Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Is the UK housing bubble about to burst? These are the best and worst scenarios
Josh Ryan-Collins The Guardian (No paywall)UK house prices appear to have defied economic gravity over the past year. The lockdowns triggered by the pandemic led to a 10% fall in GDP, the largest fall in 300 years, since the Great Frost of 1709. Yet the latest data shows house prices have grown at the fastest annual rate – 13.4% – in 17 years. Are we in the midst of another housing bubble?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/02/housing-bu…
# International, Housing market.Housing Ombudsman publishes full details of 350 decisions against landlords
Tim Clark Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... In a bid to increase transparency, the ombudsman has published more than 350 individual cases covering a range of issues including repairs, anti-social behaviour and complaint-handling. The outcomes included areas where the ombudsman found cases of maladministration, no issue and those where an incident had gone wrong but the landlord was not deemed not to have addressed it appropriately. According to the ombudsman, the decisions provide an ever-expanding resource to promote learning, fairness and accountability in the sector. The cases cover dozens of landlords and include details of incidents where housing associations have been forced to pay tenants for inadequately responding to anti-social behaviour claims, failing to deal with leaks in properties and removing gas pipes without informing residents.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/housing-ombudsman-publishes…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent, Landlords and agents.Public housing residents relocated under Victorian government program fear uncertainty
Ahmed Yussuf ABC (No paywall)Hadia Komba spends almost four hours each day travelling from her new home in Werribee to get her kids to and from school in Flemington. She recently took the option to relocate her family of seven, including her five children, out of their three-bedroom public housing flat to a four-bedroom house. ... They were moved to Werribee as part of the Victorian government's $31.7 million tower relocation program. The voluntary program was offered to 420 high-rise public housing tenants assessed as being at greatest risk from coronavirus.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-04/melbourne-public-housing-…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19, State Government.Australia’s housing FOMO is more contagious than COVID
Elizabeth Knight The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Regulators haven’t yet started to roll out a vaccine for Australia’s other pandemic - the highly infectious fear of missing out on property ownership - which has resulted in annual price growth more rapid than anything seen in almost two decades. The most infectious variant is house ownership ...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/australia-s-…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.The Controversial Floodlights Illuminating New York City's Public-Housing Developments
(Paywall)The documentary short “Omnipresence” looks at the complicated ways that a set of bright lights, installed to help reduce nighttime crime, is affecting residents’ lives. (The New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/the…
# International, Public and community housing, Local Government.'Defective' apartment developer and Sydney shock-jock Ray Hadley on legal collision course
Josh Bavas ABC (No paywall)A string of "defective" residential buildings across Sydney, constructed by developer Toplace, have been revealed as part of a court battle between the company and shock-jock Ray Hadley. ... In a statement of claim filed to the Federal Court, Mr Nassif said the broadcaster incorrectly inferred he was a "dishonest" and "shoddy" developer and that he attempted to force apartment buyers to settle when the buildings were "dangerously unfit for habitation". It's the same company that was also ordered by the NSW Building Commissioner last month to fix a range of defects, after "extensive signs of cracking" were found in the basement of its Skyview apartment complex in Castle Hill.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-03/ray-hadley-and-sydney-dev…
# NSW, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Housing market records fastest annual growth since 2004
Euan Black The New Daily (No paywall)Sydney property prices increased by about $800 a day in June as the Australian housing market recorded its fastest annual growth since April 2004.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2021/07/01/australia…
# Australia, Housing market.Sirius sale funds 330 social houses in NSW
Sian Phillips (No paywall)As Sydney's Sirius building is transformed from social housing into multi-million dollar apartments, the NSW government has revealed where money from the sale of the harbourside icon is going.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/sirius-sale-funds-330-s…
# NSW, Public and community housing, State Government.