showhouse.co.uk offers free adverts to redundant housebuilders

“The slump in the new homes market has seen a lot of outstanding industry professionals lose their jobs. Individuals, looking for new jobs and opportunities in the housebuilding sector and its ancillary services, can, subject to content being approved by Show House, list their credentials for free online to see current applications go to:  http://www.showhouse.co.uk, to " said Rupert Bates, editorial director of Show House.

Please send your advertisement together with your name, email and contact telephone number to at@globespanmedia.com. If you have any industry friends or former colleagues out of work who do not receive our newsletter please forward this opportunity.

Grant Shapps to speak at What House? Awards
Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps will be speaking at the What House? Awards on November 21st at The Grosvenor House Hotel.

Hear what the Tories have planned for housing and the housebuilding industry and have your say too. Editorial director Rupert Bates will be putting questions to the shadow housing minister from What House? Award guests. So if you have booked a table at the Awards, or plan to book a table, email your question for Grant Shapps to rb@globespanmedia.com.

This is the perfect question & answer opportunity for the industry to find out what the Conservative Party is made of and how they would help housebuilders trade out of one of the worst downturns in history. Do you want to hear from the new Labour housing minister as well? So do we. Margaret Beckett has also been asked to take part in a Q & A session at the What House? Awards and we await her reply. Forget Obama v McCain. We could have Beckett v Shapps in the battle for the housebuilder's vote. Don't worry, for light relief the Awards also has one of the top comedians in the country to host the event and announce the 2008 winners - rewarding the best new homes in Britain at the worst of times. To book Awards seats email Jo Walsh-Pickerill on jwp@globespanmedia.com or phone 020 7002 8300.

Nationwide: Forced Sellers to Hit Market
Prices fell by 1.4 per cent in October and are now 14.6 per cent lower than a year ago, says the Nationwide. The average home has now had £27,000 wiped off its value in the last twelve months.

Also, the number of completed housing sales has tumbled to its lowest level since the Nationwide series began in 1974, as sellers refuse to lower asking prices and buyers remain reluctant to go ahead. The Nationwide also said that as the recession worsens, more sellers are likely to have to lower their asking prices.

"As the economy weakens further there is likely to be more movement on asking prices as sellers adjust to the prevailing conditions and reassess their own needs. Some may choose not to sell after all, thus reducing supply, but others will adjust their prices accordingly," said Fionnuala Earley, chief economist.

"While there will always be a rump of sellers who will need to move in order to accommodate job or family changes there will be others who are affected by economic conditions more acutely. So we should expect a moderation of price expectations on the part of sellers in a weaker economic environment."

Although forced sales are likely to hit prices further, it should eventually lead to an increase in transactions and help the market find its bottom.

Repossessions Up 71%
The FSA said 11,054 homes were repossessed in the three months to the end of June, compared with just 6,476 during the same three months of 2007. It defines a repossession as an arrears case where the lender has been formally granted a possession order by a court and is then able to sell the underlying property against which the loan has been secured.

Separately, the Land Registry said all regions of England and Wales recorded price falls on an annual basis. Wales saw the biggest slide, with prices diving by 5.5 per cent during the month, making it the only region to have seen double digit annual falls of 10.7 per cent.

The South West, South East, North East and East Midlands all recorded house price drops of more than two per cent in September. Yorkshire and the Humber saw the smallest reduction, but even here properties still lost 1.2 per cent of their value during the month.

On an annual basis, the East Midlands and South West have seen the biggest price slides after Wales, with falls of 9.9 per cent and 9.7 per cent respectively. London has seen the smallest year-on-year decline at 6.1 per cent, followed by the North West at 6.3 per cent.

New Home Applications More Than Halved
The number of new home applications dropped by more than half during the third quarter of 2008, according to the NHBC. It said there were 23,185 applications in July to September, compared to 50,250 for the same months in 2007 – a fall of 54 per cent.

In terms of private housing, there was a 67 per cent decrease, with 13,358 applications for the three months to September in 2008 but 40,876 last year. But housing association statistics showed a five per cent increase, up to 9,827 from 9,374 last year.

NHBC figures also showed a downturn in the number of combined public and private sector completions for the quarter, totaling 33,299, a drop of 20 per cent from last year's 41,389.

Government Homes Target Now an “Ambition”
The government’s wish to see three million new homes by 2020 is an "ambition", rather than a target, according to the new housing minister Margaret Beckett.

She told a DCLG select committee this week that the real target was for home building to reach 240,000 annually by 2016.

Mike Leonard of the Modern Masonry Alliance said that while he was glad the government was "emerging from the denial stage", reaching the 2020 figure would be "a fantasy not an ambition". He also said the industry was unlikely to build more than 90,000 homes in 2009.

He added: “Government assistance must help all of those in the UK building supply chain. Public money being released to support the sector must be spent, where possible, on building materials manufactured in the UK rather than sourced from overseas or simply fabricated here. We need to save our building-materials manufacturing industry and save our jobs."

Beckett also said that Home Information Packs are not living up to their potential, but added that they had been "relatively successful".

SH Note: It really was about time the government admitted its target of three million was absurd. No one ever really believed it was possible – especially when you consider the government doesn’t build houses. It’s good that the undersupply message got through. Now watch it fade away…

Grainger plunges 40% as it offers to pay bondholders early
Shares in Grainger, Britain’s largest quoted residential landlord, tumbled more than 40 per cent this week after it offered to buy back its convertible bonds at about half their face value.

Grainger will offer all bondholders a cash payment of £35,000 and 11,574 shares for every £100,000 held in bonds, if they exercise their conversion rights by November 4.

It said some bondholders had asked whether it could help them "enhance the liquidity of the investment bonds".

The shares closed down 54p, or 43.9 per cent, at 72p – a 17-year low. If the whole issue of Grainger's £112 million 3.625 per cent 2014 bond were converted it would reduce the company's debt by £52 million and its loan to value ratio would also fall by about 2.5 per cent.

Robert Duncan, analyst at Cazenoze, said: "This represents a good deal for Grainger, de-gearing the balance sheet at a time of falling residential prices."

Earlier this month the FTSE-250 company, which has about £2.6billion of assets, said the market downturn was hurting its profits from property sales. It has also been forced to sell more properties with sitting tenants. In August, Grainger mothballed developments and halted its acquisition drive in order to shore up its balance sheet.

Rightmove Axes 20% of Staff
Rightmove is cutting 20 per cent of its 300-strong workforce and says the housing market will not improve until next year.

The job cuts will save the company £5 million a year and will affect about 60 members of staff. The redundancies come a month after Rightmove said the housing market was "on its knees" with "little chance of beginning its recovery”.

Alongside the redundancies, Rightmove said it would be focused on housing association properties at the expense of speculative developments. It is also scaling back the number of overseas properties it advertises because of dwindling demand from UK buyers for property in continental Europe.

"These are the first redundancies that the company has made as a result of the downturn in the UK housing market," a spokesman said. "The scale reflects the company's view that the current challenges will continue through 2009, though not at any worse level than we previously indicated."

Rightmove: Prices down 4.9%
The average asking price dropped 4.9 per cent to £229,691 during October according to Rightmove, with prices falling by two per cent in London from a year ago.

Commercial director Miles Shipside said the number of repossessions looks set to rise as unemployment increases and the problems in the housing market will get worse. The economy has "stared into the abyss'', he said.

SH Note: If Rightmove says the market is on its “knees” with a claimed 4.9 per cent drop, I wonder how it would describe the Nationwide’s 14.6 per cent figure?!

Persimmon Cuts £600 million off Value of Land Bank
Persimmon said prices in the second half will fall twice as fast as predicted earlier and land values will be cut by £600 million. It is budgeting for a ten per cent slide in prices.

"The uncertainty created in the housing market by the increasingly turbulent and uncertain outlook in financial markets has had a negative impact on all our regions across the UK," the company said in a statement.

CEO Mike Farley has closed three offices and cut 1,100 jobs. Output will tumble to 10,000 homes this year, down from 17,000 units, with 25 per cent coming from state contracts.

But the company said it was operating within its banking conditions, with cash generation in line with targets. Sales for this year include a completions total about £1.8 billion, with about £250 million of sales booked for 2009.

But its land writedowns are the biggest of any of the country's housebuilders during the current slump. Cancellation rates have increased to about 35 per cent.

Like its rivals, Persimmon is turning to social housing to see it through the bad times.

Shares clawed back to 200p.  

 

NextGeneration reveals how top 20 UK homebuilders are tackling climate change
A new study shows housebuilders are making good progress on sustainability despite the slump.

The group, NextGeneration, says Berkeley and Crest Nicholson are leading the way along with Miller Homes and Inspace Partnerships. But the study also show others have jumped on board the sustainability wagon. While in 2007, no company had a climate change policy in place, eight of the top 20 now have developed such a policy. Also, 55 per cent of majors are measuring operational energy companies and half are measuring operational waste generation. In addition, 40 per cent of housebuilders studied have developed Code for Sustainable Homes build tools to help them understand how to deliver the government's targets.

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