More Housing Numbers

I'm increasingly of the opinion that there's more to this falling house prices story than we're seeing in the averages.

Reservations of newbuild houses and flats have collapsed by two-thirds this spring due to the lack of mortgage availability, according to confidential industry data.

Figures from the Home Builders Federation, which are not normally made public but which have been seen by the Guardian, show the major housebuilders reporting that net reservations - people agreeing to buy, minus cancellations - have been running 60-65% down year-on-year for the past two weeks. This is a period which is usually a strong selling time for construction companies.

If it's the new build market which is crumbling and as I noted a day or two back, buy to let flats in such new developments which are carrying the worst paid, then perhaps single family occupancy isn't being so hard hit? Fortunately, the last time I mentioned this one Matthew passed on the following information:

Nationwide do give data and there’s evidence, if not super-strong, to back up what you say. At end Q1 (I don’t see April out yet for that) prices of detached houses were up 2.9% y-on-y, terraced 2.2%, semi-detached 1.6%, and flats onl y 1.1%.

The regional differences can and do affect this - flats in London were up 5% y-on-y, but flats in the worst region, the North West, already down by 6% year-on-year.

So I’d say detached house prices might be up year-on-year still, but probably only by 0.5% or so. I think flats have less impact than you might think as they are a small proportion of the housing stock (and then probably biased towards London, where prices have been strong).

No, I'm not tryinig to be Panglossian, far from it. It's just that I think there's more nuance to this story than we're all doomed.