House Prices up - again

Interesting piece on house prices rising again, reported today on Guido Fawkes’ blog. According to figures provided by the Nationwide Building Society, the average house now costs a whopping SIX TIMES the earnings of the average person (the historical long term figure is three-and-a-half times earnings). In London, this figure is TEN times average earnings

As someone who has been looking to buy his first property (and have been trying to do so for the past two years), these figures make pretty sobering – though not particularly surprising - reading. Anyone who has wandered into an estate agents office in my area of London will know that anything less than a quarter-of-a-million wouldn’t buy you a shoebox.

It seems incredible that at a time when the country is crying out for more affordable housing, Gordon Brown forces through the impractical and unnecessary Home Information Packs (HIPs) – the hairbrainchild of First Lieutenant Ed Balls’ missus, Yvette Cooper – piling even greater expense on the purchaser. Yet as Guido points out, this should hardly come as a surprise from the Chancellor who promised in 1997: "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery".

Gordon talks a good game when discussing the distribution of the proceeds of economic growth but given his failure to live up to previous pledges such as the above, how can anyone take seriously his latest proposals? His recent promise to build more affordable housing come as too little, too late for too many people. Let’s just hope that the electorate remembers this come election time, and rewards Gord’s incompetence with a house move of his own.