My latest for the FT:

2 key problems for construction by the government, causing so much pre-Autumn Budget uncertainty & prolonging it by pushing back the Budget to the end of November, are that... (1/n) #ukhousing #ukconstruction www.thetimes.com/article/01c8...

Auditors and new officials have been turning over stones at the body in charge of Teesworks. Turns out the Tees Valley Combined Authority has been lending hundreds of millions of £ to connected orgs, without loan agreements, and those orgs are now struggling to repay as.ft.com/r/ac457745-4...

Planning reform (including NPPF) consultation. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Lonres data from July shows the number of homes available for sale at the top end of the central London market (£5m+) has shot up since 2022.

Homelessness strategy now out - calling it A National Plan to End Homelessness certainly shows the right level of ambition www.gov.uk/government/p...

The Commons Library is recruiting a housing policy researcher! As ever: highly recommended workplace, great people, interesting work, etc etc. Apply! housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

The S&P Global UK Construction PMI was 39.4 in November 2025, (50=no monthly change in activity), down from 44.1 in October, so an 11th consecutive monthly decline in construction activity & November's decline was its sharpest since May 2020. (1/n) #ukconstruction #ukhousing

English Housing Survey 2024/25 headline report out this morning www.gov.uk/government/c...

OBR outstanding mortgage rate forecast is an interesting one! builtplace.com/weekly-summa...

@gwr.com a reminder this morning of why I’m so happy not to be regularly commuting on your service anymore.

OBR outstanding mortgage rate forecast is an interesting one! builtplace.com/weekly-summa...

Even after the mansion tax is applied, the owner of a £5m home in Westminster will pay proportionately less in property tax than the owner of a £210k Band B property in Sunderland.

Prices are falling at the top end of the housing market. I wonder how many homes will fall below £2m given the 2026 valuation date.

I’m excited ministers get to find out what a hot mess the Valuation Office is. It’s currently taking more than a year (based on personal experience!) to undertake assessments that are meant to take less than 4 months

"The latest outturn on planning activity suggests that the impact of the March 2025 residential planning reforms is yet to materialise"

High value council tax surcharge

OBR net additions forecast "This leaves cumulative net additions between 2024-25 and 2029-30 at 1.49 million, around 10,000 lower than in March" (for UK, not England)

Oh fuck I used to be a political reporter, can't help myself. Here's the big tax policies from the leaked budget.

OBR Economic and fiscal outlook, November 2025 obr.uk/docs/dlm_upl... (I changed the link address from March to November)

I wasn't keen on the idea but for my 2024 first-time buyer report, I was encouraged to end it by writing a theoretical speech by the new government. (I'm not looking for a career as a speech writer!)

MHCLG report 208,600 net additional dwellings in England during 2024-25 with 190,600 new build completions

My blog from February on the government's lack of a clear strategy for housing

‘Build, baby, build’: the pro-development Labour activists — and their backers in big business www.ft.com/content/c957...

MHCLG's net additions data for 2024/25 is due out on Thursday. It's the best housing supply data for England and the metric that the government's 1.5m target is measured against. Based on leading indicators, I'm expecting net additions of around 200k and new build completions of around 185k.

The impact of this on mortgage rates would’ve given the housing market and housebuilding a boost heading into the new year.

FFS

Re-upping this - important point in a good thread. A lot of people seem to think that 'changing the regulatory environment' is like switching from Windows to Apple in terms of increasing housebuilding and lowering prices, and not a thing that takes ages if you just leave it to its own thing.

This summer, Andrew Milne - a City of London solicitor - bought up hundreds of freeholds in west Sheffield. Then the letters started to arrive. They included threats of high court action and offers to sell the freeholds - for £25,000. Read today's story: www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/a-london-law...

Seems like a thing the government *should* maybe consider stepping in to address - not to bail out the company but to support the pipeline by protecting frontline workers - given how close this is to a key priority

This is not good www.constructionenquirer.com/2025/11/04/b...

No reason other than might be of interest: Planning application (listed building consent) for the refurbishment of an Eaton Square house by an investment company controlled by the founder of Inditex (Zara etc) idoxpa.westminster.gov.uk/online-appli... (design and access statement has photos/CGIs)

Important piece by @resi-analyst.bsky.social this. Successive governments seem not to have understood that your regulatory framework over the longterm shapes who your market participants *are*. If want short-term (i.e. over the next 5-10 years) benefits of planning reform, need to be more active.

My latest for the FT New homes: even if you build them, there’s no one to buy them www.ft.com/content/9080...

New homes: even if you build them, there’s no one to buy them on.ft.com/3Levumr | opinion

Example of the current challenges in London development: Developer completed this mixed use site in Nine Elms with 22 flats (2beds from £760k) last month. Normally they'd all be sold by now but haven't, so developer needs a £16.7m loan to keep selling. bridgingandcommercial.co.uk/article/2180...

I think this is the weirdest story I've ever reported. www.londoncentric.media/p/terry-ball...

There's a lot of people out there (apparently incl. Gov) that don't realise we can have a massive number of people that need new homes but, at the same time, a problem where there's very limited demand for new homes because prices and rates are too high while construction viability is squeezed.

Reducing the affordable housing on new developments in London might improve their viability on paper but it's unlikely to reduce the price developers charge for their market homes. Demand is constrained at current prices, so there will still be a limit to how many they can sell and hence get built.

London set to loosen planning rules in drive to boost housebuilding on.ft.com/42NFr06

Homelessness stats just out show another new record in households (132k) and children (172k) living in temporary accommodation. Up 7.5% in last year www.gov.uk/government/s...

Saturday night at the Rec.

A quick £15.75m bridging loan arranged between exchange and completion on a £22.5m house in Chelsea (another reminder that these markets are more debt dependent than the agents might tell you) bridgingandcommercial.co.uk/article/2179...

One of the many depressing things this year was realising that there is no clear strategy across the whole of government and not just with housing. (1.5m new homes is a target, not a strategy)

As I wrote back in Feb, the government's focus on building homes with no apparent strategy beyond "planning reform" is dangerous and their ongoing failure to hit their stupid 1.5m target makes is more likely they'll be stuck with only the bad options to choose from. builtplace.com/still-search...

MHCLG SoS in his “build baby build” cap at conference

Locations of proposed new towns

I’m immensely grateful to the New Towns Taskforce, under the expert leadership of its Chair, Sir Michael Lyons, and Deputy Chair, Dame Kate Barker, for producing such a considered and comprehensive set of final recommendations 👇🏻 www.gov.uk/government/p...

Yet another UK data source that is not currently fit for purpose. The VOA Council Tax stock of properties data is usually a great leading indicator for net additions and useful for local level housing stock detail but changes to their systems means there's a bigger backlog of new homes to be added.

The UK establishment has already permissioned a dangerous shift in political norms - shadow cabinet ministers turning up at protests outside asylum hotels FGS. This is not a time to triangulate. It is a time to oppose, full-throated, the enfranchisement of the radical right. To redraw boundaries.