labour regulation of lettings market
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Latest property news
A look at housing policy under Labour
FOR MILLIONS OF families across the country, the cost of buying or renting a home is at the heart of the cost-of-living crisis. And for many of those who used to dream of owning their own home, their hopes are fading fast as house prices rise and their wages stagnate. Recent figures show that for the first time in decades, if you’re in your late twenties or early thirties, you’re more likely to be renting privately than buying a home with a mortgage. The cause of this is simple – there is a chronic shortage of affordable homes in many parts of Britain. The housing shortage did not begin with this Government. But under David Cameron it is getting much worse. The number of homes built across the country in the past four years is lower than at any time in peacetime since the 1920s. We support help for first time buyers which is why we support ‘Help to Buy’. But rising demand for housing must be matched with rising supply, otherwise there is a real risk that soaring house prices will push home ownership out of the reach of the very first-time buyers that the scheme should be helping.…
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Latest property news
Something to say?
Welcome to the new normal! Anyone thinking that the current state of the property market is a ‘blip’, and that everything will return to ‘normal’ (meaning rampaging property inflation and big profits) is, I’m afraid, deluding themselves. What the property market has become over the past four years is now, itself, ‘future normal’ and we have to get used to this, because it is here to stay. There have been several key changes since we learned the phrase ‘credit crunch’ in 2008 and despite low consumer confidence and job insecurity, repossessions have not reached anywhere like the level of the early ’Nineties crash. For a start, low interest rates mean that it has never been cheaper (in living memory at least) over such a sustained period of time to have a mortgage. And a more mature attitude by lenders to the Private Rented Sector has meant greater flexibility for homeowners to decide whether the home they own is the home they want to live in. Constraints on mortgage lending mean that there is no shortage of tenants for buy to let landlords, with a 135 per cent increase in demand for rented homes since 2009 and steadily increasing rents –…
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