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Morning Briefing: UK house prices dropped last month in reaction to Brexit
The housing market flatlines ahead of Brexit, UN warns about the Department for Work and Pensions’ surveillance system, and all your other major housing stories of the day
A number of papers and websites have reported on the UK’s “flatlining” property market, as house prices reportedly dropped last month as Brexit uncertainty continues to hit.
Sky News was among a number of media outlets that reported on Halifax’s latest house price index figures which showed that house prices dropped in July, the second consecutive month that such a drop has been recorded.
The average house price in the UK in July was £236,120, a month-on-month fall of 0.2%. This followed a month-on-month fall of 0.4% in June.
Russell Galley, managing director at Halifax, said the market was “treading water” and that the drop-off in number of properties sold could be a result of some speculating that a downturn is on the horizon.
Halifax’s assumptions have been mirrored by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) latest survey of its members, which found that house prices and sales were “losing momentum”.
In the survey of property professionals, reported on by the BBC, 69% said sales prices were lower than asking prices for homes marketed at more than £1m. A total of 9% of professionals reported house prices were falling rather than rising.
Despite the fall – mainly in London, the South East and East Anglia – in Scotland house price growth remains solid. Analysing the RICS data, Scottish paper The National found that prices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were increasing steadily.
The Guardian runs a piece looking into claims by the UN’s investigator into global poverty that benefit claimants are being caught up in a mass surveillance system being run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The UN’s investigator believes that DWP’s surveillance system to combat benefit fraud is being used for other means and a number of innocent people are being caught up in it.
Commenting on his findings, Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur for extreme poverty and human rights, said that it was a tragedy that people thought the government’s “ever more intrusive surveillance was only being used against welfare cheats”.
He continued: “It’s not. It will soon affect everyone and leave society much worse off. Everyone needs to pay attention and insist on decent limits.”
The Daily Mail’s This is Money has a story about a row Legal & General (L&G), Britain’s biggest investment manager, has been dragged into over plans to build homes on the green belt.
L&G has backed University of Oxford’s plan for 2,000 homes just outside of the city but this has been met by fierce resistance from residents who say it will carve up protected green space.
According to the site, campaign group Campaign to Protect Rural England’s Oxford branch is weighing up whether to take legal action to block the plan.
There are a number of development stories in other local news as well this morning, including in Scottish Housing News which reports on a 1,850-home plan in northern Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Marina plan could start as early as this autumn after it secured planning permission this year.
Harrogate Advertiser has news of a plan for more than 1,000 homes to be built on the town of Knaresborough.
The plan has been accepted by the council’s planning committee but a number of councillors have spoken out against it.
On social media
MP for Mansfield Ben Bradley becomes the private secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
Delighted to be appointed as PPS to @mhclg and to be able to support Government in delivering on key priorities.
— Ben Bradley MP (@bbradleymp
Looking forward also to working with great colleagues in @RobertJenrick @EstherMcVey1 @JakeBerry
😊👍a>Delighted to be appointed as PPS to @mhclg and to be able to support Government in delivering on key priorities.
— Ben Bradley MP (@bbradleymp) August 7, 2019
Looking forward also to working with great colleagues in @RobertJenrick @EstherMcVey1 @JakeBerry
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Housing secretary Robert Jenrick gets stuck into modern methods of construction:
Embracing methods of construction is critical to building the homes we need. Faster, more affordable and more reliable quality. 👍
— Robert Jenrick MP (@RobertJenric
Today I met the next generation of builders at LowCal in #Walsall. pic.twitter.com/hn4S1D0O3n/a>Embracing methods of construction is critical to building the homes we need. Faster, more affordable and more reliable quality. \uD83D\uDC4D
— Robert Jenrick MP (@RobertJenrick) August 7, 2019
Today I met the next generation of builders at LowCal in #Walsall. pic.twitter.com/hn4S1D0O3n
The big issues that impact the regeneration and delivery of social housingSPONSORED ARTICLE
