Featured Sector: Private Housing

Underlying value of construction projects starting on site. (Excludes individual projects of more than £100 million and framework agreements).

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This year has seen flat house prices, falling numbers of transactions and weak lending figures. Despite rises in housing completions, house building has been on a downward path. Since the summer of 2010, where a temporary recovery was providing optimism amid a gloomy construction industry, Glenigan has recorded falling levels of starts, a drop in the number of planning approvals and a lengthening in the time it takes projects to start on site having achieved planning approval.

2010 was a recovery year for the sector – the underlying value of project starts grew by 20% over the year. However, the trend has turned and the Glenigan Index of housing starts has fallen throughout the first half of this year. After a brief uplift in starts over the third quarter of the year, there was a 13% fall in the underlying value of project starts over the three months to November.

Regionally, the decline in housing construction has not been evenly spread. Scotland has suffered particularly this year so far, with a 26% drop in project starts. In contrast, London is the only part of the UK to experience a significant increase in house building over the first eleven months of 2011, becoming an increasingly important source of work.