Latest ONS figures show average UK house prices decreased by 0.7% between November 2025 and December 2025, compared with a decrease of 0.2% in the same period 12 months ago. House prices in inner London boroughs declined on average by 4.6% during 2025. The biggest annual drop since 2008…
Unsold homes are piling up in London, with Zoopla reporting 14% more properties than a year ago. In parts of London, 15% of homes for sale have already had price cuts. Last year, London homes took 72 days to find a buyer, with houses taking on average 63 days to go under offer and flats 85 days, according to Hamptons. One in three sales still fell through…
Higher mortgage rates have curtailed affordability, along with Reeves’ mansion tax imposed in the last Budget – where owners of homes worth more than £2 million will have to pay an additional “high value council tax surcharge”. Labour’s stamp duty changes, raising costs on foreign buyers while cutting thresholds, have also crushed confidence. In April 2025, the nil-rate Stamp Duty threshold was cut from £425,000 to £300,000, with relief lost entirely for properties worth more than £500,000 – dragging nearly 37,000 first-time buyers into paying stamp duty in 2024/25. London’s housing market hitting a brick wall…
New affordable housing statistics covering the July to September period have been released by the Greater London Authority just now. They continue to be poor…
In Q1 Khan had only managed 347 affordable housing starts. That has now reached 1,239, with 2,904 completions. That completion rate suggests 5,808 affordable homes will be completed this year, which is 5,828 less than last year’s figure of 11,636. Basically half…
Central government intervened last month to address the “housebuilding crisis in London.” Whether actions taken by Steve Reed work in time remains to be seen…
Labour is relying on a series of doubtful policy advisers on housing, one of whom declared that supply and demand don’t exist in the housing market. Good luck getting to that 1.5 million target, Angela (or successor)…
Catriona Riddell, who is known well to MHCLG’s civil servants, has held various planning roles and was “a freelance adviser to the Labour Party in the run-up to the 2024 general election.” She currently boasts on LinkedIn of having “chaired a national Strategic Planning Group… to advise Government on the new system of spatial development strategies, working closely with MHCLG, PINs and others.” Wonder what this freelance Labour adviser thinks about the housing market…
Riddell’s X is packed full of posts praising Labour housing minister Matthew Pennycook. In 2021 she argued:
“You can’t make housing affordable in high cost areas by boosting supply – it doesn’t work that way. But councils can – and are – taking direct action to boost more affordable housing supply.”
Typical illiterate planning fare. In advising Labour Riddell joins former head of policy at Shelter UK Kate Webb, who has been hired this week from Sadiq Khan’s advisory team to work as a No10 SpAd on housing. Webb, who has has advocated for mass use of compulsory purchase orders, said to fix the housing crisis you should “make it easier for local authorities and other bodies who are serious about building to get land at a price that allows the development of affordable homes” involving “reform of land values.” In her position at Shelter she congratulated George Osborne for his pernicious tax reforms because he made it “much less advantageous to be a landlord.” Look how that’s turned out…
In a sign of the quality of its advice Labour is handing hated quango Natural England a veto via amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure bill. Curiously Schedule 27 of the English Devolution Bill allows for local authorities to designate land and assets as “community assets,” perform their own valuation, and force a sale at a reduced rate to a “preferred community interest group.” Might as well form collectives and be done with it…
Despite Labour’s much-touted “build, baby, build” promise, Sky News’ Sam Coates reports that 1,210 completed homes remain empty as of August, awaiting clearance from the Building Safety Regulator. Between September 2024 and March this year, only 32% of the regulator’s decisions were made on time…
Last year, just 14% of applications cleared ‘gateway 2’ building control approval for high-risk buildings (more than eight storeys) – while only seven out of 40 developments secured final certification at ‘gateway 3’. In Parliament this morning, Andy Roe, non-executive chair of the BSR, warned:
“If we haven’t shown very significant change by the end of the calendar year we run the risk of losing the confidence of everyone in the regulatory regime.”
Roe was appointed a little over a month ago and has only met with Rayner for the first time this week. Labour has pledged to reform the system, though is only moving the regulator out of the Health and Safety Executive and making it a quango under Rayner’s MHCLG. Meanwhile, Reeves has insisted she “will not renege” on safety commitments. Labour growth gaslighting rolls on…
A minister has left the door open to an extension of National Insurance to rental income this morning. Torsten Bell is already making his position as the budget’s new architect felt…
The idea, which some predict could raise a couple of billion pounds, is a pet project of the Resolution Foundation when it was run by Bell. The Treasury briefed the plans to the Times last night…
It would constitute another violation of Labour’s pre-election pledge not to hike NI taxation. Early years minister Stephen Morgan said on Times Radio this morning:
Combined with Starmer’s post-election insistence that any landlords don’t count as “working people” that is an implication from Morgan. Last month the total rental properties coming onto the UK market dropped sharply for the 11th straight month. Low supply and static demand plus even higher tax burden = no more houses to rent…
Over in the Commons the other day Hartlepool Labour MP Jonathan Brash took a swipe at local development corporations. The backbencher asked: “Will the Minister look at curbing the powers of development corporations so that planning remains in the hands of democratically elected politicians?” That’s despite the Government’s own Planning and Infrastructure Bill actually promoting corporations…
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook(ed) replied: “I note my hon. Friend’s concerns… we would be more than happy to take a look.” Brash was lashing out at Hartlepool Development Corporation, the body relevant to his constituency. Who’s on the Board? None other than his wife, Councillor Pamela Hargreaves…
The good councillor is also the local cabinet member for regeneration and – even more amusingly – Brash himself voted for setting up the development corporation and giving it powers when he was also a councillor. A little local Labour u-turn to go with the big ones…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”