Housing market: What can homeowners and prospective buyers expect from the housing market?

What does the housing market look like as autumn approaches?

Transcript

00:00Well, what's really interesting is that despite the news about prices being up, listings being

00:07up, activity being up, we're still running at a lower level of total transactions on

00:17a quarter by quarter basis than we were two years ago. So, we've not yet returned to pre-costal

00:23living crisis activity levels in the market.

00:27Amanda Bryden, head of mortgages at Halifax, also said, quote, with market activity picking

00:33up and the possibility of further interest rate reductions to come, we expect house prices

00:39to continue their modest growth through the remainder of this year.

00:44Well, I think the government at the moment is calling on people, calling on the construction

00:51industry to build one and a half million new homes. They're also setting impossibly

00:56high criteria on grey sites for the number of affordable homes, which is making those

01:02sites commercially non-viable. If, as Angela Rayner said to the local authorities, there

01:09is a moral obligation to build new homes by local authorities and in their areas, then

01:16surely there is a moral obligation on the government to provide the funding and ensure

01:20the viability of those developments that they wish to force through.

01:26Affordability for the average person has not improved. Indeed, it's worsened. If one were

01:32to try and correct, I'll call it, they always talk about multiples of income versus house

01:38prices and that has broadened dramatically in the last 20 years. If one had to do something

01:45about it, I would suggest that we ought to perhaps look at maybe getting real salaries

01:50paid for real jobs in the economy. And if we were to do that, many more people would

01:55meet affordability criteria.