I am very much saddened to report that my friend, @nearlylegal.co.uk passed away this weekend.

nearlylegal.co.uk/2026/04/gile...

I recall almost all the advertising space in New Delhi being versions of this message around then (1999/00).

The Starmer-shaped hole where a prime minister should be Mandelson scandal shows he has never successfully made the transition from an opposition mindset to a governing one

Ah, it’s actually up already:

He's not the worst PM of my adult life but he is the most disappointing one.

Help to Buy equity loan redemptions for less than the original purchase price by flat/house
(from the bottom of here builtplace.com/weekly-summa...)

which is not necessarily a bad thing given what happened to many of those who bought flats via the scheme, especially in London.

It was nicknamed "Help to Buy Bigger" quite early on.

And a chart showing how that income distribution changed over time.

Income distribution of Help to Buy equity loan scheme borrowers.
(from my old slide deck full of charts, last updated in 2023 when the scheme ended builtplace.com/digging-deep...)

Was it new build?

We don’t even manage to count new build homes accurately!
(largely because the structure of the market changed)

And “co-living” is now the popular tenure for developers. Effectively student housing for everyone. Lots in London but also happening in urban areas across the country.

There’s been quite a lot of attempted and actual conversions of struggling student accommodation, especially in places like Coventry. Did have a bit of a thread going at one point:

bsky.app/profile/resi...

There's a lot of people that I would defer to on social housing policy, including Neil!

I booked Eurostar for our late July holiday on Sunday, plenty of tickets available then.

Currently sat in the pret on Berkeley Sq where my career in housing research started back in 2005. Met my future boss for a coffee here and started the following week - it was a different employment market then!

A housing lawyer on Twitter once described it as neither shared nor ownership.

Inspired by you, I just got around to buying some of their latest flavour. Actually quite like it, more than the Nessie nectar/unicorn tears flavours from last summer.

Getting flashbacks to autumn 2022 when I needed to explain to Treasury and Cabinet Office how mortgages actually worked.

They (including Truss) were still of the view that most people had variable rates tied to Bank Rate.

that probably applies nationally but there's a lot of supply already on the market in central London.

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/EZG...

I've got other stuff to do but would be interesting if someone put together a list of all the central London properties linked to these companies:
find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/i1S...

find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/AJF...

Central London market was already looking in trouble and that's before all the MFS related properties hit the market and the impact of rate rises.

There's now less capacity to deal with higher rates and that suggests any rises in mortgage rates are more likely to lead to falling prices than we saw back in 2022/23

What is also worrying me is that new mortgage buyers have coped with higher rates by increasing repayments as % of income. As rates have eased over last couple of years, any benefit has been captured by rising prices rather than reducing repayments.

If it's in next couple of months, you should be able to lock in a rate now. My lender let me do it with 90 days left but some offer longer. Got mine locked in on the 3rd March, though slightly regretting the choice of two-year fix rather than five.

There's now less capacity to deal with higher rates and that suggests any rises in mortgage rates are more likely to lead to falling prices than we saw back in 2022/23

What is also worrying me is that new mortgage buyers have coped with higher rates by increasing repayments as % of income. As rates have eased over last couple of years, any benefit has been captured by rising prices rather than reducing repayments.

It looks that way

Here's the longer trend