The Great Housing Price Bubble: British families are 'choosing between paying the rent and eating'

2013.11.11

A new BBC documentary warns that the housing market is forcing people to give up other basic needs, as fears of a bubble return to parts of Britain

 

British families are choosing between paying the rent and eating, according to the chairman of a food charity.

 

Chris Mould, the Executive Chairman of the Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks nationwide, said: "Many of them (clients) are choosing between paying the rent and eating, or they're choosing between paying the mortgage or having a reposession order."

 

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Mould's comments appear in Panorama: The Great Housing Price Bubble?, which airs tonight on BBC one.

 

The documentary claims that 31 per cent of people spend more than a third of their income on mortgage or rent, meaning that they can't afford other basic needs.

 

According to organisations such as Shelter and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, if people are spending 35 per cent or more of their disposable income on their accommodation, they many not be able to afford other essentials.

 

The warnings come as fears of a housing bubble return to parts of the country, particularly the south-east. London property prices are rising by 8 per cent a year. The new Help to Buy scheme, in which the government partly guarantees mortgages for first-time buyers, has begun strongly. RBS and Halifax, two major lenders, reported that they had received a total of 2,384 applications since the scheme began last month.

 

Housing Minister Kris Hopkins played down fears.

 

"We've seen nothing yet to suggest there is anything going anywhere near a bubble at this moment in time. We've seen a lot of activity in London. There is some movement, some confidence across the country but there's a long way to go. I think we're only up to 60 per cent of transactions that we were prior to 2008."

 

Panorama: The Great Housing Price Bubble?