By Alistair McIntosh, HQN CEO

  • The RSH finds that projections of finances made by housing associations are too optimistic. How can we rectify this? Do our boards lack ‘imagination’? (As Einstein said, “imagination is more important than knowledge.”)
  • How can we be sure the buildings we develop now don’t incur the huge repair bills of the ones we built before? Does new/green technology add to the risks?
  • Is it appropriate to account for mergers and stock rationalisation as we do now? These deals seem like alchemy, such is the impact on financial strength. But what happens when the music stops?
  • Stock is growing at a glacial rate – how do we help meet government housing targets? Do we need an injection of grant? Is the door creeping open for private equity? After all, we’ll need to offer up some deregulation to boost growth. That’s the name of the game today
  • Marry in haste, repent at leisure. That just about sums up shared ownership for many. We’ve all seen folk queue round the block to snap up a shared ownership home. Then the milk turns sour. As you can tell from the official satisfaction figures, people that live in flats and don’t staircase up are unhappy. Often, they complain about high levels of service charges. Yet the RSH reports that associations only recover about three quarters of their service costs overall. No one is winning. We need to find a way of getting an affordable route into homeownership back on track.
  • Behind you! The RSH’s analysis of trends in housing association finances is deeply impressive. But it raises two questions:

          When will we get a similar in-depth look at the finances of councils? A big part of the jigsaw is missing

          The larger housing associations aren’t setting the heather on fire on VfM. There are plans to merge councils. Will that actually drive efficiency? Do we need a learning the lessons from problem mergers paper from the RSH?

We’ll be sending our HQN model analysing the Global Accounts and showing indicative VfM metrics to our Housing Finance Network members in this week’s newsletter.