Housebuilder & Developer
Publisher Lesley Mayo
James Parker, Editor
FROM THE EDITOR
A week before the General Election, Nationwide announced figures showing that house prices had fallen for three months in row, the first time this had happened since 2009 – the depths of the recession. This prompted the mortgage lender to say this was evidence the housing market was “losing momentum.”
While the reasons for this are hard to pin down, and are probably multi-factorial, Nationwide thinks the sustained weakness of the pound has put a squeeze on household budgets and this could be a major contributor. The cost of living is increasing as import costs rise, and wage growth is not keeping pace.
The firm hoped that the parallel shortage of housing supply would help to keep prices stable however, but this is not good news for those wanting to see a massive uplift in supply to meet demand. The idea that firms will voluntarily build thousands more houses only to see their values drop is counter-intuitive, not to say fanciful.
ON THE COVER
06.17
And it might be a bit old hat now, but it’s not an issue that is going to go away – we need the hard hats to be on sites, and this could be the biggest problem going forward when it comes to delivery. In fact, relying on migrant labour as construction does currently, could a drop in supply post-Brexit mean the industry can’t find people it needs to even build the bare minimum it requires to tick over, taking the drop in prices into account?
Political leaders on both sides seeking to win votes reasserted their desire to cut immigration pre-Election, yet even leading Tories such as David Davis have admitted that levels may even need to rise further post-Brexit to support our economy. Research has found that 700,000 people will need to be recruited into the housebuilding sector over the next five years just to maintain current building levels of around 140,000 per year.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has said that over half of London’s construction workforce is made up of migrant labour. Dean Clifford, of high-end London housing developer Great Marlborough Estates, recently spoke out on the potential risk caused by an immigration crackdown, saying “cutting immigration will kill off the life-blood of construction workers who have made large housing schemes a reality.”
SUPER-PRIME MOVERS
It is not an outlandish prediction to say this is going to be the big issue for the sector to tackle in the coming years.
Finchatton’s Kingwood – go to page 24
James Parker
Managing Editor James Parker
Assistant Editor Jack Wooler
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