land and new homes
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Latest property news
Work starts at Mulberry Park
Work has got underway on Bath’s latest housing development at Mulberry Park, thanks to fresh funding from the Government.
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Latest property news
New £1.4billion vehicle for rented homes
The investors behind residential schemes at the Olympic Park in Stratford and Elephant & Castle have merged the developments to create a £1.4bn vehicle for rented homes. Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company, which is owned by the State of Qatar, property firm Delancey, and Dutch pension fund asset manager APG have merged the assets to create a new company with 4,000 homes, 1,500 of which are already built. The partnership said its ambition was to become the leading player in the delivery of homes for rent in London and other major UK cities over the next few years. The merger is conditional upon regulatory approval. All of the homes will be managed and leased through Get Living London, an existing management and letting platform. Sheikh Jassim Al-Thani, chief development officer for Europe and the Americas at Qatari Diar, said, “This merger between two leading London private rented sector schemes is the first step in what is a much larger endeavour: to significantly increase the supply of new homes in connected and affordable locations in British cities.” The private rented sector (PRS) has boomed in recent years as requirements for sizeable deposits and stricter lending criteria have made it harder…
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Latest property news
Government is not reaching its housebuilding targets
The Government’s target of building 1 million new homes over this is unlikely to be met. Less than 460,000 homes were built between 2011 and 2014, according to figures from the National Housing Federation, despite forecasts that 974,000 new homes were needed. This contributed to the significant shortfall or residential properties across the country, prompting the Government to increase its housebuilding target to 1 million by 2020, including more Starter Homes and shared ownership properties. However, despite efforts by the Government to encourage more housebuilding, the latest PMI data for the manufacturing industry shows that the residential housing sector in Q1 2016 actually recorded the weakest pace of growth since January 2013. Tim Moore, Senior Economist at Markit, said, “Residential building has seen the greatest loss of momentum through the first quarter of 2016, which is a surprising reversal of fortunes given strong market fundamentals and its clear outperformance over the past three years.” Last week, the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and Home Builders Federation (HBF) announced a major new partnership to help tackle the housing skill needs in the construction industry by creating long-term skills solutions to meet the Government’s target of 1 million new homes by 2020.…
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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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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
RIBA calls for more new homes…
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has welcomed the Government’s recent commitments to increasing the numbers of new build houses, including the announcement on funding for Housing Zones across England. But the RIBA has also warned that the whole exercise could prove futile if the Government fails to put quality at the heart of this investment. RIBA went on to call on MPs from all political parties to vote for the amendment to the Housing and Planning Bill calling for the adoption of a minimum space standard into national building regulations. This will ensure new build homes are large enough for families and built to last. RIBA President Jane Duncan (left) said, “Whilst this new focus on quantity is to be applauded, the Government can no longer ignore the poor quality of some of our new housing stock, especially as it ploughs public money into housebuilding. Our latest report, ‘HomeWise: Space Standards for Homes’ concluded that some new homes being built in England are still too small and that a minimum space standards for new dwellings must be adopted into building regulations. “These aren’t outlandish demands; they simply ensure that all new build homes are of an adequate size.”…
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Housing Market
Investing in the (newbuild) future
Giles Leadbetter of Hunters Land & New Homes, London, speaks to Marc Da Silva about Hunters’ new Residential Development Investment division.
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Land & New Homes
The West needs 85,000 homes
85,000 new homes need to be built in the West of England over the next 20 years to meet demand, significantly more than anticipated. The four councils – Bristol, North Somerset, Bath & North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire – estimate that the West now needs 85,000 new homes by 2036, rather than the 56,000 units originally planned. They have vowed to work together to plan the new properties and all the roads and other infrastructure that will need to go with them. A 12-week public consultation is underway offering local residents the opportunity to have their say on what sort of projects should go where.
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