The figures triggered widespread media speculation that a recovery in the house-building sector was running out of steam.
The data showed that the value of new construction orders for private housing developments fell by 24% in the second quarter of this year. Over the same period, government funded house-building orders declined by 23%. However, both measures showed a year-on-year increase from what were exceptionally low levels of activity early in 2009.
But while the decline in house-building activity is pronounced and very recent, there has been a longer-term – although much slower – downturn in owner-occupation. Between 2003 and 2008-9, the Survey of English Housing showed a fall in the proportion of owner-occupiers, from 70.9% to 67.9%, the first significant decline in home-ownership for a century.
What, then, do these and other trends mean for the future of housing? How does the recent decline in home-ownership square with the housing minister’s desire to deliver an age of aspiration? Is it even possible that an age of austerity can also be an age of aspiration?
Those are just some of the questions that will be considered at the CML’s forthcoming future housing conference.
They will be debated by an extensive range of speakers including the CML’s director general and chief economist, Michael Coogan and Bob Pannell, the Chartered Institute of Housing’s director of policy, Richard Capie, and Richard McCarthy, director general of the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The conference is being held at the Ambassadors Bloomsbury, Upper Woburn Place, London, on 22 September. For more details or to make a booking, contact claire.ashby@cml.org.uk
