As the dust starts to settle on the various unread General
Election party manifestos, with their ‘bran-bucket’ made up numbers, life goes
back to normal as political rhetoric on social media is replaced with pictures
of cats and people’s lunch. Joking aside
though, all the political parties promised so much on the housing front in
their manifestos, should they be elected at the General Election. In hindsight, irrespective of which party,
they seldom deliver on those promises.
Housing has always been the Cinderella issue at General Elections. Policing, NHS, Education, Tax and Pensions
etc., are always headline grabbing stuff and always seem to go ‘to the ball’.
However, housing, which affects all our lives, always seems to get left behind
and forgotten. Nonetheless, the way the politicians act on housing can have a
fundamental effect on the wellbeing of the UK plc and the nation as a whole.
One policy that comes to mind is Margaret Thatcher’s Council
House sell off in the 1980’s, when around 1.4m council houses went from public ownership
to private ownership. It was a great
vote winner at the time (it helped her
win three General Elections in a row) but it has meant the current
generation of 20 somethings in Southampton (and elsewhere in the Country) don’t
have that option of going into a council house. This has been a huge contributing factor in
the rise of private renting and buy to let in Southampton
over the last 15 years.
Nevertheless, looking back to the start of the Millennium, Labour
set the national target for new house building at 200,000 new homes a year (and
at one point that increased to 240,000
under Gordon Brown for a couple of years). In terms of what was actually built, the
figures did rise in the mid Noughties from 186,000 properties built in 2004 to
an impressive 224,000 in 2007 (the highest since the early 1980’s) as the
economy grew.
Then the
Credit Crunch hit. It is interesting,
that the 2010 Cameron/Clegg government did things a little differently. The fallout of the Credit Crunch meant a lot
less homes were built, so instead of tackling that head on, the coalition side-stepped the target of the number
of new homes to build and offered a £400m fund to help kick start the housing
market (a figure that was a drop in the ocean when you consider an average UK
property was worth around £230,000 in 2010). The number of new houses being completed
dipped from 146,800 in 2011 to 135,500 the subsequent
year.
So, one might ask exactly how many new homes do we need to
build per year? It is commonly accepted
that not enough new properties are being built to meet the rising need for
homes to live in. A report by the
Government in 2016, showed that on average 210,000 net additional households
will be formed each year) up to 2039 (through
increased birth rates, immigration, people living longer, lifestyle (i.e.
divorce) and people living by themselves more than 30 years ago). In 2016, only 140,600 homes were built ...
simply not enough!
Looking at the numbers locally in Southampton and the
surrounding area, it is obvious to me, that we as an area, are not pulling our
weight either when it comes to building new homes. In the 12 months up to the
end of Q1 2017, only 240 properties were built in the Southampton City Council
area. Go back to 2007, that figure was 550,
10 years before that in 1997, 670 new homes and further back to 1988, 540 new
homes were built.
Who knows if Teresa
May’s Government will last the five years? She will think she has bigger fish to fry with
Brexit to get bogged down with housing issues.
But let me leave you with one final thought.
The conceivable
rewards in providing a place to live for the public on a massive house building
programme can be enormous, as previous Tory PM’s have found out. Winston Churchill in 1951, asked his Minister
for Housing (Harold Macmillan) if he could guarantee the construction of
300,000 new properties a year, he was notoriously told: “It is a gamble—it will make or mar your
political career, but every humble home will bless your name if you succeed.”
Isn’t it
interesting, that the Tories remained in power until 1964! Mrs May will have to work out if she wants to be the heiress to Harold Macmillan
or David Cameron?
For more information on the Southampton property market, visit the Southampton Property Market Blog If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.
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Thank you so much for such a great blog.
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