The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

the times | Saturday April 30 2022 41

News

House prices rose for a ninth
consecutive month in April but growth
appears to have peaked.
Prices increased by 0.3 per cent
between March and April to an average
of £267,620, according to the
Nationwide house price index, which
showed demand among would-be
movers is still strong.
Compared with this time a year ago,
prices are up 12.1 per cent and have
never been higher.
The increase marks a fall in annual
price growth from the 14.3 per cent seen
in March, which was the biggest year-
on-year rise since 2004.
Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief
economist, said: “It is surprising that
conditions have remained so buoyant,
given mounting pressure on household
budgets, which has severely dented
consumer confidence. Consumers’
expectations of their own personal

Smart house rises to

cheat the floodwater

I

n a vast Oxfordshire

laboratory a

seemingly ordinary

three-bedroom

house stands on

stilts in a giant test pool

(Martina Lees writes).

As waves begin to

build, the whole building

starts rising, being

gently lifted by six jacks

to a point where the

water cannot touch it.

Then the wind turbines

fire up and a simulated

log hits one of the stilts

at 40mph. Still it stands

safe and dry.

This is Britain’s first

mass-produced home on

rising stilts — ready to

go on sale to avoid

devastation from floods.

The FloodSafe house

normally sits on the

ground, but in a flood its

water sensors

automatically prompt

mechanical jacks to

raise it up to 1.5m within

15 minutes. The system

then tracks the flood

level, keeping the home

15cm above water until it

is safe to return it to the

ground.

The University of

Liverpool, which helped

to develop the

technology, has tested

the house in a giant

basin at HR

Wallingford, a

hydraulics research

centre in Oxfordshire.

Its jacks raised the

house above 50cm-deep

water, while scientists

monitored how it

reacted to waves, wind

and debris crashing into

one of the stilts.

The team behind the

“one of a kind” design

believes it allows homes

to be safely built on land

at risk of flooding

without expensive

communal defences.

Flooding costs Britain

£1.3 billion a year. One

in six homes — and

27 per cent of new

homes — are in flood

zones, with more than

10,000 built in them last

year alone, Environment

Agency and housing

ministry data shows.

Climate change makes

flooding from storms 59

per cent likelier, Oxford

University and the Royal

Meteorological Institute

have found.

Andrew Parker, a

former builder, invented

the jack system after

metre-deep flooding

damaged a

friend’s small

terraced home

near Sheffield

in 2007 and

again in 2009.

“In the 2007

floods, he and

his family had

to move

[while repairs

were made],”

Parker said.

“They came back after

12 months to find mould

and damp in the

building, so had to move

back out again. Luckily,

in 2007, he was insured.

In 2009, he was not so

lucky. With no

insurance, he lost

absolutely everything.”

The house does not

just protect the

inhabitants from

flooding. If services are

cut off, which often

happens in a flood, a

built-in home battery,

radiant electric heaters

and water tank mean

owners can survive off-

grid for three days.

Hadley Group, a steel

manufacturer that

builds modular homes at

its Midlands factory,

added the flood jacks

underneath its standard

three-bedroom design.

Made up of six pods that

are delivered on the

backs of lorries, the

93 sq m house can be

assembled on site within

a day. Fully fitted out

with a kitchen and a

bathroom, the FloodSafe

house costs £165,000,

excluding land and

foundations, which is

about £35,000 more

than the same modular

home without the flood

avoidance system.

“But it’s the property

with the view. People

will pay more for the

house... with the

unobstructed view of the

river that might flood,”

said Ben Towe, Hadley’s

managing director.

“Flood land is cheaper

than normal land, so

when you put the two

together, it’s cost-

effective for the builder.”

The group has raised

£362 million to build

400 homes across the

northwest in the next

three years. The first five

are due to go up in

Burnley by autumn.

Parker faced “a lot of

scepticism” in the 12

years since he first came

up with his invention.

“I’ve been thrown out of

many places and taken a

lot of knocks. But we’re

nearly there... If people

see a real house going

up and down... they

start believing it.”

In 2020 Boris Johnson

made his “build, build,

build” speech on

economic recovery from

the pandemic in front of

an earlier version of

Parker’s design.

The inventor expects

his flood jacks to be

commercially available

“very quickly” and plans

eventually to retrofit

them to existing homes.

LABC, which

represents local

authority building

control teams and

provides ten-year

warranties on new

homes, has approved the

FloodSafe house in

principle.

A FloodSafe house costs

£165,000 and can rise

1.5 metres off the ground.

Andrew Parker, the

inventor, says people are

starting to

believe now

they can

see it in

action

Turning the tide

Floods are a growing

concern for many

homeowners and new

technology is emerging

around the world to

guard against extreme

weather events.

Britain

Sir Jim Ratcliffe won a

planning battle in 2020

to build a £6m home

on stilts in the gardens

of his estate in New

Forest National Park.

Ireland

Dam Easy, an Irish

company, has invented

a portable, watertight

flood barrier. A

pneumatic pump

inflates a barrier in a

doorway to create a

watertight seal.

The Netherlands

Residents can live in an

amphibious building on

a platform that can

float if necessary. The

buildings rise as the

water level rises,

Australia

A technique called

“wet floodproofing”

lets part of a house

flood. Vents installed in

the foundations allow

the water to pass

through the house.

How it works

House

lifts up at

same speed as

rising water

levels

FloodSafe

housing

estate

A signal is sent to the

central control station

2

Fixed

bollard sensors

around the estate

first detect water

1

Variable

sensors under the

house detect water

and trigger the

control panel

to activate

the flood

jack system

Six fully galvanised legs lift the steel-

structured house, keeping it 15cm above the water

3

4

properties that are on the market. More

than a third of 3,000 people polled by

Nationwide said that they were either

in the process of moving or looking to

do so. Most want to move to “less urban

environments”, while a quarter were

looking for bigger homes.

“The survey results suggest that

shifts in housing preferences as a result

of the pandemic are continuing to

support housing market activity,

though to less of an extent than at this

time last year,” Gardner said.

Growth in property prices starts to fade

finances over the next 12 months has

dropped to levels last seen during the

depths of the global financial crisis

more than a decade ago.”

Mortgage approvals continued to

run above pre-Covid levels, with

demand supported by “robust labour

market conditions”, he said.

Since the start of the pandemic,

house prices across the country have

jumped by more than 21 per cent. In

March 2020 the average value of a UK

home was less than £220,000.

Prices have been pushed higher by an

imbalance between supply and

demand. Lockdowns forced people to

rethink how and where they wanted to

live, with many wanting more office

and garden space. Some also brought

forward planned moves to take advan-

tage of the stamp duty holiday, which

saved buyers as much as £15,000. Estate

agents have been complaining for

months that not enough houses are for

sale, leading to bidding wars for

The latest price rise means it has

never been harder to get on the proper-

ty ladder. Historically, on average,

house prices have equated to about four

and a half times annual household

income and fell below three times in the

mid-1990s. The surge in house prices

over the past two years means that

house prices now work out to almost

seven times the average household’s

annual income. “This is important as it

means it’s more difficult to raise a

deposit,” Gardner said. “A 10 per cent

deposit on a typical first-time buyer

property is at nearly 60 per cent of gross

annual income — a record high.”

He said that housing affordability

had deteriorated because house price

growth had been outstripping income

growth by a significant margin over the

past two years, while borrowing costs

have increased though they remain low

by historic standards.

Cheap mortgage rates have played

their part in inflating prices by allowing

people to borrow more money than

they would have done previously.

The Bank of England is expected to

keep raising interest rates, making

mortgage repayments more expensive,

which, along with rising inflation, is

why Nationwide believes that the

housing market will “slow in the quar-

ters ahead”.

Capital Economics predicted this

week that house prices are set to fall by

5 per cent in 2023 and 2024.

With the consultancy expecting

interest rates to hit 3 per cent in 2023,

Andrew Wishart, senior property

economist, is forecasting the sharpest

rise in mortgage rates since 1990 to 3.6

per cent from 1.8 per cent.

“The first signs that the market is on

the turn are already appearing,” Wish-

art wrote, citing Google data showing

that visits to property websites had

dropped to their lowest level since May

2020.

Mortgage crunch time, Money, page 57

Tom Howard Cost of average house

1995 00 05 10 15 20

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

£000

Source: Nationwide

ANDRE CAMARA FOR THE TIMES