Brickonomics

"House price falls are over" say futures traders

House price falls are over. That is the declaration made over the past two months by the futures market after two years of grim expectations. As recently as last December you could forward buy a notional average house three years...

Posted by Brian on September 14, 2009 8:53 AM

Homeowners turn their backs on using their homes as a bank

I was intrigued by the response from the surveyors' body RICS to the latest Bank of England figures for Housing Equity Withdrawal. The figures show a continuation in the rapid repayment of housing debt, as the graph below shows, and...

Posted by Brian on April 1, 2009 5:38 PM

Could buying up unsold private stock be stifling social house construction?

Is it just me, or is there a link between the deals being struck through the Government's National Clearing House to take unsold private homes into the social sector and the recent collapse in new construction orders for social house...

Posted by Brian on February 16, 2009 5:54 PM

Rapid rise in company failures underlines threat to construction firms

The latest insolvency figures make bleak reading and confirm the stress on construction businesses in the wake of the credit crunch. If you add up all the construction companies falling into receivership, administration or company voluntary arrangements in England and...

Posted by Brian on February 6, 2009 11:24 AM

The beast of inflation may be in retreat, but it can still bite

As if the confusion over the credit crunch's causes and effects is not enough, we now have the related confusion over inflation. What is a good level for inflation to fall to if deflation is a fear? We have just...

Posted by Brian on December 16, 2008 12:34 PM

Why bigger contractors were slower to see the oncoming recession

Something that has been puzzling me for some while is why bigger contractors were so slow to accept their may be a recession coming. Up to about springtime in various conversations with fairly senior folk and in notes I'd read...

Posted by Brian on November 13, 2008 1:40 PM

House sales plunge further but surveyors see brighter future

The RICS has put an extremely upbeat spin on its latest monthly housing market survey despite the continued collapse in sales. The survey highlights the clear 20% majority of optimists over pessimists among the surveyors quizzed in October about future...

Posted by Brian on November 11, 2008 8:17 AM

Company collapses add to construction industry woes

The financial stress within construction firms caused by the credit crunch is made stark in the latest official insolvency figures. And the problems facing the sector are being increased as property firms collapse in massively swelling numbers. Between July and...

Posted by Brian on November 7, 2008 10:57 AM

Threat of more job cuts as credit crunch contagion spreads to commercial work

The recession in construction is looking increasingly desperate as the giant commercial sector appears to be heading for a nasty fall. The latest round of data will be a massive body blow to those who sought comfort in the notion...

Posted by Brian on November 4, 2008 10:26 AM

Houses set for a revival as flats wane in the wake of credit crunch

If one thing epitomised the boom years in the housing market it was the building of high-density blocks of apartments that were sucked up off plan by eager investors. The credit crunch has changed all that. Outside of London dense...

Posted by Brian on October 7, 2008 7:36 PM

Two years of US house price falls and more to come

The latest release of the Case-Shiller index shows that house prices in the US have now fallen in every month for the past two years. The price of an average US home on the 20 city index measure is now...

Posted by Brian on September 30, 2008 4:36 PM

Why house prices indexes seem insane and short-term forecasts are futile

The Council of Mortgage Lenders is bang on when it says it is futile to try to update its house price forecast. Frankly it is probably sufficient to say that houses are worth less than they were a year ago...

Posted by Brian on September 24, 2008 9:25 AM

Housing rescue plan? What housing rescue plan?

Caroline Flint has just announced the much talked of rescue plan for the housing market - couched in terms of affordable housing, but in essence an attempt to bolster the crumbling house building sector. It has been welcomed by the...

Posted by Brian on July 2, 2008 12:22 PM

Workload and job prospects crash, confidence plummets - RICS

A dramatic reversal of fortunes saw confidence in the future of construction workload plunge in the second quarter of this year to the lowest level ever recorded by the chartered surveyors body RICS. The figures suggest that more than 11...

Posted by Brian on July 2, 2008 8:24 AM

Construction recession looks likely this year

On the face of it things look fairly steady in construction land. Thanks to a strong showing from publicly-funded work and a timely rise in private non-housing repair and maintenance, construction output remained steady in the first quarter of 2008,...

Posted by Brian on June 6, 2008 10:49 AM

Accountants see confidence drop in property and construction

When accountants start to get twitchy it is worth sitting up and taking notice. So, the latest business confidence survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) showing the impact of the credit crunch is spreading...

Posted by Brian on May 19, 2008 1:39 PM