builders
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Latest property news
Sheffield auctioneer’s Yorkshire & Humber 2019 sales hit £32million!
A Sheffield auctioneer has topped the Yorkshire and Humber results tables for 2019 with sales of more than £32million...
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Latest property news
The Homeowners Alliance now blames builders for the state of peoples’ homes!
The Homeowners Alliance frequently castigates estate agents for their repeated failures to please homeowners and movers… now it’s all the builders’ fault! Which makes a change, at least. Homeowners, according to the new research, do not make improvements to their homes because of the costs; because of having to pay VAT and because good builders are hard to find… and when they do find one, homeowners then break the law by paying in cash. Almost half of homeowners (42%) hit a brick wall finding a builder (pardon the pun). A third (31%) pay cash to avoid VAT to afford home improvements (criminal). 8 in 10 (79%) homeowners have faced obstacles with their home improvement plans – levels highest in London at 87% Difficulty finding a reliable builder is top obstacle – approximately 7.2 million homeowners (42%) affected VAT costs are deterring almost a quarter (23%) – roughly 4 million homeowners – a much bigger issue than Brexit (15%) A third (31%) – approximately 5.3 million homeowners confess to paying cash to avoid VAT costs on home improvements ‘SHOCKING’ DELAYS The Homeowners Alliance also says that Planners are to blame. “… planning permission is stopping or delaying 27% of homeowners from…
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Features
Conflict of interest
"Agreements, valuations and a conflict of interest – be careful where you stand when you are caught in the middle", says Katrine Sporle, The Property Ombudsman.
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Features
Incentivise investors to build!
Designs on Property tracks and summarises the monthly property indices. Kate Faulkner says, “Imagine if 10 per cent of landlords decided to build, with the help of local agents, surveyors and builders. That would be 200,000 homes and a massive investment into the UK economy.”
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Features
Kate Faulkner: c’mon agents, let’s sell more new-builds
Buyers may dream of a cottage with roses around the door, but, says Kate Faulkner, buying a new home can get FTBs on the ladder.
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Features
Why we need to let SME builders flourish
Andrew Jacobs wants to overcome the barriers to building for SME developers so that they can just get on with the job.
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Latest property news
New partnership to support housebuilding sector
With a backlog of almost half a million homes across England still waiting to be built despite receiving planning consent partly because of a construction skills shortage in the housebuilding industry, the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and Home Builders Federation (HBF) have teamed up to form a major new partnership to help tackle the housing skill needs. More than 45,000 new homebuilding workers will be trained by 2019 to help tackle the nation’s housing shortage through the Home Building Skills Partnership – a £2.7 million training initiative designed to help boost the supply of new build homes. The shortage of skilled labour in the housebuilding sector is pushing up the price of hiring tradesmen. The financial crash of 2007-08 bears some of the blame as it led to thousands of people leaving the construction industry. Now that demand has returned, there is a skills shortage, with bricklayers, carpenters and joiners in short supply. Brian Berry, Chief Executive, FMB, said, “We’re already seeing housing developments starting to stall because the cost of hiring skilled tradespeople is threatening to make some sites simply unviable. Unless we see a massive uplift in apprenticeship training in our industry, there won’t be enough pairs…
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Latest property news
Housebuilders accused of ‘restricting supply’
Housebuilders are being blamed for the lack of housing supply after it was suggested that they are intentionally ‘holding back’ the construction of new homes to keep property prices artificially high in order to boost profits. The latest figures from Glenigan, which were compiled for the Local Government Association, show that 475,647 homes in England now have planning permission granted but have yet to be built. This figure is up 60 per cent since 2010, but the number of new homes being built has increased at a lower rate of 48 per cent, owed in part to the fact that the average length of time it takes for developers to complete a new home has jumped from 24 months to 32. Labour MP Clive Betts, Chair of the Local Government Select Committee, has reignited a long-running row between policymakers and the housebuilding sector over who is to blame for the current housing shortage by accusing the big housebuilders of failure to speed up housebuilding “to maximise their profits rather than addressing the country’s housing need.” “These are private companies who are very simply trying to make money for their shareholders. They are restricting supply and the government urgently needs to…
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Housing Market
Government Spending Review
George Osborne has today declared that he plans to “end the crisis of home ownership in our country.” Great news. To do this, The Chancellor is to double the housing budget to £2 billion a year and build 400,000 new homes across the country. “We are the builders!” yelled Mr Osborne above the parliamentary hubbub. He was talking about infrastructure when he said that, but it also applies to his housebuilding plans. A new building bonanza will be funded by public money, with developers channeled into building starter homes for hard working families (Mr Cameron’s favourite sector). The Chancellor is also mindful of the importance of ‘young hardworking families’ as he has now decided to rein back his proposed cuts to tax credits, softening the blow by delaying implementation of those deeply unpopular cuts. He is, however, capping Housing Benefit for new tenancies. The funding for housebuilding will be split into several parts; £2.3 billion directly to developers (ever thought you were in the wrong business?) to ‘encourage’ them to build 200,000 starter homes. That’s £11,500 per house. These homes are designated as being for ‘those aged under 40.’ Tough luck if you are just 41 and not yet been…
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Housing Market
Stimulating institutional investment is key to success of PRS
London property consultancy Daniel Watney LLP is calling on the Government to encourage further institutional investment as a means of improving the private rented sector, rather than relying on extra regulations for landlords and agents. It is well documented that significantly more new build homes are needed to help solve the UK’s housing shortage, and Daniel Watney believe that new funding from institutional investment can play an important role in contributing to the rise in housing supply, as well as addressing pricing issues in the housing sector. The comments come ahead of the Department for Communities and Local Government launching a new consultation on how to best tackle to rogue landlords and drive up standards in the private rental market. Julian Goddard, head of residential at Daniel Watney, said, “As the consultation paper itself acknowledges, rogue landlords are very much the minority, with the overwhelming majority of tenants satisfied with the accommodation and service they receive from their landlord. “The best way to improve the private rental market is not to burden landlords with excessive regulation, as the proposed immigration checks will do, and to encourage further institutional investment, which will allow for more purpose-built rental accommodation to be built,…
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