Homes From Empty Homes

Influential think -tank Centre for Cities concludes that national policies to increase housebuilding are working against bringing vacant properties into use in the north. It’s new report Cities Outlook says bringing empty homes into use is likely to be more beneficial than building new houses in areas with lower house prices.

But national housing policies are such as New Homes Bonus, designed to increase housing supply, may be unhelpful in areas with lower house prices by encouraging house building when improving the exisiting housing would be better.

It reccomends that other measures such [...]

>Earlier this month I was honoured to be a guest of the CIH president at his annual dinner. This huge annual event takes place in the Natural History Museum in London. Tables of the great and good of the housing industry were assembled around the Brontosaurus skeleton and under the gaze of Charles Darwin’s statue. This is always a helpful prompt to speakers enabling them to make self-deprecating jokes about how old they are how their views have had to evolve.

This year the speakers were in fiery form. There was a general theme that public and the media were not [...]