Oliver Letwin
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Guest Blogs
Guest blog: Don’t bury the Letwin review of new-builds. He got it right
Read our guest blog by Glynis Frew, CEO of Hunters Property, on Oliver Letwin's recommendations on how to reform the new-build housing market.
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Latest property news
Builders are not ‘land-banking’ but their homes are too boring, says Letwin review
MP Oliver Letwin’s long-awaited investigation into land-banking by big developers has failed to find proof of the alleged practice. “The review found no evidence that speculative land-banking is part of the business model for major house builders, nor that this is a driver of slow build out rates,” Chancellor Phillip Hammond said during his budget speech yesterday. But big builders are not off the hook. The report also takes a highly critical view of the homes they build and calls for large estates to be constructed more creatively and offer a wider range of home designs. In recent years big developers have been accused by many experts and lobby groups of ‘land banking’ or ‘sitting’ on land for their own financial gain. But Letwin’s review instead points a finger at the uninspiring and ‘homogenous’ nature of the homes they built as the main culprit. His report concludes that too many developments and the properties within them look and feel the same and this makes them harder to sell – or ‘absorb into the market’, as he puts it. Greater diversity To remedy the problem, Letwin recommends that new planning rules are introduced to force site developers containing more than 1,500…
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Latest property news
Spring Statement: Hammond reveals where taxpayers’ billions are being spent on extra homes
Philip Hammond updated MPs during his Spring Statement today about the government’s progress towards building more homes in the UK and revealed where and how part of the £44 billion committed to the effort is now being spent. This includes £4.1 billion being distributed to 44 “forward thinking” local authorities via the government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund to help build more homes, and that £220 million is to be spent on supporting small house builders. Also, London is to have £1.67 billion to spend on 27,000 additional affordable homes by 2020/21. First time buyers The Chancellor also said that 60,000 first time buyers had been helped on to the property ladder so far by his Stamp Duty changes in last year’s Autumn Budget, which abolished the duty for homes bought by first timers under £300,000. Philip Hammond also referred to the work of Oliver Letwin MP, who is leading a government investigation into why it takes so long for homes to be built. House building delays In a letter deposited in the Commons Library, he reveals that his initial investigations blames the ‘build out’ stage rather than land banking, which many affordable homes campaigners believe is the real culprit. Instead, Letwin…
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