Brickonomics

Construction continues to shed workers at an alarming pace

A further 38,000 construction workers were made redundant in the three months to September according to the latest Government labour market figures. This raises the total of employees shed over the previous 12 months to 177,000. Meanwhile the figures also...

Posted by Brian on November 11, 2009 9:59 AM

Forecasts suggest some rays of hope, but huge uncertainty remains

For those with an optimistic nature there was some good news to be seen in the latest set of industry forecasts with both the Construction Products Association and Hewes trimming how much they feel output in the industry will fall....

Posted by Brian on October 16, 2009 12:35 PM

111,000 jobs lost to construction... and that is just the start

The latest employment figures make grim reading for the construction industry with the number of workforce jobs plunging by 61,000 in the second quarter of this year. This means that 111,000 jobs have been lost to the industry since they...

Posted by Brian on September 16, 2009 10:07 AM

House prices on the increase, but so too are the questions marks over the housing market

The big news is that for the first time in two years more surveyors in Britain said prices rose than said they fell, according to the latest RICS housing market survey. The big question is whether this is the start...

Posted by Brian on September 14, 2009 11:54 PM

Meanwhile, ITEM Club says recent house price rise is a false dawn

Today the Item Club released a special report on house prices that suggests a further fall in the first half of next year. It sees the recent rise as a false dawn and says it will be another five years...

Posted by Brian on September 14, 2009 9:44 AM

Caution rules in house price debate

The latest Nationwide house price survey for August recorded the fourth rise on the trot and puts the average price of a house £12,500 higher than in February. Surely this means the slump is over and the price of houses...

Posted by Brian on August 27, 2009 10:11 AM

Redundancies in construction jump to 170,000 over 12 months

The latest employment figures show a continued shocking rate of redundacies in construction with another 42,000 jobs shed from the industry in the second quarter of this year. That makes a total of 170,000 recorded job losses over the past...

Posted by Brian on August 12, 2009 10:05 AM

Survey shows widening North-South house price divide

The latest RICS survey out today adds yet more evidence to suggest a widening north-south gap in the housing market. Prices are now rising robustly in the equity-rich, high housing-demand south, while for most of Britain house prices remain on...

Posted by Brian on August 11, 2009 9:22 AM

Forecasters call the bottom of the house price slump

The increasing stretch of stable house prices is leading forecasters to call the bottom of the slump. The Nationwide late last month tentatively said it may be time to think the unthinkable that house prices may exit 2009 higher than...

Posted by Brian on August 8, 2009 4:45 PM

RICS: Housing market remains fragile, despite recent improvement

The message from the latest update on the housing market from the surveyors' body RICS is that while the market may have found a clearing it is not out of the woods yet. There has been a torrent of better...

Posted by Brian on August 6, 2009 9:06 AM

Nationwide ponders the unthinkable: A house price rise for 2009

The latest figures from Nationwide show a rise in prices for the third month on the trot, which puts the price of an average house at 1.3% more than at the start of the year. This sign of buoyancy is...

Posted by Brian on July 30, 2009 10:52 AM

Odd ideas to kickstart house building No 93: Just give first-time buyers £10,000

What would happen if the taxpayer (via the Government) decided to give first-time buyers otherwise unable to raise a deposit £10,000 so they could buy a new home? The answer, at least on the face of it, is a bit...

Posted by Brian on July 26, 2009 9:36 AM

Recent housing data poses the question: Higher, Lower or Stick for prices?

The latest Halifax house price figures showing a 0.5% drop, stacked on top of recent data from Nationwide, Hometrack and a range of others, suggest that prices may be holding steady. But what should we read into that? Which way...

Posted by Brian on July 8, 2009 10:38 AM

Rightmove figures provide food for thought on house prices

The latest figures divined from the property website Rightmove show that asking prices fell 0.4% in the month. And at first sight this seem a little at odds with most of the data coming from the housing market of late....

Posted by Brian on June 22, 2009 9:40 AM

Why you might want to raise a glass to building homes?

As we rage about the cost to the taxpayer of 80p bath plugs and the construction of elaborate duck houses, here's a figure to contemplate. For every new home built in recessionary times, each taxpayer is about 10p to 15p...

Posted by Brian on June 5, 2009 9:45 AM

Redundancies ravage the construction workforce - 141,000 jobs gone in the past 12 months

The numbers made redundant in construction over the past 12 months have mounted to 141,000, according to the latest set of figures released by the official statisticians at ONS. Almost 100,000 of those redundancies were made in the six months...

Posted by Brian on May 12, 2009 2:51 PM

A housing market recovery next year, says CEBR

There is a growing chorus of voices saying that the worst is over in the housing market and that the upturn is not that far away. And to add a bit more volume to the choir is the latest Consumer...

Posted by Brian on May 5, 2009 9:54 AM

Home prices slide but rate of decline has eased, says Nationwide

The latest Nationwide data on house prices is yet another pointer to suggst the slide in house prices is far from over. The April figure saw the average price fall by 0.4% in April after the upward blip of 0.9%...

Posted by Brian on April 30, 2009 9:25 AM

Construction job vacancies evaporate as recession bites

The latest batch of employment figures provides little comfort to the thousands of construction workers who are now looking for jobs, as vacancies in the industry have plunged deeper. The figures show that in the three months to March this...

Posted by Brian on April 22, 2009 10:04 AM

Is the housing market out of the woods?

More encouraging news for those involved in selling houses came from the surveyors' body RICS today with the release of its latest housing market survey. The survey adds further weight to the argument that the catastrophic collapse in house prices...

Posted by Brian on April 15, 2009 11:34 AM