Land & New Homes
News focusing on new homes, housing development, land acquisition and joint venture projects between agents and developers.
-
New Garden Town to be built in Kent
Housing Minister Gavin Barwell today announced that Kent is to get a new garden town in addition to similar projects already planned in Bicester, Didcot, Basingstoke, Essex and Northamptonshire. Outline plans revealed in May this year by Shepway District Council and Folkestone Racecourse, which owns the land to the west of Folkestone, are to get official backing. The new town will include seven primary schools and three secondary schools as well as several doctor’s surgeries. The site, called Otterpool Park, will create some 12,000 homes for approximately 29,000 people although local agents will be waiting a long time to get in on the act. The town is not scheduled for completion until 2046 and may face several hurdles including a well-organised and vociferous local campaign against the project, which will swallow up three villages. The new town is part of a three-pronged policy announced today to achieve the government’s aim to build an additional million homes by 2020. It includes an £18 million fund to help councils tackle planning logjams on behalf of builders, and the creation of six new Housing Zones to encourage 10,000 new properties on brownfield sites. These are to be in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, Grimsby and Cleethorpes in…
Read More » -
Developer rises to the challenge of floodplain homes
Agents may soon have a new type of house to sell with a very unusual set of particulars if plans by a Lincolnshire developers are realised. Larkfleet Homes, which is based in Bourne, Lincolnshire and specialises in sustainable homes and green technology, is to build an experimental house that can rise above flood waters on jacks. If tests are successful the house could provide a model that would enable housebuilding on thousands of sites across the UK which at present cannot be developed because of the risking of flooding, the company says. It is now awaiting planning permission to build the house, which will be a three-bedroom detached property on a site near Spalding. All 65 tonnes of house will be raised off the ground using eight mechanical jacks to a height of 1.5 metres and sit on a steel ring beam in place of conventional foundations. Larkfleet says that after the property is built the company is to spend five years testing the jacking system, which will be able to lift the property off the ground to its full height in five minutes. The property would disconnect from mains electricity and other utility supplies but use solar panels to…
Read More » -
Newcastle scheme wins award
A Tyneside housing scheme which combines traditional community values with modern sustainability has won a prestigious award.
Read More » -
Modular construction begins
Modular construction is underway in a Shropshire factory to create a development of 249 homes for rent in south London.
Read More » -
MOD site in Bath to be transformed
Savills is the selling agency for a former Ministry of Defence site in Bath, which is being transformed into a new neighbourhood of 200 classically-styled homes...
Read More » -
Urban escape: right on track at Carriages
An innovative new collection of apartments, exclusively for the over 60s, has launched in Purley with Frosts Estate Agents.
Read More » -
PIC OF THE WEEK: shipping container house listed by Brighton agent
An agent in Brighton is marketing a very unusual solution to the UK housing crisis – a house made out of two shipping containers. Oakley Homes is offering the one-bedroom house for £35,000 although purchasers will have to find their own site for the home, which was designed by award-winning architect Carl Turner for a recent London Design Festival event. The house is a mixture of shipping containers, steel and timber and comprises a bedroom as well as a kitchen diner, with a terrace built across the top featuring a vegetable patch and built-in seating. It was installed at London’s The Building Centre between September and October last year as part of the annual London Design Festival and was a collaboration between Arup, Carl Turner Architects, CBMM and The Building Centre. The focus of the project was to create a home that was affordable for Londoners by producing a home that cost approximately the average salary in London – £24,648 – and would fit into a small plot of land. But the house did not go on to fulfil its potential. After appearing at the festival it was acquired by local property search agency Find and Build and is now in…
Read More » -
Connells says Midlands new homes sales have bounced back
Connells has reported a 12% year-on-year increase in sales for its Midlands new homes division (pictured, right) which, the company says, marks a return to confidence within the region following June’s Brexit vote. Its Land and News Homes team racked up a “staggering” 210 new homes sales between July and September this year. It’s an achievement which, says Regional New Homes Director Donna Smith, has been helped by a “pro-housing government, record low interest rates and competitive mortgage products”. “New homes sales are currently flying across the Midlands and we’re not experiencing any hesitancy from customers in the wake of the referendum decision. “In fact, we’re seeing quite the opposite and with continued lack of supply, new homes continue to perform well and remain much in demand.” Developments which have helped the team deliver such strong results include sites in central Birmingham, Oldbury in the West Midlands and Lichfield in Staffordshire. Also, recent figures from NHBC confirm a national post-Brexit bounce for new homes. Its figures show that the number of newbuilds registered to be built in the UK during August reached 12,500, an increase of 20% compared to the same month last year. These results are a vindication for Connells’…
Read More » -
Chancellor’s £3 billion new homes promise
The Chancellor Philip Hammond and Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, have announced a £3billion Home Building Fund to provide more homes, more quickly, in, they promise, the places people want to live. The announcement came following Philip Hammond’s key speech at the Conservative conference on Monday 3rd October. As part of the government’s action to tackle the housing deficit and ensure everyone has a secure place to live, the Communities Secretary and the Chancellor said that they are determined to take action and get more homes built. Chancellor Philip Hammond set out the plan to launch a £3 billion Home Building Fund to help to build more than 25,000 new homes during this Parliament and up to 200,000 in the longer term. Note that this isn’t a donation to building homes, the fund will provide loans for small and medium enterprise builders, custom builders, offsite construction and essential infrastructure. Sajid Javid said, “This Government is getting on with the job of building a country that works for everyone. We’ve made great progress fixing the broken housing market we inherited but now is the time to go further. We want to ensure everyone has a safe and secure place to live and that means we’ve got to build…
Read More » -
New homes orders recover after Brexit
The post-Brexit rise new in new homes orders has been so strong it’s helped the construction sector return to growth despite a decline in commercial non-residential work. Latest figures reveal that the new homes sector has bounced back after four months of declining orders with many buyers reporting increased confidence in the economy as Brexit fears subside. This has led house builders to revise their outlook for business and homes construction and many now have the most optimism in the future since May, just before the Brexit vote. Some 45% of builders surveyed said their output would rise this year while only 9% said it would reduce. The research, which is carried out regularly by Markit/The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS), says that the increase in housing activity was the strongest recorded since January, with a number of builders citing “resilient demand for residential building work and generally improving market conditions”. “A number of survey respondents noted that Brexit-related anxiety has receded among clients, although it remained a factor behind the ongoing decline in commercial building work,” says Tim Moore, Senior Economist at IHS Markit and author of the report (pictured, left). But David Noble, Group Chief Executive…
Read More »
