One Banking Rule Locked a Generation Out of Housing. What Happens When It Goes?
Britain's housing crisis is a myth. Neil Woodford has run money for over 35 years, and in this episode he tests the UK housing market's most repeated story against 55 years of data: mortgage payments as a share of take-home pay are close to their long-run average, buying costs less per month than renting the same home, and real house prices have been falling for five years.
So why can't young people buy? The average first-time buyer was 23 in 1960 and is 34 today. The answer is not affordability. It is a banking rule written after the financial crisis: capital requirements that make high loan-to-value mortgages uneconomic for banks to write. Nobody banned the 95% mortgage. It died of unprofitability, and UK mortgage approvals have run 40% below normal for 15 years.
Then the investment question. Housebuilders trade at roughly 70p per pound of assets while the banks have re-rated back above book. Is the market right about the builders, or is it pricing a suppressed market as a dead one? Neil gives his position, what would change his mind, and what he is watching: the regulator's decision on loan-to-income caps, due within months.
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UK Inflation Will Stay at 3% — Here’s Why the Market Is Wrong
UK inflation is falling while oil is up 35% and gilt yields are at an 18-year high. Neil Woodford explains why the 4-5% inflation forecasts are wrong again, what is actually in the CPI basket, and why the bond market may be pricing the wrong story.
Show notesBritain’s Productivity Crisis: A Great Deception?
Is the UK's productivity crisis actually real? The ONS has quietly admitted its Labour Force Survey overstated UK employment, and the HMRC tax data tells a completely different story about the UK economy, your taxes and interest rates. In this episode, Neil Woodford explains what the tax records really show about UK productivity, why the official survey invented half a million workers who don't exist, and how one wrong number fed both the OBR forecast that drove Rachel Reeves' tax rises and the Bank of England's view of how fast the economy can grow before rates must stay high. We also get into the collapse in graduate jobs and what it says about AI adoption in the UK, whether Britain's productivity has genuinely accelerated since 2024, and how the UK really compares with the G7. Stay to the end for what a correction means for the November Budget, mortgage rates, gilts and rate-sensitive UK stocks, and where Neil sees the opportunity. Read Neil's full written analysis Neil's first piece on this from 2024
Show notesThe 7 Decisions Every Investor Faces (Part 1)
Neil Woodford has been answering questions about investing for 35 years – and every one of them comes down to seven decisions. In part one of this three-part series, Neil and Jon Adair cover the funnel: the three decisions that take you from every company in the world down to a shortlist worth owning.
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