Although my glass is more often half-full than empty, I have recently been a doom-prophet about the housing market. Although we’re told there’s a housing crisis, I still can’t work out who’s going to buy the hundreds of houses being built on hundreds of estates with silly names straight out of an episode of Miss Marple. And that’s without mentioning the ‘B’ word. This week we heard that new builds are now at their highest level since 1988. Not good, I’d say. It was in 1990 that the words ‘negative equity’ hit the headlines. And stayed there for more than a few years.
“John Lewis foray into BTR could result in losses of £57m”
I did predict a while ago that Waitrose Homes rather than Waitrose Home Deliveries could be the future. John Lewis were probably the most benign big business to decide to go into the housing rental market, a move which could swing things away from the unpredictability of the mass of private landlords who dominate the sector.
