Steady the housing market to avoid boom and bust hell

THERE is a certain sort of person who will react to new figures from the Nationwide house prices falling fast showing by declaring themselves delighted and hoping for further falls and even a housing market crash. crossThe rationale given will be that this will make it easier for millions of young families to get a foot on the housing ladder.

- Patrick O'Flynn

But such thinking does not survive a moment's examination. The main reason house prices are falling is that would-be buyers cannot afford to make such high bids due to falling real incomes and rising interest rates on mortgage borrowings.

Such is our overall shortage of property that people will in general need to stretch themselves as much as they ever did.

A housing market that leaves the number of households and the number of available houses unchanged will not solve the housing crisis. At most it will just leave a different set of people disappointed.

The odds are that anyone saying they want to see an extended slump is mainly seeking to signal their own virtue.

But they are not being virtuous or communicating a wellinformed point of view either.

The fact of the matter is that precipitous falls in house prices - beyond the 3.4 per cent slump recorded by the Nationwide can have disastrous wider economic impacts, as well as resulting in financial pain for those who have purchased homes recently and are most at risk of plunging into the nightmare of negative equity.