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15 July 2013updated 22 Oct 2020 3:55pm

We need to talk about the British property cult

Something should be done about the housing crisis before it's too late.

By Spencer Neal

I was discussing the implications of the British Government’s recent spending review for housing associations when news of the civil unrest in Egypt started to come through. The housing crisis is much debated and its scale and significance are well recognised.We wondered whether the issue would ever lead to widespread protests. We started thinking about the poll tax riots of the 1990s which effectively put paid to Prime Minister Thatcher. Would the bedroom tax lead to similar unrest?

No: on the whole the people affected are either too old or too poor to protest with any force. More importantly the sentiment of the vocal masses is consumed by the UK’s one permitted greed: ownership.

But what will happen when a majority of people expecting to own a house find themselves not just priced out but physically excluded by a lack of available housing? These will be the children of the people with most influence over policy and public order and not just the weak, the poor and the vulnerable. This may offer a glimmer of hope to the CEOs of those housing associations that are neither too big to fail nor niche enough to be essential.

There are already indications some policy makers have seen that the demographics are shifting. As Janan Ganesh wrote in the Financial Times last week, it is inevitable that taxation’s focus will shift from income to assets. This has already started with increases to stamp duty on luxury houses and an end to the Council Tax discount on second homes. Income taxes are being reduced at both ends of the income scale.

Home ownership cuts to the heart of the conundrum facing the housing associations that provide the bulk of the UK’s social housing. Investors much prefer the yields achieved with privately owned housing to the lower, albeit steadier, returns offered by housing associations. Yes, this is changing but not quickly and not for all. The result is that few of the existing housing associations will be able to fund expansion and therefore few will survive the coming rigours of a mixed-economy market.

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The obstacle is obvious. If the UK’s housing stock were to increase to meet demand then house prices would stop rising and the “investment” potential that drives almost every purchase and every single mortgage decision would be diminished. And no-one with a current investment, whether as a lender or an owner, will tolerate this. The success of the UK’s housing ladder is dependent on it being pulled up higher and higher with each generation. Like main-frame computers in the 1980s, residual values are always predicted to be far greater than the purchase price. This is a problem that has been known for decades, as David Miles points out in his Bank of England Report. The report also highlights that the problem gets worse as population density increases. Not only will house-price rises greatly outpace wage inflation, land availability will become even scarcer. Housing associations will have to fight for land, for financing and for affluent tenants able to afford the ever rising rents. Something has to give.

Will this really pave the way for a new levy on housing and an assault on the British property cult? If so perhaps the usual restraint will crumble and we will see waves of street protests, albeit more Glastonbury meets Glyndebourne rather than Tahrir Square meets Jarrow March.

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