For developers, planning constraints, urban regeneration and the push for sustainable communities have created new challenges and redoubled old ones. A greater emphasis on high density mixed use developments alongside traditional housebuilding has meant the recruitment of those with commercial, residential and social housing development expertise. Specific project led positions have emerged to successfully manage high value, high profile schemes. Having the right individual is pivotal to delivering the project and the profit on time.

Finding experienced people for large Regeneration projects is increasingly difficult, and having the right contacts and knowing who to talk to is crucial. At Edbury Daley we have a strong network of contacts particularly in Regeneration and Social Housing. We use over 25 years of market knowledge to identify experienced professionals in the industry.

Property Advisors are evolving too. In tandem with established service offerings, a number have found new areas of growth in full life cycle consultancy to public and private sector clients in areas such as education, social housing, mixed use and regeneration schemes. The need to manage consultancy projects, multi-disciplinary teams and client relationships over a number of years requires multi-skilled and very talented property professionals. Identifying those who can combine all these facets is critical in a changing property advisory marketplace.

We launched The Careers in Housebuilding Recruitment Survey earlier this year and already have some very interesting data on the job market, much of it pointing to changes in the way in which people look for career opportunities.  This is of particular interest in the current economic climate with developers facing a depressed housing market yet still reporting some encouraging results. This has prompted the green shoots of a recovery in the housebuilding job market but it is still early days.  The headlines from our research so far are:

85% of housebuilding professionals surveyed so far prefer applying directly to employers than through recruitment agencies

89% of respondents so far prefer specialist job boards like www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk to the leading generalist job boards

Over 70% find social media like Facebook & Twitter helpful to keep up to date with job news

We plan to publish all the findings from our research early in the new year so if you haven’t contributed yet, please find 5 minutes to complete the 11 multiple choice questions here.

Everyone involved in the housebuilding industry continues to experience very challenging market conditions for a variety of reasons, primarily the restricted availability of mortgage finance, but there has been some evidence of slight improvements in the past quarter.

Using data from www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk and http://www.zed-sales.co.uk/ supported by evidence from our extensive network of housebuilding professionals, we have observed the following trends:

The most encouraging trend in the recruitment market is the increase in advertising for site based roles. E.g. Sales, Site Management and to a lesser extent Quantity Surveyors.  There is evidence of this on www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk

This reflects an increase in the number of new sites and overall production from builders of all sizes.

There is little evidence that builders are moving away from the lean approach to regional and head office staffing which many adopted at the beginning of the recession.

Recruitment at Manager and Director level appears to be mainly replacements rather than an increase in head count.

The strongest area of temporary recruitment in the housebuilding market is for site based sales staff as builders seek to utilize the availability of experienced Sales staff to cover holidays, new sites and increased visitors to site.  There are examples of such jobs here: http://www.zed-sales.co.uk/?cat=7

Most builders appear reluctant to employ head office or non-sales site based staff on an interim or contract basis, preferring to wait until they can justify recruiting a permanent member of staff.  This is in contrast to other industries where the temporary market is busy due to the need for flexible resource in areas like IT, finance, construction and sales.

Suppliers to the housing market (particularly building materials) have increased their advertising in 2011 signalling their optimism that this year will be one of recovery for the industry.

Senior management within the housebuilders have told us that they expect the 2011 market to be relatively flat with no significant improvement before 2012 or in some views 2013.

The restricted availability of mortgage finance remains the major factor in the challenging market conditions.

Budgets remain very tight for most organisations in the sector.  From a recruitment perspective builders remain keen to avoid paying fees if it all possible.  We built our model for www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk around the need for builders to have a quick, inexpensive online advertising resource solely dedicated to the industry.

Past seasonal trends were bucked in 2010. For example several builders we work with experienced stronger sales in August and December 2010 than the autumn which is usually viewed as a busier period.

Many builders are now actively seeking new sites as their land banks dwindle, but land values are increasingly volatile in an uncertain marketplace.

Whilst some of the larger builders have restructured their debt and are in a much healthier state as a result, there remain some smaller builders that are reliant on the banks view that they are of more value as going concern for their continued existence.

Larger housebuilders have completed significant restructuring to allow them to be profitable operating with much lower production volumes.

What do you think will happen in the industry this year?  Here are some of the discussion points that we are investigating at present:

Would an interest rate rise kick start the market? Historical trends suggest it may do.

Regional variations. Is the South East fairing better? Will there be a ripple effect further north?

The mortgage guarantee schemes recently launched by Barratt and Taylor Wimpey. Could they be the answer to lack of finance to first time buyers?

What do you think of the points raised here?  Are they consistent with your experience?  Why not comment here http://www.edburydaley.com/wp/2011/02/24/housebuilding-market-update-q1-2011/

Last month we reported some mixed news from the housebuilding industry, this month it is difficult to be that positive. For the last few weeks hardly a day has gone by without the media reporting a bad news story about the construction and housing market.

Smaller to medium sized developers are undoubtedly feeling the pressure and some experts believe that many will face financial meltdown as sales decrease and overpriced land deals combine to force many out of business.

The major players are equally feeling the pain. Bovis, Taylor Wimpey, Barratt and Miller, all agree that current market conditions are the worst they’ve seen for the past decade. Persimmon has announced that they have put the start of new sites on hold until the market improves. The main cause doesn’t appear to be lack of interest from potential buyers, Persimmon described visitor levels in March as ‘encouraging’; the blame seems to lie with the difficulty in obtaining a mortgage.

That said, there maybe a silver lining for some. It was reported recently that Scottish housebuilder Stewart Milne is planning to take advantage of the downturn by aggressively pursing land opportunities in the hopes of acquiring sites at a decent price. No doubt Stewart Milne are hoping to emulate the 1990’s success of Tony Pidgley.

For people looking for a new role this all adds up to a difficult time. Let’s hope that Pidgley is right when he was quoted as saying, ‘This crisis has come so quickly. But then, I think it could go away just as quickly.’ Let’s wait and see what May brings.

So, some mixed news in Q1 from the housebuilding industry. Persimmon and Barratt report declining sales figures for 2007 yet increasing profits. Sales Directors are reporting increasing footfall to site but customers are delaying buying decisions. The media reports turbulence in the lending market but interest rates have been reduced for the second time in three months. It would be a shrewd person who could accurately predict the direction of the industry for the remaining nine months of 2008.

So what effect has all this had on the employment market for housebuilding professionals? In short, the housebuilders are taking this opportunity to re-evaluate overhead. Persimmon and Gladedale have merged two local offices in to one in a number of locations resulting in some existing vacancies being filled by employees from the adjacent regional office and a number of redundancies.

Housebuilders have long memories and don’t want to be over burdened should the market take a further downturn so the decision to replace leavers is being delayed. Departmental teams are managing on limited staff resources whilst everyone awaits the next shift in the market.

Many well respected and established senior managers and directors are putting the feelers out to create a safety net for themselves. Wary of an office closure or staffing cuts they are tentatively attempting to get a feel for other job opportunities should the possibility of redundancy materialise.

For the firms who are looking to fill vacancies the choice of candidate is a strong as it has been for several years. High performers are more open to an approach than seen in recent months.

As yet the change in market dynamics has seen no material change to salary expectations. Although with lower levels of recruitment activity it may take some time for the any downward pressure to take effect.

In summary, if you are recruiting staff expect to see three or four very good candidates for your vacancy but don’t expect to employ them on the cheap. If you are looking for a new position some confidence seeping back in the market is what you require to take the brakes off recruitment plans.

Would you like to receive a free copy of our Quarter 1 2008 Housebuilding Survey?

If so, please take 5 minutes of your time to complete the questions below, and if you register your e mail address with us we will send your own personal copy of the results and analysis as well as invitations to contribute to future studies.

We will be looking at recent salary trends and bonus packages in our Q2 Survey in April with more interesting topics planned for later in the year.

For further information please contact Simon Edbury on 0161 776 4604 or simon@edburydaley.com

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