Surveyors: Housing market is a "national emergency"
Government must act to boost supply, surveyor body says.
The property market now represents a “national emergency”, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has declared.
The surveyor trade body said that addressing this “crisis” must be the priority for the new government, after its latest Residential Market Survey revealed the number of surveyors seeing house price rises had hit its highest figure since last summer. This was coupled with new instructions dropping for the eighth straight month.
As a result, almost three quarters of surveyors believe house prices will rise over the course of the next year.
According to the latest Halifax house price index, house prices jumped 1.6% between March and April, taking the average price of a UK home to £196,412.
Government must boost supply
RICS said it was “absolutely critical” that the government focuses on how to boost the building of new homes.
Jeremy Blackburn, head of UK policy at RICS, said that the nation need a coherent and coordinated house building strategy. He added: “This should include measures that will kickstart a supply-side revolution, such as mapping brownfield, addressing planning restrictions and creating a housing observatory to assess the underlying economic and social drivers of housing and provide the impetus for solutions.”
He added that introducing measures like the extended Right to Buy scheme will only serve to further boost demand and won’t help address the problem.
Looking for a home to buy? Compare mortgage rates with loveMONEY
More on property:
Most Recent
Comments
-
All the political parties commitment to "we'll build X number of houses" is a big fat lie. Our governments have an (unspoken) desire to not build houses, they are tinkering around the edges, stamp duty, deposits, brown field release. UK house building in large part is resting in the hands of the big house builders who the government have no control over. If the big builders ramped up supply then prices would start coming down, what possible incentive is there for them to do that? They will continue to sit on the land banks they already have, trickling out supply to keep prices inflated. Sadly, unless there is a massive shift in interest rates, and I'm skeptical of that now, I think we'll be in much the same position as we are now, or worse, in 5 years time.
REPORT This comment has been reported. -
We need to build 250,000 houses per year for the next ten years? How many immigrants came to this country last year? Stop immigration. How many homes are needed then? When we build on half the farm land in the Uk how are we going to grow enough food to feed the growing population? Buying food on the world market will not be possible or affordable because China and other former third world countries are getting a taste and the cash to purchase more food on the world markets. We are doomed me thinks. You are doomed because I probably wont be around. I grow most of my own food anyway.
REPORT This comment has been reported. -
The only snag with the statement is that it is by the RICS who have a vested interest in developers being allowed to build on every scrap of land they can get their hands on. The problem rolls on to the fact that there are not sufficient support facilities like Schools, Doctors and Hospitals to support the additional people who will be living in the various areas. With regards to getting onto the housing ladder I think the worse thing that happened was the right to buy which has taken thousands of houses out of the affordable living bracket.When you get Nurses and Teachers who cannot afford to live in the area where they work no matter how many houses they build, something is wrong with the system. The politicians just will not have it that Britain is full.
REPORT This comment has been reported.
Do you want to comment on this article? You need to be signed in for this feature
15 May 2015