
Melsonby sub-postmistress Diana Garbutt was found dead in her home in March 2010. Her husband Robin was arrested three weeks later and was subsequently found guilty of her murder.
Unoccupied since the crime, the only shop in the North Yorkshire village, along with its attached living quarters, has now been sold on at a knock down price.
Get your MP to back renters
It was announced on Thursday that the House of Commons will be debating the Private Renting Sector next Wednesday 25th June from about 12.30-5pm.
There are over 9 million private renters in Britain increasingly getting a rough deal from landlords and letting agents. We’d like you write to your MP asking them to back our renters’ manifesto to create a fair and sustainable rental market for both tenants and landlords.
We’re also calling for a secondary, bubble-free housing market for those people who just want to buy or rent a home for a reasonable cost rather than an investment at a high cost.
Click here to contact your MP now!
Many thanks,
Alex
No light at the end of the tunnel for the Housing Pinched
Today was marked by the signing of a new contract at work. As well as being my first contract for a long time without a specified end date, it brings with it the promise of a modest, but extremely welcome increase in salary. Welcome since over the last five years I have noted that the combination of taking care of a family, paying for an appropriately sized privately rented house, whilst commuting by train to work has meant that the money I’ve had available after all the bills have been paid, has been shrinking year on year.
It seems I’m not the only one and indeed my situation has been much more comfortable than that of others. The Resolution Foundation recently published research which shines the spotlight on that sector of the UK population who spend over half of their disposable income on ongoing housing costs: the so-called ‘housing pinched’. Their findings are significant and depressing. Data relating to 2011-12 shows that 1.6 million households were ‘housing pinched’. Of those just under 1 million households (that’s 2.2 million people) were in work. To put this into perspective, in 2012 the Resolution Foundation reports that the average household spent £60 on each of the following: food, non-alcoholic drinks, transport, recreation & leisure. The ‚Äòhousing pinched’ on average had £60 a week left for absolutely everything.
Half of Londoners want a house price fall
Alex Hilton (me) brandishing the Evening Standard today
The Evening Standard today splashes on an exclusive YouGov poll in which 50% of Londoners want house prices to decrease. The Housing Minister Kris Hopkins, Chancellor George Osborne and London Mayor Boris Johnson have all stated publicly that they want house price rises to continue.
With half of Britain’s renters in London and the South East, these powerful politicians are increasingly at odds with the public’s day to day experience of the economy. They are also ignoring warnings from the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who has called the current state of the housing market “the biggest single threat to the economic recovery”.
Right now, politicians seem happy for a free housing market to grind down renters as long as homeowners and landlords are content, and so they have offered no real solutions. We have offered a solution. Our paper, Buying out of the Bubble, outlines how a secondary, bubble-free housing market can be developed, offering low cost housing to people willing to forego free market-level returns in capital gain or rents.
A secondary housing market would provide affordable housing for those people who just want a home, not an investment, while insulating the free market from what will otherwise become a traumatic market adjustment, with dire consequences for London’s economy.
Sign up as a supporter of Generation Rent and help us win a better deal for renters.
Alex Hilton
Director, Generation Rent
MPs sold on our manifesto policies
On Tuesday evening we marked the launch of the Renters’ Manifesto with a reception in Westminster. We were honoured to have both Labour’s Shadow Housing Minister, Emma Reynolds, and Cambridge’s Liberal Democrat MP, Julian Huppert, speak at the event and set out their priorities for reforming private renting.
Emma Reynolds MP and Julian Huppert MP address the Generation Rent launch reception
How to build loads of truly and permanently affordable homes, without spending any money
At Generation Rent, we’ve listened to lots of experts who have analysed the housing crisis and have come to a conclusion. The principle problem is that you can’t just buy or rent a home, you have to pay for an investment too. Some people say the problem is supply – and that’s true – but the supply problem exists because of the inability to supply homes that people need without charging them a high price because of a potential future investment return.
And so we’ve been looking at how you can decouple the investment value of a home for an investor from its utility value to the person living there. And we came up with this. Britain needs a second housing market. A bubble-free housing market for people who only want a home, sitting neatly alongside a free market for those people who want an investment.
And it turns out this could be implemented cheaply and easily and that it will save taxpayers money. We’ve made a short presentation here and written a paper, Buying out of the bubble.
So we’re calling for a secondary, bubble-free housing market – and we need your support to get politicians to adopt it and implement it. Join Generation Rent today (it’s free) and help us campaign for real, effective solutions to the housing crisis.
Cheers,
Alex
The easy way to implement a national register of landlords
A low cost implementation of a National Register of Landlords
The last time the government seriously considered implementing a National Register of Landlords (more accurately a register of tenancies) it was estimated that the cost would be £300 million. The proposal was parked, however, we suspect this figure was derived by simply asking well known consultancy firms what they would charge to deliver it.
Generation Rent, and previously as the National Private Tenants Organisation, has been calling for landlord registration for years. This briefing outlines the principal benefit of a register and a low cost means for implementation.
Housing costs hitting young workers the hardest
On Saturday our director Alex spoke at the Trade Union Congress’s Big Youth Debate, where he outlined the findings of a joint survey of 18-35 year olds that Generation Rent conducted with the TUC. We found that most young renters are living in unaffordable housing, while a third of young mortgage holders are being stretched.
The full details are below: