The Evolution Of Starter Homes: From A Useful Addition To A Serious Threat

When the government first announced plans to build 100,000 ‘Starter Homes’ a year ago, we welcomed the commitment to get more land released for building homes, and to use the value created to make these homes more affordable than the market otherwise would. We felt that building some homes for sale to first time buyers at a 20% discount on the market price could be a useful addition to overall supply – as long as this was actually additional supply and didn’t replace genuinely affordable homes in the process. So we hoped that the government would listen to our concerns and drop the idea that this new form of housing could be paid for by scrapping the requirements on developers to build genuinely affordable homes – known as Section 106 agreements. Read more on the Shelter blog.