Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
'Zero bills' homes praised by housing secretary
Nadira Tudor and Jodie Halford BBC (No paywall)A sustainable housing development promising "zero energy bills" should be the blueprint for new homes across the country, the government's housing secretary has said. The site at Carpenters Yard in Epping, Essex, has 113 homes in a "pioneering microgrid community" where every house has a heat pump, solar panels and a centralised battery system to reduce energy bills to zero. The development was built by private developer gs8 and was financed by Octopus Capital. Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Housing, said the Labour government was consulting on the "future homes standard" and asking "how we can make more homes capable of generating their own energy in the way that this development is?".
# International, .The housing crisis is forcing Americans to choose between affordability and safety
Ivis García The Conversation (No paywall)Picture this: You’re looking to buy a place to live, and you have two options. Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars – the median California home sells for US$906,500 – and you’d be paying a mortgage that’s risen 82% since January 2020. Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs less than half as much: just $353,700. The catch? Option B sits in an area with significant hurricane and flood risk.
https://theconversation.com/the-housing-crisis-is-forcing-americ…
# International, .Won’t somebody please think of England’s poor £2m homeowners? Oh, wait – everyone already is
Jonathan Liew The Guardian (No paywall)The new “mansion tax” announced by Rachel Reeves in last week’s budget is estimated to affect around 165,000 property owners, and on current trends the British media is forecast to have interviewed every single one of them by the end of the year. How else to explain the chorus of squeals we’ve been exposed to from the impoverished victims of Esher and Pimlico, whose only crime was to own a house worth over £2m in an era of egregious wealth inequality?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/02/homeowners…
# International, .‘Practical, functional and meticulous’ should be the perfect approach to solving a housing crisis
Steve Ford The Fifth Estate (No paywall)POSTCARD FROM AMSTERDAM: It’s a country where they literally hold back the tide, and it seems like they have a practical and functional solution for everything. Trains run on time, and ships move large quantities of materials in canals above the highways. Cars give way to bikes (lots of them), and the people are known for calling a spade a spade. The Netherlands is a can-do country, and they do things neatly, no, meticulously, with barely a blade of grass out of place in the entire landscape. This shows in their town planning, with well planned infrastructure, lack of sprawl and a housing density that feels just right.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/practical-functio…
# International, .More than 75% of homes across the U.S. are unaffordable, study finds
Megan Cerullo CBS News (No paywall)Homeownership is increasingly out of reach for most U.S. families as the gap between people's earnings and home prices widens, according to a new analysis. More than 75% of homes across the country are unaffordable for the typical household, Bankrate said in a report. The personal finance firm defines a home as affordable if the annual housing costs do not exceed 30% of a household's income.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/affordable-housing-home-prices-bank…
# Australia, .People on lowest incomes being denied access to social housing, research finds
Jessica Murray The Guardian (No paywall)The poorest people in England are being denied access to social housing owing to their low income, in a “catch-22” situation that is pushing more people into homelessness, research has found. A new report from Crisis said that an ever depleting supply of social homes meant that housing associations were using strict criteria to choose new tenants, and people on low incomes and in receipt of benefits were having applications denied due to being deemed too risky.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/08/people-on-lowest…
# International, Public and community housing.Trump had two mortgages he claimed were primary dwellings, records show
Joseph Gedeon The Guardian (No paywall)Donald Trump signed mortgage documents in the 1990s claiming two separate Florida properties would each serve as his principal residence – the same thing his administration is calling “mortgage fraud” when done by political rivals, records show. ProPublica unearthed documents demonstrating that within seven weeks of each other in late 1993 and early 1994, the president obtained loans for neighboring Palm Beach homes, pledging each would be his primary dwelling. Instead of living in them, though, he rented both out as investment properties.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/09/trump-mortgage-r…
# Hot topic International, .When Home Sellers Set Prices Too High, They’re Paying for It
Veronica Dagher The Wall Street Journal (Paywall)If you are serious about selling your home, you might need to drop the price. Overpriced houses are languishing on the market as buyers continue to be deterred by elevated mortgage rates and persistent economic uncertainty. Many sellers optimistically price their homes based on sales from earlier in the 2020s, when they saw neighbors’ homes get snapped up quickly at high prices. Instead, Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, advises owners to calibrate their asking prices by looking at what comparable houses in their neighborhood sold for in the last month or so.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/when-home-sellers-set-prices-too…
# International, .