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    A Broom Cupboard of One's Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership
    A Broom Cupboard of One's Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership
    A Broom Cupboard of One's Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership
    Ebook49 pages43 minutes

    A Broom Cupboard of One's Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership

    By Ross Clark

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    About this ebook

    During the great property boom of the early 2000s when the conversation in every pub, club and living room was how to make a killing on the property market, one sanguine voice stood apart. Writing in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Times, the Mail on Sunday and the Spectator, Ross Clark warned that rampant inflation in house prices would bring nothing but misery.
    The aftermath of the great property boom is an acute housing crisis. Millions are priced-out of buying a home of their own, while millions more are desperately hoping that prices remain high to prevent a slide into negative equity. We are caught in a trap of our own making: we thought house price inflation had made Britain rich, but instead it's just made homeowners over-leveraged and would-be homeowners tenants of mum and dad.
    Meanwhile, new regulations on the horizon threaten to make the problem worse, needlessly driving up the price of new houses and failing to address the real causes of the crisis.
    But what if there are answers? And what if they neither involve a calamitous collapse in property values, nor worsening social and generational divides by leaving young people priced out?
    And what if it's possible to boost home-ownership without spraying the greenbelt with concrete?
    Ross Clark tackles the housing crisis head on in this compelling new book, revealing the sources of the crisis and exploring with deadly insight the flaws of current attempts to address it, before revealing a range of simple solutions that can be implemented to start easing the problem today.
    The result of 15 years of up-close observation of the property market, 'A Broom Cupboard of One's Own' is a searingly honest and thought-provoking take on the housing crisis facing Britain. Read it and find out how one of the biggest asset bubbles in recent history needn't provoke social or financial crisis if we act now.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarriman House
    Release dateDec 14, 2012
    ISBN9780857192967
    A Broom Cupboard of One's Own: The housing crisis and how to solve it by boosting home-ownership

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      Book preview

      A Broom Cupboard of One's Own - Ross Clark

      Publishing details

      HARRIMAN HOUSE LTD

      3A Penns Road

      Petersfield

      Hampshire

      GU32 2EW

      GREAT BRITAIN

      Tel: +44 (0)1730 233870 | Fax: +44 (0)1730 233880

      Email: enquiries@harriman-house.com | Website: www.harriman-house.com

      Copyright © 2013 Harriman House

      First published in Great Britain in 2013. Published in United States 2010.

      The right of Ross Clark to be identified as the Author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

      ISBN: 9780857192967

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data | A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

      All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without the prior written consent of the Publisher.

      No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher, by the Author or by the Employer(s) of the Author.

      Preface

      THERE IS NO shortage of comment on the housing crisis, most of it produced by vested interests of one kind or another. This book is not is not the product of anyone with an axe to grind. It has been written without any financial contribution from any source. Its author is not employed by any property-related company or organisation, neither does he belong to any political party. The analysis and ideas contained here are the results of 15 years of observation by a journalist who has specialised in the property market and watched at close quarters the property boom of the early 21st century. It is an honest comment on the housing crisis facing Britain.

      Given that everyone must live somewhere, no one can approach the subject of the housing market from an entirely neutral point of view, but for the record the author owns, jointly with his wife and with a small mortgage, his home in Cambridgeshire. In addition his wife owns an investment property in Scotland. He has some small investments in the shares of property-related companies, but which are not disproportionate to his investment portfolio.

      The century-long ‘boom’ which has made us poorer

      THE HOARDINGS ERECTED by Wates Homes outside the Heathway Park Estate in Mitcham in the early 1930s reached over the road and formed a gateway into another world: one in which the masses could transform themselves from rent-payers to property-owners. Guaranteed modern houses, brick built throughout, they read. Nearly every house has a garage space. Prices from £315 to £530.

      The early 1930s are synonymous with economic depression. It is a time remembered for hunger marches, for lingering slums, for families living on bread and margarine, for tuberculosis and no state healthcare. But if you had a job and at least eight shillings a week to spare and aspired to buy your own home, times had never been better – and have never been so good since. In 2012 prices the Mitcham properties would have cost between £18,000 and £30,000 – closer now to the cost of a large family car than a three-bedroom house.

      The inter-war building boom extended the London suburbs by several miles in all directions. But it wasn’t just houses that were being built: the foundations were being laid

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