With the dust almost settling post referendum in Britain we are now able to make a more informed approach in terms of Brexit. As House prices fell by 1% and we can see the housing market has a bad swing in momentum.
Considering in June house prices rose by 1.5% according to Halifax, we can only assume that Brexit played a major part in the housing market’s dip, pretty much immediately. Though the mortgage lender suggested it was too early to make assumptions as to whether this is the result of Brexit, we cannot see it as a result of anything else, and even if summer is the time of year when prices fall. Although this time last year house prices were still 8.7% cheaper than last year, so perhaps banks like Halifax and Nationwide who say it is too early to say could be right and not just saying it to keep us calm and for us to continue buying houses.
The bank of England has also cut interest rates to allow more money in to the economy as lower mortgage rates may increase the demand for homes. Although one can only imagine this as a quick, short term strategy. Cutting interest rates, as Ben Madden managing director of London estate agents Thorgills said, ‘it will help stabilise prices’.
Atwell James thinks this is frustrating nonetheless. Banks talk about house prices going up like it is just a casual thing and that people can normally purchase a house at will and they are not actually empathising with the average UK person in that buying a house is not so easy. In fact, it was the sort of jargon used by Madden that made people choose the Brexit option and got ‘us’ into this mess in the first place. Atwel James does support the membership of the EU, however, we can also empathise with people on why they may have chosen to leave. The Guardian in 2016 found that nine in ten renters can’t afford the 5% house deposit and of course the 10% that may be declined due to personal circumstances.
We believe that the housing market and banks need to wake up and realise that this is not a quick fix but a long-term project of people lives and homes. In fact, the housing market is in such a disaster, Jonn Elledge wrote an article suggesting the dream of buying our own home is over, we need to become accustomed to renting.
What sort of long-term plan would we be trying to envision? Perhaps something that makes a house slightly more affordable for everyone but also an increase in houses…desperately. Surely the country cannot ignore the elephant in the room that we are short of houses and perhaps if we build more houses it would suit the worker. Is building more houses in the interest of the mortgage lender, theoretically, you would think so. More houses mean more purchases on an affordable scale, but at the same time why would ‘they’ give in to the idea of building more houses when the banks have such a strong element of control over the people since there is a shortage. Whilst the banks do not seem to be too worried about the money itself, you cannot help but see they are more concerned with the control they have over people which may see extreme, but it could also make Elledge seem correct and we should adapt to renting.
In conclusion, Atwel James is tired of seeing a shortage of houses and thinks there’s no way it is feasible for our country to connote the way it is. The fact of the matter is we do not live under a housing market, we live under a house. The sooner we come to grasp that it become a right of the people other than another method of making billions of pounds worth of profit, the better it would be for me, us and dare we say, it would be better for ‘the economy’.
