星空传媒

Your article "Uncertain times" (11 April, page 16) considered the effects on housing of an economic downturn.

One of the subheadings was "Falling demand for shared ownership" and I take great exception to this.

Anyone ill-informed, who only scans headlines rather than slavishly reading every line of Housing Today, might think demand for shared ownership has fallen or will fall.

Howard Cresswell is quoted as suggesting that demand could fall quickly if house prices drop dramatically.

As I understand it, Howard is a human resources type who has never dabbled in sacred (sic) ownership.No doubt he is thinking of scared ownership. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

As a seasoned practitioner I can tell you that in a recession (certainly in London) demand actually goes up because people suddenly realise they might just be able to get their foot on the ladder.

Consider that the average-priced home in London is 拢200,000 and the average key worker earns 拢25,000 a year. If house prices drop 50%, it doesn't take a genius to realise that the key worker will still need a mortgage of four times their salary to buy outright. So, shared ownership is virtually recession-proof.

So let's look at the facts, rather than anything an HR type would guess at (film buffs might recall what Clint Eastwood said about personnel in the film The Enforcer. Anyone who knows and manages to get the immortal line into Housing Today will get a free box of Jaffa cakes from me).

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tower had a field day. We couldn't get enough schemes to sell. Developers were trying to offload homes in a falling market , while we were making homes ever more affordable.

Some RSLs got caught out because they had a large number of homes under construction and they caught a cold.

In Tower's current position we have more than 400 homes under construction but we don't bank on rising prices, we price conservatively and we try to set low equities.

If prices fall, we raise equity levels, so the buyer gets more for his or her money. If prices reduce significantly it usually follows that interest rates have risen sharply in which case the rent that we charge is a balancing factor. Thus, happiness all round.

Your article goes on to say that demand for intermediate housing is so high that serious problems are unlikely.

Pity, then, that you chose to keep in a deliberately misleading sub heading.

PS: I do not profess to be an HR guru.