Month: October 2021

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A Challenge to Estate Agents to Improve The Housing Market in the UK

We all deserve a better housing market in which to find and purchase houses and flats for ourselves so I now challenge all estate agents and the landed professions to a full debate on the merits of my prescribed solution to the present and unacceptable house-price crisis, as well as to discuss the pressing need to correct the insufficient number of houses currently being purchased for owner occupation.

“There’s currently NO genuine competition between sellers who employ their own agents, as happens at present. I propose that instead, estate agents should be working for buyers in a similar way to travel agents and sales of tickets in the airline industry.” Travel agents help travellers to find the best value holidays for their chosen destinations.  This is what should also be happening with housing.

House prices themselves should find a level based on real competition. For this to happen, housing should be priced in a similar way to the methods used in the travel industry.

Fair competition should be introduced into our housing markets so as to achieve best throughput in the market, whilst maintaining price stability by using The House Price Solution.

The proposition:
Here is the essence of what I am saying by using this method.

It involves a complete and permanent change in the way estate agents deal with residential house sales.

As far as residential sales are concerned, to use this solution, only Registered House Agents (RHAs), would be licensed to deal with residential sales & purchases. The key difference is, this would involve a new type of agent which would always be acting for the purchaser rather than the vendor.

Existing Estate agents could continue to offer both sales and management services to all their existing clients except on residential or part residential property sales. In other words, sales of all types of property other than residential property may be dealt with in exactly the same way as before by existing estate agents.

Only Registered House Agents (RHAs), would be licensed to act in dealing with the sale and purchase of residential property. They would also be licensed to manage such property.

Those licensed to act in such matters would be expected to have passed a new qualification prior to obtaining a license to carry out this type of business.

You may ask in this case, would anyone else be allowed to act on behalf of those wishing to buy or sell residential property?

The answer is no. Market forces will be harnessed to act both for sellers as well as buyers by using different and competing Registered House Agents, tasked with the work of obtaining for their clients, the best combined buy and sell prices in the market whenever moving house.

Competition would be achieved because the selling process would normally be done using a separate and competing RHA in every case.

Whereas selling residential property may only be carried out by Registered House Agents (RHAs), existing professional buying agents may continue to operate as normal by negotiating terms of purchase on behalf of buyers as they do at present. The difference for them would be that they would be dealing with Registered House Agents when buying rather than with estate agents as at present.

This unique plan is designed to eliminate the exaggerated house prices which are being quoted and are seriously damaging our housing markets.

By stabilising prices in this way many more people would be able to transit between properties, as and when they may need to.

Your thoughts are welcomed on this new idea for smoothing rising house prices whilst helping to stabilise the capital values of privately owned residential property as part of this process.

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.

How to fill out the form to contact me:

Please enter your email address carefully. I always reply to emails so if you don’t hear back it may be your email address was incorrect.

I may not reply straightaway if I’m busy but if you haven’t heard after a while, then check that the email address you provided us was correct.

If so, then please get back by sending your message once again, also giving me a phone number to contact you on as well.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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The Politics of Housing

The Politics of Housing is necessarily societal. In other words you can’t really divorce housing from politics.

When canvassing for the Brexit vote in 2019 and accepting becoming our Prime Minister in July 2019, Boris Johnson promised that his government would be a government inclusive for all in society; having won the popular vote on that basis.

Whatever political view individuals may take, it would appear that there are three institutions that should be held as being vital to the wellbeing of present day society. These are The Judiciary, The NHS and The Town and Country Planning Acts.

Whenever setting out to make new policy for the benefit of Britain’s populace, these three and established pillars of fairness should always be carefully considered.

Tough love, directed towards some parts of society, may well be necessary for its further improvement but it would, by its own definition, have to be based on love and nurture and not prejudice.

However even so, the noblest of such decisions, taken in the quest to improve the lot of society may occasionally fail, especially where housing matters are concerned.

What follows is a set of proposals specifically designed to resolve the present housing distribution problems.

FIRSTLY: Before designing a new Town & Country Planning system, ideally for the whole of Britain, it would be a very good idea to get a clear picture of what might make each local community thrive, and then incorporate precisely that into the new planning model.

To date we have seen little evidence of such an approach and practically no justification for the arbitrary zoning designations which are being proposed in the Planning White Paper currently being debated in Parliament. This does, therefore, deserve further and serious consideration.

In peacetime (i.e. whilst our country is not at war with another), residential planning consents should be delegated to all local town or parish councils for them to determine, depending upon local housing need.

This way, genuinely democratic decisions may be arrived at using local decision-makers whom are best able to understand what the current needs of the community are at any particular time.

The clear and over-riding objective must surely be for ordinary working people to be able to find openings for good new jobs close to where they may live.

This should mean the forward plan ought to involve a proper debate with business leaders to start searching for and employing more-skilled people, including training them up and paying them adequately whilst expecting more productivity/profitability from them in return.

Such an outcome and gain to industry could be achieved from increasing the incentive amongst school leavers and university graduates alike to decide on a higher-skilled career for themselves earlier, and then to train them more intensively for that.

Those youngsters who do not choose to follow this clear path would be likely to have to accept the unskilled jobs which there may be and at low wages (albeit with little or no prospects), of course.

This is, in effect, increasing the incentive for job seekers to decide what they would like to do earlier and to embark on getting the necessary training and qualifications which they will need for their choices of career.

Other successful economies have already achieved such outcomes and because this has been done elsewhere it could certainly be done in Britain, if the incentives were provided.

One organisation, KPMG (the accountancy conglomerate) is already in the news for helping in the battle for greater diversity among types of job, especially within the poorer communities, by offering apprenticeships. It wants nearly a third of their staff to be coming from working class backgrounds by 2030. Enabling diversity of perspective, fresh thinking, and, wide-ranging insight which should help all businesses to perform better.

People coming from routine maintenance and service organisations may apply. Levels of pay and prospects in life really matter to employees but so does aspiration. Van drivers, butchers and factory workers should be among those applying for schemes such as these if they should wish to do so.

What is Levelling Up really about?
Added to this post 2 jan 2022:

Levelling up is about empowering local leaders and communities.
It’s about raising living standards and growing the private sector.
It’s about spreading opportunity and improving our public services.
It’s also about boosting local pride and improving our local environments.

Young people should be empowered to learn all the skills they need in order to be enabled to use their passions and their abilities to help them get good jobs in the future, wherever they may choose to live.

All this is can now be achieved with the localised Towns Deals which are being made available by government as well as the Community Renewal Fund and other funds also to do with Levelling Up.

Under the present government you can search online for:
Department for Levelling up Housing and Communities

Equally important however is resolving the house price crisis itself!

To find out all about everything to do with the extreme lack of adequate and available housing on the market and how to deal with the non-affordability of it, click below.

This House Price Solution is devised to resolve the current housing crisis completely

You can either comment there, or go back to ‘The Politics of Housing’ and post your comment here.

What do you think about this idea for drastically improving the operation of all housing markets potentially across the whole of Britain?

Constructive comments are very much welcomed.