New homes should build upon civic pride and pleasure
THE doom-mongers keep on getting it wrong. Inaccuracy is the only reliable feature of their bleak prophecies. At the height of the coronavirus crisis, they warned with almost ghoulish excitement that the housing market was on the verge of meltdown and property prices were about to crash.
But that forecast turned out to be as mistaken as most of the others. Far from collapsing, the property sector has roared back to life since the relaxation of the lockdown. Only this week, the latest official statistics revealed that construction rose by 8.2 per cent in May, more than four times the overall rate of growth in the economy.
Private sector house-building was up by a fifth during the month, while residential construction in the public sector surged by 42 per cent.
It is the same story with sales, where the end of the lockdown has unleashed a wave of pentup demand. A large dose of rocket fuel has been added to the recovery by the Chancellor’s recent mini-Budget, which dramatically suspended stamp duty on all transactions worth less than £500,000.
As a result, 90 per cent of purchasers will pay no tax at all until the end of March next year. In this new climate of optimism, property websites and mortgage brokers say that interest from potential buyers is up by almost 50 per cent since Rishi Sunak’s statement.
The buoyancy is further helped by the available of cheap credit, with mortgage rates at a historic low. M OREOVER, the continued growth in the size of the population means that the demand for housing will remain strong, bolstered by the pledge of Boris Johnson to “build, build, build” our way back to prosperity.
Indeed, despite all the hostile propaganda about a housing “crisis”, the Tory government’s record on construction is quite impressive. In 2019, 241,130 properties were completed, representing a 30-year high in new home building.
Some fret about affordability, but the reality is that a lively housing market is good news for the economy, for property is one of the key engines of wealth generation in Britain.
Increasing sales mean more work for removal companies, furnishers, decorators, landscapers, electricians, designers and estate agents. Similarly, it is estimated that there are three million jobs in the construction industry, 10 per cent of the whole national workforce.
Yet two notes of caution should be sounded, one on values, the other on quality. First, if the market inflates into a dangerous bubble, there would be devastating consequences once it burst. Millions would be trapped in negative equity, new estates would be transformed into ghost towns and repossessions would soar. That is what happened in the late 1980s, when the boom fed by Chancellor Nigel Lawson’s tax cuts eventually led to a disastrous recession, with house prices falling by an average of 35 per cent in the South-east between 1989 and 1993.
The second problem is the danger of ruining our heritage under a tidal wave of mediocre development. Boris Johnson’s mission to “build, build, build” cannot simply be a licence to cover our green and pleasant land with concrete and brick.
Unfortunately, the lesson of modern British history is that a frenzy for construction, unfettered by any considerations of aesthetics, promotes ugliness and shoddiness, where the landscape is littered by tower blocks without beauty and sprawling estates without a soul.
In the 1960s, an unholy alliance of developers and politicians tore down vast swathes of magnificent historic architecture, replacing them with brutalist monstrosities.
Today, there is more respect for conservation, but far too much development still has neither visual appeal nor high standards of building. Design guru Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs fame has said that quality of construction in newbuilds is often “unforgiveable”.
Also, the idea that residents are crammed into identikit hutches is no myth. N EW homes today are not only 32 per cent smaller on average than those built in the 1970s, but also the smallest in Europe.
The unsightliness of most modern architecture is a prime reason that planning proposals often attract ferocious hostility,. But the answer is to improve the quality of the buildings.
If more developments had the sweeping grace of terraces in Bath or the green openness of streets in Letchworth Garden City, they would be welcomed rather that challenged.
Urban expansion should deliver more than quick profit. It should also bring lasting civic pride and pleasure.
‘Mission to build can’t be licence to concrete over our green land’