Housing Market Expects 100,000 Extra Home Sales In Early 2021

More than 100,000 additional house sales are expected during the first three months of 2021, as the rebound in the property market continues and buyers rush to complete their purchases before the end of the stamp duty holiday. The number of new sales being agreed remains 38% higher than it was a year ago, according to property website Zoopla. The UK housing market has rebounded since the summer because of pent-up demand following the first UK-wide lockdown, and after the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, decided in July to introduce a stamp duty holiday on properties up to £500,000 until March 2021. Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/25/uk-housing-market-expects-100000-extra-home-sales-in-early-2021 

Releasing Untapped Potential For More Housing

A new report from Savills says housing associations (HAs) have the financial capacity to more than double their output and bring forward 44,000 extra new homes by 2029 through additional asset-backed borrowing. Some form of subsidy is critical to deliver these homes across a range of tenures and to achieve affordability. In the absence of grant, HAs would need to secure land at zero or low value to deliver shared ownership or affordable rent housing. Almost half of the additional financial capacity to become a new class of home builder rests with large scale voluntary transfer (LSVT) associations, particularly larger ones. Download the report from the Savills website.

170,000 Extra Homes Built Across England

More than 170,000 homes were added to England's housing stock in the last financial year, figures show. The total was 25% up on the previous year, but remains 26% below the peak of 223,530 recorded in 2007-08, just before building slumped as a result of the financial crash. Communities Secretary Greg Clark said the figures showed reforms had worked. Labour said they were evidence of "the Tories' five years of failure on house-building". Download the figures from the CLG website.

Another Inglorious Failure

The New Homes Bonus scheme was meant to be a reward to councils that encouraged housebuilding. There was some Treasury funding at first but the main method of funding was to ‘top slice’ normal council grants. There was therefore always going to be a redistributive effect from some councils and to others. Analysis in the Financial Times concludes that the NHB ‘has shifted cash from poor northern councils to rich areas in the south with little evidence that it has boosted homebuilding.’ The FT quotes the National Audit Office finding that there is ‘little evidence’ that the bonus has change councils’ behaviour in terms of planning, contradicting ex Minister Mark Prisk’s claim that it would bring about ‘at least 400,000 additional homes’. According to the authors, NHB has cost £2.2 billion so far – which happens to be 50% more than the annual affordable grant programme. For that money, to justify itself the policy should be delivering major improvements in housing approvals and delivery. It plainly isn’t. Read more on the Red Brick blog.