affordable homes
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Latest property news
Prime Minister to force councils and developers to build more affordable homes
The Prime Minister Theresa May has delivered her long-promised keynote speech on how she’s going to achieve her government’s ambitious house building targets. As well as a promised reform of the national system of planning, she also included a strong challenge to builders that her government would only continue to support them via schemes such as Help to Buy if they started building more affordable homes. She also called for developers to “do their duty” and stop using the viability assessment process to “dodge their obligations”. These are reviews that builders can request that councils undertake to work out how profitable a development is likely to be, and if necessary reduce the number of affordable homes within a site. A report by Shelter in November last year revealed that at sites where viability assessment were undertaken, 7% of homes were affordable. Some 28% of property developments are supposed to be affordable, on average. While speaking against a backdrop of bricks at the Royal Town Planning Institute in London – which some commentators on Twitter were less than kind about (see below) – May revealed a major reform of the National Planning Policy Framework. This is designed to release more land…
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Latest property news
Only 4% of new builds are affordable, says conveyancer
It has been revealed that only 4% of all affordable homes sold in England are new builds. Conveyancing services firm MyHomeMove looked at all property transactions under the £125,000 zero percent Stamp Duty threshold between January and September this year and found that just 3,841 new homes were sold out of a total of 100,656. Doug Crawford, CEO of MyHomeMove, says he doubts whether the government can deliver its affordable homes promises of 40,000 units made in the recent Autumn statement, as so few new homes are being built that can be classed as affordable. “From our own research we know that two thirds of people believe affordable housing should cost less than £120,000,” he says. Some of the figures will make for grim reading for Housing Minister Gavin Barwell. In Berkshire, Herefordshire, Surrey and London only 1,544 properties were sold for less than £125,000 of which just 57 were new builds. The research also reveals the three areas where the most affordable homes, and new homes, were sold. These are Manchester, West Yorkshire and the Midlands, reflecting a strong north/south divide in the figure. The further south you go the fewer affordable homes of any kind are found for sale.…
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Latest property news
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…
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Features
Housing crisis – can we fix it?
The Government wants more new-builds, but can we build enough new homes to resolve the housing crisis? Marc Da Silva reports.
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Housing Market
New homes: Government is “pulling out all the stops”
On the first day back at work after the festive break, Prime Minister David Cameron announced another new scheme to get Britain building. Smaller developers will be able to buy sites in England with planning permission in place – with 40 per cent of the new-builds to be “starter homes” aimed at first-time buyers. Direct commissioning has not been used on this scale since Margaret Thatcher started the regeneration of Docklands, the benefit is that it allows the government to assume responsibility for developing land, instead of large building firms. Prime Minister David Cameron said it was a “huge shift in government policy. Nothing like this has been done on this scale in three decades, government rolling its sleeves up and getting homes built.” The Labour party said he was using “rhetoric to hide his failure on new homes.” Shadow Housing Minister John Healey said the announcement did not promise new investment or affordable homes beyond those already announced. ‘Radical’ shift Adding to Mr Cameron’s energy rush, Communities Secretary Greg Clark (left) said that the government was not only rolling up its sleeves but was “pulling out all the stops to get the country building.” “We know that consistently 90%…
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Housing Market
More starter homes needed
The Government wants to give thousands of young people the opportunity to own property, David Cameron announced during the closing speech of the Conservative Party conference last week. Not for the first time, the Prime Minister talked about plans for new starter homes – to be built as part of a new residential development, allowing housebuilders to fulfil their obligation to develop affordable homes. Cameron hopes that the starter homes, which would be sold for 20 per cent below the market rate, will lead to a significant increase in housebuilding levels, as part of the Government’s plans to tackle the mounting housing shortage. The starter homes discount will apply to properties worth up to £450,000 in London and £250,000 outside the capital, and the Tories believe this scheme will provide 200,000 new homes by 2020. The Home Builders Federation (HBF) has welcomed the Government’s plans to deliver on its pledge to improve homeownership opportunities for young people. Stewart Baseley (left) of HBF said, “Greater flexibility in the way affordable housing is provided should not only speed up the process of securing an implementable planning permission but also make more sites viable for new housing. This will in turn increase availability…
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Housing Market
Jeremy Leaf
Home ownership strife: Jeremy Leaf says, “Higher rents and tougher lending criteria continue to hamper home ownership. How can we close the gap between aspiration and reality?”
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Housing Market
Lib Dems vow to build 20,000 affordable homes
The Liberal Democrats has announced plans to develop 20,000 affordable homes in Wales by 2021 if the party is in Government after the 2016 assembly election. Lib Dem AM Peter Black (left) said his party would tackle the “crippling undersupply of housing” in Wales by using new borrowing powers and by abolishing plans for an M4 relief road. The target to build 20,000 affordable homes over the five-year period is double that set by the existing Labour Government in Wales. After launching a housing supply pact with the with Community Housing Cymru last year promising to build 10,000 new affordable homes during the terms of the Government, Housing and Regeneration Minister, Carl Sargeant, said, “Increasing the supply of homes in Wales is my top priority and I am committed to working with developers, housing associations, local authorities and financiers to bring forward innovative schemes that will increase the supply of good quality affordable homes.” Over half of the Welsh Government’s affordable housing target – set at 7,500 homes – was met within the first two years in power, with most properties delivered by housing associations. Meanwhile, Adam Hesse, Director at Home Counties land broker Aston Mead, has expressed his concern…
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Housing Market
Significant rise in number of new homes in Scotland
There has been a sharp increase in the volume of new homes built in Scotland, according to official figures. The latest housing statistics from the Scottish Government haveunveiled that the number of new homes completed across the private and social sector rose 9 per cent to 16,281 between April 2014 and March 2015, compared to the same period in 2013-14. Based on the latest data, the Scottish Government is well on track to exceed its five-year target to deliver 30,000 affordable homes by March 2016, as part of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme. Figures to the end of June 2015, show that a total of 28,048 affordable homes have now been delivered –93 per cent of the 30,000 target “By targeting resources at making private sector homes more affordable, through schemes like Help to Buy (Scotland), we have seen the number of private sector completions rise significantly,” said Scottish Housing Minister Margaret Burgess (left). House builders have welcomed the 9 nine per cent rise in the total number of new homes built across Scotland, but have called for greater early clarity on the details of the successor to the hugely successful Help to Buy (Scotland) scheme if such an increase…
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Housing Market
Mansion Tax would be bad for property, warns agent
With just over a week until the General Election, London based estate agents Sandfords has joined a chorus of other industry experts and warn of the possible ‘disastrous consequences’ for the residential property market if Labour is elected into power. The estate agency firm is particularly concerned about the party’s plans to introduce a mansion tax on all homes worth more than £2 million, and the potential impact that the levy could have on the housing market in London as well as other parts of the country. _“In the immediate run up to the Election we are seeing a lot of influential individuals, economists and agents shouting about the reality of a Labour Government and the effects their proposed mansion tax will have on the whole property market, and not just in London,” said Tim Fairweather, a Director at Sandfords. “We have voiced our fears of Labour’s taxing policy on numerous occasions ever since its proposal but it’s now increasingly apparent that it will provoke far reaching problems that will have an effect on millions of everyday people,” he added. Although Labour insist that they want to help aspirational homeowners gain a foot on the housing ladder, Fairweather claims that…
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