23 April 2016 – by Alexander Peace
Setting the scene in his keynote address, Savills’ head of residential research Lucian Cook said that increased regulation and the threat of interest rate rises would curtail house price growth over the next five years, especially in London.
But in the meantime, EG’s head of London residential research Nigel Evans says that housing provision in the capital is at an all-time high.
He said a record 47,000 homes are under construction in London, nearly double the last peak of 26,000 recorded in 2007, though this masked serious issues of affordability.
“We may be on the cusp of a paradigm shift,” he said, “away from an owner-occupied market to a rental dominated one. This is a market increasingly polarised, with homes at the one end and investments at the other.”
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Neither of the mainstream mayoral candidates, according to panelists and the prevailing mood in the room, were the ones to fix the crisis, with the view that pledges were not only populist, but far too similar.
“What is remarkable is there is such little difference in reality between the two leading candidates,” said Steve Norris, former government minister.
“At base, they are preaching the same message, and they face the same challenge: how to turn the rhetoric into reality… and I am not sure I have heard a convincing argument from either of them,” he said.
Professor Tony Travers from the London School of Economics said: “There is a risk of disappointment in relation to the housing bids made in this election. Candidates are offering simple-to-understand commitments, but these are pretty steep commitments.”
The pair said that one of the few meaningful powers the London mayor held was the ability to change the threshold for mayoral call-ins, allowing higher density housebuilding, though there was acceptance of the kick-back this would create from the boroughs.
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