Hurrahhh! A Promise To Fix The Broken Housing Market….Again….
We have seen and heard previous promises from the government to build more homes to fix the broken housing market and the announcements made in the Autumn 2017 budget are no different. This post is a snapshot of the budget content focussed on housing and changes being brought into place.
House prices continue to increase with the average cost being up to 12 times (In London) of the average salary in the UK. No wonder why house ownerships have fallen by nearly 20% when compared to levels in 2002-3.
The government accept there is no one single element to increase capacity and have clearly identified a number of areas in the budget statement to help meet the targets. The full Autumn 2017 report pdf can be found on the Gov.Uk site by clicking HERE.
Just over 217,000 homes were built over the 2016-17 period according to Gov.uk. This is short of the planned 250,000 from previous promises. The revised 2017 target is to build 300,00 new homes per year for the next five years. Ambitious is a word that comes to mind, given the historical data.
The bones behind this plan is to provide an additional 44 billion of financial support for housing over the next five years as well as introduce planning reforms to allow more land to be available, particularly within towns and cities while protecting the green belt. Providing the reforms are brough into place quickly, there is a good chance of achieving the numbers.
Some of the reforms will allow support to convert spaces above retail shops to be converted in housing as well as policy changes to make it easier to convert retail and employment land into housing.
Noted within the Autumn Statement is a table of the National Productivity Investment Fund under housing, shows funding for accelerated construction from 2017-2021 to be £690 million. This will be welcome and comforting news for the off construction companies across the UK seeing investment into the sector.