Ditching house building targets is only hurting young buyers - Andrew Vine

Both squeeze the young couple I’ve been accompanying out of any chance of buying. They can’t afford to bid against competing buyers, nor have they the money to undertake extensive building work like having a new roof without taking out a mortgage too big for comfort.

That’s in addition to ever-rising prices constantly diminishing what they can afford after five years of saving.

The result is as they turn 30, with both in full-time jobs paying decent wages, the dream of having a home of their own where they hope to start a family is as distant as ever.

As an aspiration, it’s not much to ask. But the economics of the housing market are making it unachievable.

The trap they are caught in is going to be familiar to any number of younger people – effectively shut out of home ownership because of factors completely beyond their control and left relying on parents for a roof over their heads or paying out a lot in rent, which makes it harder to save enough to buy.

This is more than just the source of personal heartache, which it assuredly is for this young couple.

It is damaging communities large and small, which are being starved of new blood and growing families who keep local schools open and parades of shops in business.

I’m seeing this on my own doorstep, where the population in all the roads around is ageing and far fewer young people move in than they did even five years ago because prices have risen so much. The effect is a loss of vibrancy.

What has been plain to me is that there is a shortage of properties out there, particularly within the means of first-time buyers who don’t have the good fortune of parents wealthy enough to make a contribution from the bank of mum and dad.

In Yorkshire, we’ve long known that the young have been priced out of rural areas, even if they have grown up there and want to stay, because so many properties have been snapped up as second homes.

But now a lack of properties is having the same effect in urban areas.

This is a growing social problem that needs to be addressed, but shamefully the Government has turned its back on any responsibility to provide new and affordable homes by scrapping housebuilding targets to appease its own backbenchers.

The Conservatives’ abandonment of its plan to build 300,000 new homes a year will come back to haunt them, and not just because of the grubby motives behind it.

This was a decision that pandered to nimby – “not in my back yard” – sentiment on the part of MPs in the southern shires, who feared a backlash from constituents who don’t want new estates of “executive” homes spoiling the view of fields at the bottom of their gardens.

It’s utterly irresponsible, in its way as reprehensible as a refusal to provide additional hospital beds despite there being evidence of a need for them.

And there is a clear need for new homes. Housebuilding is at its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis, and home ownership levels are at their lowest in 40 years, even as the age at which those able to get a foot on the housing ladder has crept up to 33.

There is an internet meme doing the rounds featuring a character called “Deano” – an aspirational husband and father in his 30s who works hard and has managed to buy a home, but is growing disenchanted with the Government because of rising mortgage costs and poorer public services.

A caricature? No, quite the contrary. My friends fit that profile pretty closely, apart from the fact that they can’t buy a home.

They were dissatisfied with the Government anyway, but the abandonment of house-building plans has made them even more so.

If elected, Labour has promised to restore house-building targets, and the party is right to do so, both because no responsible Government can preside over a housing crisis, and because it’s going to be a vote-winner amongst the young.

Building more houses doesn’t mean concreting over the countryside. There are massive amounts of brownfield land that could be built on, offering the potential to create new and attractive communities in areas that can be regenerated by them.

If the Conservatives are not to diminish their electoral chances yet further, Rishi Sunak needs to face down his backbench nimbys and do a U-turn on house-building.

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