CML news & views

Last Friday, we hosted our successful annual lunch in London – a noticeably more upbeat event than last year. More than 610 members, associates and guests attended this year’s event – an increase in attendance of almost 40% on the 440 who were at the lunch in 2009.

In his keynote speech to guests, The Sunday Times’ economics editor David Smith applauded the CML for helping to keep the issue of the shortage of mortgage funding in the media spotlight. He agreed that, while the topic had not received much attention in the election campaign, it was one of the biggest problems for a new government to address.

It was a subject he recently covered in a Sunday Times article on what the party manifestos had to say about housing. 

“Also missing, according to the industry,” he wrote, “are the answers to the biggest questions facing housing over the next few years. The CML has been through the three main party manifestos and found policies it likes, but its big worry is in an area none of the parties appears to have ideas about: how to fill a £300 billion mortgage funding gap during the next Parliament…The danger, says the CML, is of a prolonged mortgage famine.”

On a more light-hearted note, David Smith told lunch guests that he had updated his own index of housing market activity: the ‘skip index’ – based on the number of builders’ skips outside houses in his street. None represents the depths of a recession; and four, a housing market boom. There are currently two outside houses in his street, suggesting a modest market recovery, he concluded.

The more upbeat tone at this year’s lunch was also reflected in the fund-raising for our adopted charity, Habitat for Humanity. Guests raised a total of £5,300 for Habitat, which works to eradicate housing poverty and has so far built more than 300,000 homes in over 90 countries since it was established 35 years ago.