Are House Builders giving First Time Buyers what they need? Part 4 - Potential Solutions

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Posted on 11 August 2020

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The UK urgently needs more housing. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has estimated that 225,000 – 275,000 new homes are needed per year to keep up with population growth and 20 - 30 years of chronic undersupply. Housebuilders maintain that they are trying to meet this demand, but at what price?

Potential Solutions?

In the past two decades first time buyers, who are essential to the housing market, have been the hardest hit of all. House prices have grown seven times faster than the average income of young adults, the Government’s ‘Help to buy’ scheme has been disbanded, banks are far more cautious about providing mortgages, requiring 10% or more as a deposit, and the overall rise in house prices, which has been exacerbated by the lack of supply, has cut many potential first time buyers out of the market. 

So, given that housing land is in short supply, should local authorities be re-visiting the disused industrial sites in their area? Could ‘brownfield’ sites provide the key to addressing the shortfall in development land, and at the same time breathe new life into significant areas of land rather than removing land from greenbelt?

Should more old buildings be refurbished to provide apartments and flats? Mixed use developments are on the increase. Is this the key to reviving our high streets and re-populating our town centres?

As mentioned in part 3 of our blog series, the Government recently announced a number of radical changes to planning rules, due to take place in September 2020. In a recent planning update Peter Leaver of Jones Lang LaSalle expressed the view that these new measures should be treated with caution, noting that often the homes created are of poor quality and local authorities could well ‘miss out on affordable housing’.

Clearly the situation is not straightforward, but at Land Hero we are constantly looking for new sites and we believe that communities should have some say in the improvement of their own localities. We would welcome any comments.

Ben Oakes

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