"Home ownership has peaked, with potentially disastrous consequences. We need drastic action to revive the market.
"... It is 10 years since the rate of home-ownership peaked. ... Today it is young people, many in professional jobs, who are left out of the property market. ... Not only can many young people not afford to buy, in London they can hardly afford to rent either.
"House-price booms are a product not of shortage, but of cheap money, which sucks in speculators hoping to make quick, highly-geared gains.
"... But there are ways in which land prices and building costs can be brought down, to mitigate the damage.
"Development land - identified as such by democratic process - should be purchased by development corporations at agricultural or other current-use value. It should then be parcelled up, granted planning permission and auctioned off to [a deliberate mixture of] developers"
"... The profits should then be ploughed back into infrastructure."
[Link to The Times (subscription)]
[We say: Remember that Hammerson and other major developers were saved from collapse at the start of the credit crunch - by state intervention. So, do you fancy grabbing Hammerson's currently-undevelopable land at Brent Cross for the price of a field of turnips?]
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| Link to publisher Harriman House's web site |
A Broom Cupboard of One's Own
The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership
"During the great property boom of the early 2000s, when the conversation in every pub, club and living room was how to make a killing on the property market, one sanguine voice stood apart. Writing in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Times, the Mail on Sunday and the Spectator, Ross Clark warned that rampant inflation in house prices would bring nothing but misery.
"The aftermath of the great property boom is an acute housing crisis. Millions are priced-out of buying a home of their own, while millions more are desperately hoping that prices remain high to prevent a slide into negative equity. We are caught in a trap of our own making: we thought house price inflation had made Britain rich, but instead it's just made homeowners over-leveraged and would-be homeowners tenants of mum and dad.
"Meanwhile, new regulations on the horizon [zero-carbon requirements] threaten to make the problem worse, needlessly driving up the price of new houses and failing to address the real causes of the crisis. [Well, in housing yes, but what about the environmental crisis?]
"But what if there are answers?
"And what if they neither involve a calamitous collapse in property values, nor worsening social and generational divides by leaving young people priced out? [Although the author's Times article seems to suggest a 'collapse' of prices is required.]
"And what if it's possible to boost home-ownership without spraying the greenbelt with concrete?
"Ross Clark tackles the housing crisis head on in this compelling new book, revealing the sources of the crisis and exploring with deadly insight the flaws of current attempts to address it, before revealing a range of simple solutions that can be implemented to start easing the problem today.
"The result of 15 years of up-close observation of the property market, 'A Broom Cupboard of One's Own' is a searingly honest and thought-provoking take on the housing crisis facing Britain. Read it and find out how one of the biggest asset bubbles in recent history needn't provoke social or financial crisis, if we act now."
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