Something of a personal announcement here. Continue reading Brexit and Housing, London and Oxford
A former bond analyst thinks again about house prices
I was going to title this blog ‘house prices, supply, rents, incomes and interest rates‘, but then wondered if any would be readers would still be awake.
The background is the discussion which has been going on for a while about whether UK house prices so high because of a lack of supply, but it also leads me to some thoughts about the linguistics of ‘rent’
Continue reading A former bond analyst thinks again about house prices
We need more evidence on tenure and occupancy
It is sometimes argued that policy changes which affect landlords can have no effect on the balance of supply and demand for tenants because the properties which may move between being rented and owner occupation will still exist, and will be occupied all the same. See for example these recent tweets Continue reading We need more evidence on tenure and occupancy
Flooding, engineering, planning and politics
Reposted from my local Forum, 16 Jan, 2014, with a more helpful title, and some editing. It rambles a bit, but putting here now because it touches on various questions which arose yesterday (July 25, 2018) when I attended a consultation event on ‘De-risking’ growth in the Cambridge Milton Keynes Oxford arc.
I’m thinking about it now as much as raising the general problem of why landowners and other interested parties fail to co-operate.
The trigger here is this BBC interview with a member of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) as reported here:
Back-to-nature flood schemes need ‘government leadership’
Continue reading Flooding, engineering, planning and politics
South Anywhere County Development Corporation / Equity for land rights funding
Rather than purchase land for some monetary amount, compulsorily or otherwise, and load local authorities / development corporations with debt, a South Anywhere County Development Corporation (SACDC) would issue equity to landowners whose land was affected by the JSP, in exchange for rights SACDC acquired over the land. Continue reading South Anywhere County Development Corporation / Equity for land rights funding
Elder Stubbs and Existing Use Value
“Elder Stubbs” is an allotment site in East Oxford owned by a charity rather than the local authority. Something of its history can be found on its website here, but this skips the period in the 1990s when the charity found itself at loggerheads with Oxford City Council. For this I am grateful for the privately printed notes on the history of Elder Stubbs, written by John Purves, formerly Chair of the Elder Stubbs Trustees. Continue reading Elder Stubbs and Existing Use Value
How to fix the rental market for real
we need an understanding that better ways are needed for setting rents on longer term tenancies, that these will need the buy in of landlords and their agents, and that they will involve an accurate reflection of local market rents. The history of their development in Germany suggests they were pioneered at a municipal level before being required nationwide by central government, but still operated locally. Even if the data used in the most sophisticated German municipalities is not immediately available for any UK local government, a lot of data will be available across different parts of government, and a better system than currently available for setting rents on longer term tenancies could be developed. It needs one local government to pioneer such an approach, and a department of central government to sponsor it.
Why I did not vote Labour in 2017
No significance in the timing here, but just putting here a comment on a Facebook post of Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham, 26th May, 2017,
https://www.facebook.com/sir.steve.bullock/posts/10211160522747305
As of 29th December 2017, the Labour was still campaigning against charges which unfairly target the more affluent
Jeremy Corbyn joins thousands in backing the Mirror’s campaign to end hospital car parking charges
We can agree that the “strong and stable” is a myth, but the flip which showed it happened because Labour offered to insure the inheritances of those whose parents have benefited from the financialisaton of property. Continue reading Why I did not vote Labour in 2017
How do we feel about renting?
I am the child on the left here, feeling at home in the rented sector, and where my Dad to this day feels at home. In a few days we’ll be celebrating Christmas there again, now with grown up grandchildren. Continue reading How do we feel about renting?
Self-build, Community Land Trusts and the Housing Crisis
What follows isn’t meant as opinion, but an attempt to research the extent to which self-build and Community Land Trusts have a role in helping solve the housing crisis. Writing it, I find I want to research more, and ask questions of various contacts who know more about aspects of the subject than me. So, I am publishing it here, and seeking their comments before any attempt to develop an argument.
Continue reading Self-build, Community Land Trusts and the Housing Crisis