new homes
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Latest property news
36,566 new homes registered in Q1
The NHBC reports a 10 per cent increase in new home completions in 2015/16.
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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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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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Latest property news
New homes to get superfast broadband
Poor Internet connections and slow download speeds will soon be a thing of the past for residents of new build homes across the country, after the Government struck a deal with telecoms provider BT and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) to ensure that all new build homes are delivered with superfast broadband installed. The deal means fibre-based broadband will be offered to all new developments either for free or as part of a co-funded initiative. “Broadband connectivity is just one thing that home buyers now expect when buying a new build, so this industry-led push to make superfast, or indeed ultrafast, broadband speeds available by default in new homes represents a very important step in meeting the UK’s digital needs,” said Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey. The installation of fibre broadband should help to increase the attractiveness of new build homes, ensuring that “new build purchasers benefit from the very best connectivity to go alongside the many other advantages of purchasing a brand new home”, according to Stewart Baseley (left), the Executive Chairman of the HBF. The HBF has in the past criticised BT-owned Openreach for a persistent failure to connect newly built homes in a timely fashion. But the…
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Housing Market
UK steps up housebuilding
The number of new homes registered to be built in the UK increased by 7 per cent year-on-year in 2015, hitting an eight year high of over 156,000, the latest figures from the National House Building Council (NHBC) show. Private sector registrations rose by seven per cent to 118,611 in 2015 compared to 110,674 in 2014 while public sector registration increased by five per cent to 37,529 from 35,685 in 2014. While the 2015 annual total is still well below the 199,177 new build homes registered in 2007, it is 75 per cent higher than the 88,993 new homes registered during in 2009. “2015 was a year for continued housing growth in the UK. Both the public and private sectors have performed well and we have seen encouraging levels of house building across most regions of the country,” said NHBC chief executive Mike Quinton (left). The volume of detached homes registered reached 42,173, the highest for more than a decade. Additionally, the number of semi-detached homes registered in 2015 at 35,423 was the highest in over 20 years. NHBC’s latest figured also revealed that most parts of the UK experienced significant growth year-on-year, led by Northern Ireland, up 30 per…
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Housing Market
Regeneration of a leading city
Marc Da Silva discovers that there is now a very lively property market in Leeds.
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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
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
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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Housing Market
Planning delays stifle new housing
A lack of resources within planning departments is one of the biggest reasons for the chronic housing shortages in this country, according to Linea Homes. The niche housebuilder reports that the vast majority of planning applications are being delayed by six months or more owing to what it claims is a shortage of staff and inefficient processes within local planning departments. It is estimated that around 250,000 new homes need to be built in the UK annually to help address the growing supply-demand imbalance in the market, but housebuilders will continue to fail to meet that target year-on-year owing to severe delays with planning applications that could be avoided, Gavin Sherman, Co-Owner of Linea Homes, has said. He commented, “We are not alone in experiencing severe delays with our planning applications that are complete with professional reports and are policy compliant. Local authorities are so under resourced that they simply can’t acknowledge and administer the number of applications they are receiving. Some officers only work two days a week, which makes it impossible for them to deal with the workload they are given.” A recent report compiled by the British Property Federation and GL Hearn, a property consultancy, supported Sherman’s…
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