Tag: house price solution

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A Challenge to Estate Agents to Improve The Housing Market in the UK

We all deserve a better housing market in which to find and purchase houses and flats for ourselves so I now challenge all estate agents and the landed professions to a full debate on the merits of my prescribed solution to the present and unacceptable house-price crisis, as well as to discuss the pressing need to correct the insufficient number of houses currently being purchased for owner occupation.

“There’s currently NO genuine competition between sellers who employ their own agents, as happens at present. I propose that instead, estate agents should be working for buyers in a similar way to travel agents and sales of tickets in the airline industry.” Travel agents help travellers to find the best value holidays for their chosen destinations.  This is what should also be happening with housing.

House prices themselves should find a level based on real competition. For this to happen, housing should be priced in a similar way to the methods used in the travel industry.

Fair competition should be introduced into our housing markets so as to achieve best throughput in the market, whilst maintaining price stability by using The House Price Solution.

The proposition:
Here is the essence of what I am saying by using this method.

It involves a complete and permanent change in the way estate agents deal with residential house sales.

As far as residential sales are concerned, to use this solution, only Registered House Agents (RHAs), would be licensed to deal with residential sales & purchases. The key difference is, this would involve a new type of agent which would always be acting for the purchaser rather than the vendor.

The job of these new Residential House Agents (RHAs) would be not only to sell or indeed let owner’s houses but more importantly to find and secure the houses which their contracted client(s) are seeking both for themselves and their families – whether these clients are wishing to buy or to rent.

Existing Estate agents could continue to offer both sales and management services to all their existing clients except on residential or part residential property sales. In other words, sales of all types of property other than residential property may be dealt with in exactly the same way as before by existing estate agents.

Only Registered House Agents (RHAs), would be licensed to act in dealing with the sale and purchase of residential property. They would also be licensed to manage such property.

Those licensed to act in such matters would be expected to have passed a new qualification prior to obtaining a license to carry out this type of business.

You may ask in this case, would anyone else be allowed to act on behalf of those wishing to buy or sell residential property?

The answer is no. Market forces will be harnessed to act both for sellers as well as buyers by using different and competing Registered House Agents, tasked with the work of obtaining for their clients, the best combined buy and sell prices in the market whenever moving house.

Competition would be achieved because the selling process would normally be done using a separate and competing RHA in every case.

Whereas selling residential property may only be carried out by Registered House Agents (RHAs), existing professional buying agents may continue to operate as normal by negotiating terms of purchase on behalf of buyers as they do at present. The difference for them would be that they would be dealing with Registered House Agents when buying rather than with estate agents as at present.

This unique plan is designed to eliminate the exaggerated house prices which are being quoted and are seriously damaging our housing markets.

By stabilising prices in this way many more people would be able to transit between properties, as and when they may need to.

Your thoughts are welcomed on this new idea for smoothing rising house prices whilst helping to stabilise the capital values of privately owned residential property as part of this process.

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.

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The Politics of Housing

The Politics of Housing is necessarily societal. In other words you can’t really divorce housing from politics.

When canvassing for the Brexit vote in 2019 and accepting becoming our Prime Minister in July 2019, Boris Johnson promised that his government would be a government inclusive for all in society; having won the popular vote on that basis.

Whatever political view individuals may take, it would appear that there are three institutions that should be held as being vital to the wellbeing of present day society. These are The Judiciary, The NHS and The Town and Country Planning Acts.

Whenever setting out to make new policy for the benefit of Britain’s populace, these three and established pillars of fairness should always be carefully considered.

Tough love, directed towards some parts of society, may well be necessary for its further improvement but it would, by its own definition, have to be based on love and nurture and not prejudice.

However even so, the noblest of such decisions, taken in the quest to improve the lot of society may occasionally fail, especially where housing matters are concerned.

What follows is a set of proposals specifically designed to resolve the present housing distribution problems.

FIRSTLY: Before designing a new Town & Country Planning system, ideally for the whole of Britain, it would be a very good idea to get a clear picture of what might make each local community thrive, and then incorporate precisely that into the new planning model.

To date we have seen little evidence of such an approach and practically no justification for the arbitrary zoning designations which are being proposed in the Planning White Paper currently being debated in Parliament. This does, therefore, deserve further and serious consideration.

In peacetime (i.e. whilst our country is not at war with another), residential planning consents should be delegated to all local town or parish councils for them to determine, depending upon local housing need.

This way, genuinely democratic decisions may be arrived at using local decision-makers whom are best able to understand what the current needs of the community are at any particular time.

The clear and over-riding objective must surely be for ordinary working people to be able to find openings for good new jobs close to where they may live.

This should mean the forward plan ought to involve a proper debate with business leaders to start searching for and employing more-skilled people, including training them up and paying them adequately whilst expecting more productivity/profitability from them in return.

Such an outcome and gain to industry could be achieved from increasing the incentive amongst school leavers and university graduates alike to decide on a higher-skilled career for themselves earlier, and then to train them more intensively for that.

Those youngsters who do not choose to follow this clear path would be likely to have to accept the unskilled jobs which there may be and at low wages (albeit with little or no prospects), of course.

This is, in effect, increasing the incentive for job seekers to decide what they would like to do earlier and to embark on getting the necessary training and qualifications which they will need for their choices of career.

Other successful economies have already achieved such outcomes and because this has been done elsewhere it could certainly be done in Britain, if the incentives were provided.

One organisation, KPMG (the accountancy conglomerate) is already in the news for helping in the battle for greater diversity among types of job, especially within the poorer communities, by offering apprenticeships. It wants nearly a third of their staff to be coming from working class backgrounds by 2030. Enabling diversity of perspective, fresh thinking, and, wide-ranging insight which should help all businesses to perform better.

People coming from routine maintenance and service organisations may apply. Levels of pay and prospects in life really matter to employees but so does aspiration. Van drivers, butchers and factory workers should be among those applying for schemes such as these if they should wish to do so.

What is Levelling Up really about?
Added to this post 2 jan 2022:

Levelling up is about empowering local leaders and communities.
It’s about raising living standards and growing the private sector.
It’s about spreading opportunity and improving our public services.
It’s also about boosting local pride and improving our local environments.

Young people should be empowered to learn all the skills they need in order to be enabled to use their passions and their abilities to help them get good jobs in the future, wherever they may choose to live.

All this is can now be achieved with the localised Towns Deals which are being made available by government as well as the Community Renewal Fund and other funds also to do with Levelling Up.

Under the present government you can search online for:
Department for Levelling up Housing and Communities

Equally important however is resolving the house price crisis itself!

To find out all about everything to do with the extreme lack of adequate and available housing on the market and how to deal with the non-affordability of it, click below.

This House Price Solution is devised to resolve the current housing crisis completely

You can either comment there, or go back to ‘The Politics of Housing’ and post your comment here.

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.

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Where are estate agents going wrong nowadays

Where are estate agents going wrong nowadays?

Well, first please fully understand that the vagaries of the housing market are complicated as most people will admit.

As a senior contributor and property surveyor of 30 years working experience I have watched how things have been going for several decades and a clear picture is at last emerging.

The estate agency sector, since the last war, has been increasingly failing to balance demand and supply in the housing market over the decades for reasons other than the imbalances in supply and demand!

The problem is that the estate agency sector itself is mistakenly working on the basis that the demand for housing is economically highly elastic whereas housing supply, they would frequently tell you, is highly IN-elastic. They say, that it is this mismatch which is causing price peaks and troughs in the housing market to occur. This argument is completely wrong for the reasons I will now set out.

Firstly, the supply of houses coming onto their books is not IN-elastic and neither is it dependent upon the total number of houses actually built.

Here are some other reasons why they are mistaken:
As just explained estate agents are actually only dealing with the number of houses currently on the market – or on their books, from a supply point of view. This is quite different from the total supply of all the houses currently built and in use in the whole country!

Once they ‘get this’, they can free themselves from such confusion and begin to help those wishing to instruct them when moving house. They ought to be able to do this for those hoping to buy their next house in any case.

Secondly, and on the fluctuating level of demand for houses from buyers, the agents generally assume this is highly elastic in nature but sadly this is again mistaken.

In fact, agents very much affect the level of demand from buyers directly, (by affecting the number of homes coming onto their books as mentioned above).

This is because buyer demand is greatly affected by the level of wealth of buyers wishing to buy houses at any one time.  Understanding this is very important for generating successful house completions, especially because buyer demand is not highly elastic at all.

Why is that? Because overstating the asking prices of houses going onto the market will put many buyers off, lessening demand. In addition, it also provides misleading information to sellers concerning apparently increasing prices, which can also put many sellers off; rather ironically.

I say this because if agents were to act for buyers instead of sellers, they would see the various opportunities available in the marketplace quadruple, bringing many more house hunters onto the marketplace and thus onto the agents’ books.

Once agents realise that they do in fact influence the number of houses coming onto the market (i.e. by influencing the total supply of houses becoming available for purchase), then business will increase for the agents because this depends on the way in which they interact very much with the buyers as well as with sellers.

This means they should realise that they can and should influence the number of houses sold from a buyer’s point of view, since that must depend on the levels of wealth currently being enjoyed by those in the market to buy themselves a house at any one time.

It should be stressed, acting as an agent in housing is completely different from agents who may be selling, for example, expensive cars and/or yachts, because house agents are dealing with capital assets, not depreciating assets or chattels. Capital assets require extra special skills, involving advising buyer-clients, rather than merely advising the seller, after having obtained a selling contract!

Please understand. No current asking prices indicate a house’s true market value. Neither should you think that whatever reduction you can negotiate will be the actual market value of the property. The asking price is just part of the marketing. Most sellers are optimistic, all selling agents are ambitious sales people and so most sales naturally complete for less than the initial asking price for that very reason.

Therefore and in conclusion for the reasons I have just provided, prudent agents should be acting for or serving buyers as their primary clients instead of sellers, in order to bring about the greatest number of sales in every specific market situation.

Prices should be dependent upon or determined by what different buyers might be willing to pay. Where estate agents almost invariably go wrong, is they confuse this with how much buyers can each individually be made to pay!

Doing the latter is incorrect and it is that which actually causes markets to begin a ripple, which then results in price peaks and troughs, inflating and then deflating again and again on a regular or cyclical basis, throughout the various housing markets, spread across the whole of the UK.

Please notice these peaks and troughs do not always coincide with periods of greater and lesser wealth.

This explanation supports my argument that agents should change their mode of operation to one of acting for buyers rather than for sellers. As well as that, it fully explains that the massively increasing price levels we see currently are not as a result of increasing net wealth but these are in fact more to do with buyer coercion. Such coercion must be taken right out of the agency-equation if prices are to stabilise at safe and supportable market price levels.

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.

Footnote:
This is not to say new houses should not be built to provide new accommodation, wherever this is strategically necessary within each local jurisdiction.

What do you think about this analysis of the present situation please?

Comments are moderated but constructive ones are always welcomed.

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Why are house prices still rising despite the downturn?

On the thorny subject of house prices, what we have right now are house prices still rising despite the economic downturn which is following the Covid 19 pandemic.

Why is this?
The reasons are actually straightforward but the current upward trajectory is not good news for those who need financial help to become home-owners in the future.

Research from Savills released in March 2021, estimates that the UK’s housing stock became worth £7.56 trillion – more than four times the value of the FTSE 100 index on the London Stock Exchange. These are seriously head-turning economic statistics!

What is particularly interesting, are the recent stats which explain that the value of mortgaged owner-occupied homes currently is only about £2.5 trillion, whereas there is £5.0 trillion worth of UK property which is owned completely mortgage-free. In other words this is twice as much as the value of today’s homes being purchased with a mortgage.

This would suggest that the main driver of the present government’s policy, is to continue to encourage capital growth in the housing sector. Such capital value increases obviously favour those who already have substantial property assets however, of course, the converse must therefore be true. These same policies can thus only hinder first-time buyers’ ability to become owners, as their purchasing ability is dependent upon and geared to earnings not capital values.

Polly Neate, the CEO of Shelter, is reported to be saying there is a “desperate shortage” of actually affordable homes for people on low incomes.

It’s simply no good putting up with what there is, or just continuing in exactly the same way as before.
We all have to change for the better. We should do this by treating first time buyers just the way we would like to be treated ourselves, even if we own houses outright. Houses are roofs over peoples’ heads rather than capital assets expected to appreciate in value before all else!

The House Price Solution has come up with the best possible new policy for the whole of the housing sector and for stabilising house prices within it.

In a nutshell the new policy is this:
Firstly, Neighbourhood Development Plans (or NDPs), which are readily available planning tools, should be adopted across the whole country and they ought to include similar purchasing restrictions to those which have more recently been enshrined in the St Ives, Cornwall Area NDP, the H2 policies.

These are to allow local earners a better chance to become local owners and to buy (rather than continue to rent) their principal residences.
As long as there are numbers of local earners who are not becoming mortgagor/owners, these people ought to be considered in preference to those simply having greater wealth and wishing to move to a new location of their choice.

The effect of this policy would be to help retain local communities functionally intact.
The alternative, which we have seen all too much of recently, is allowing whole areas to become ghost towns, owned by richer buyers from further afield. Allowing this destroys local communities of course.

One may easily understand that the present property-owning statistics demonstrate that a new policy is needed if we are to protect local individuality and preserve communities from societal desecration i.e. suffer the same fate that has befallen high streets up and down the country having become clones of one another lacking individuality over time. Specifically, I mean that we should save the character and cohesion of localities, from outside influences such as from those simply hoping to buy into a location just to gain an additional property investment for themselves.

BUT, something more than this is required if we are to stabilise the accelerating rise in house-prices and instead make way for a fairer and more inclusive house-price environment.
What is also required is a much better way to determine house prices themselves and it is this idea which I now put forward, naming it The House Price Solution.

In essence it is all about how to market houses in a way that can balance-out the different offers from competing buyers fairly and more equitably, resulting in a better marketplace for all those wishing to buy their next homes to live in.
It involves changing the way in which houses have traditionally been sold using vendor-led estate agency, to having new buyer-orientated agencies instead. Many of those who are employed in vendor-led estate agency practices currently could fairly easily get re-trained and become registered as buyer-advising agents.

These agents would handle incoming offers in a very different way by acting for and liaising with the different buyers. Sellers would be less able to influence the prices that are achieved because offers would be received directly from the buyers competing with one another, to the relevant buyers’ agents. These offers would be passed to the appropriate vendors by their own buying agents and this would allow house prices themselves to stabilise across the various different regions of the country. The mechanism by which this could happen would be by all offers becoming primarily dependent upon local buyers’ offer-price levels.

Only houses which are exempt from the H2 residence restrictions would be available for purchase by wealthier buyers from the rest of the country, these being outside the scope of these policies.

The above would help the success rate of individual housing transactions themselves, causing a general improvement in the number of house sales able to be made.

In peacetime (i.e. whilst our country is not at war with another), residential planning consents should be delegated to all local town or parish councils for them to determine, depending upon local housing need.

This way, genuinely democratic decisions may be arrived at using local decision-makers whom are best able to understand what the current needs of the community are at any particular time. 

The different local housing markets could be brought to balance and price levels better able to reflect local demand for housing, more appropriately.

The other necessary change would involve making housing markets operate more efficiently than currently happens, by requiring estate agents to work for buyers rather than being able to work for both buyers and sellers as happens currently.

As a retired residential property valuer I remain convinced that if democratically elected local councillors were to be granted full authority to decide local residential planning applications, the effect of this could resolve the whole housing crisis.

Decisions made by such elected representatives would not be based upon NIMBYism ‘Not In My Back Yard’; quite the contrary!

Instead it would be a question of ‘IN My Back Yard’, as these councillors would be representing the wishes and needs of the local community – not simply trying to resist necessary change!

There could be no finer outcome than this, especially where residential property is concerned, because with this solution these councillors could work to actually resolve the housing crisis which we are now all being affected by, particularly owing to its increasing severity.

As explained, the goal of preserving local communities by providing sufficient and affordable homes up and down the country, whilst still allowing a smaller number of the wealthier buyers to integrate, could be achieved. Better price stability within all UK housing markets also would be the clear result.

Resource links:
Savills:

https://www.twindig.com/market-views/houselungo-210321#slice

Shelter’s impact and activities:

https://england.shelter.org.uk/what_we_do/our_impact

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.

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Will house prices ever stop rising faster than inflation?

I have worked as a Chartered Surveyor in the property sector from the 70s to the 90’s. During this time I have seen the relentless upwards direction of travel of house prices as related to true affordability, based on general earnings, first hand.

The golden dream of becoming a home owner by purchasing using mortgage borrowing repayable over the next 25 years, was something that was every young family’s ultimate ambition at one time. This has morphed into a nightmare recently. Why?

First of all, landowners have increasingly scooped-up increasing gains on the value of the land involved – by relying on the increased amounts to be borrowed by both first-time buyers and others further up the property chains.

Secondly, the banking and finance sectors have hijacked most of the profit remaining to be found and taken a big slice of it for themselves. In other words those institutions lending capital on mortgages have annexed a greater and greater share of the profits by doing what they think they are supposed to be doing – i.e. advancing increasingly large amounts of finance. More recently, they are now even prepared to increase the mortgage term length beyond the original 25 year repayment period, moving towards 30 years or more, which is highly questionable.

Simultaneously, interest rates, which have dropped to extremely low levels at the moment are enabling buyers to over extend themselves using loans they should not be being advised to take out.

The super-rich, on the other hand, are able to utilise the same unrestricted availability of mortgage finance to outbid the rest, using the collateral they already possess. The difference between the two positions is stark.

Shared ownership schemes (part rent part buy) have begun to appear which further decrease the actual dream of owning a whole building and the plot it is built on, in one’s lifetime.

House prices are being talked-up increasingly by estate agents whose primary interest above all else is to make the sale at the best price possible.

Employment is becoming more uncertain with flexible working hours making earnings unpredictable.

The actual cost of living is going up whilst basic wages are not keeping pace.

The housing market’s core buy-prices are further adjusting to match the described ‘loosening’ parameters. This has tended to happen in the past but the graph is exponential and it is set to continue in the relatively near future because house prices themselves are pegged in a practically unregulated market. In such a heady market, those who will have over extended themselves will, as a result, suddenly find they have a big financial problem.

The more wary amongst potential first-time buyers, are understandably holding back.
Apart from being wary, the main reason for this is that asking price levels of ‘so-called’ affordable housing today, are no longer truly affordable to them.

The only solution to this pernicious problem:- is to lower the buy-in prices of housing for all owner occupation.

How? That is the question?

The answer, as provided by those in the financial sector, is to offer to build more houses to increase the supply so that prices will finally and in theory reduce!

The main flaw in this argument is that it will take many years worth of building new housing (certainly if traditionally constructed), before sufficient numbers of them could push the prices down even a little. In the meantime, builders, landowners and mortgage lenders would hope to be able to carry on making their profits unhindered!
By the time the planned massive building boom will have begun to have had any noticeable effect, the players described will have made all the profits they were hoping to make for themselves!

The other and far more applicable answer would be to make the necessary changes to the way houses are bought, sold and let. Doing this now, alongside building more housing units, is the best and only way to restore the housing economy to sound health once again.

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.