January 16, 2009
New Home Building Sinks To An ALL Time Low
New-Builds property dissappears
The govenment will later this month, publish its latest plans to speed up house-building in the countryside.
Farmers have recently been presented with a whole host of incentives to sell land to developers with the proviso that "restrictive" planning policies are be eased. I'm sure this may have something to do with the fact good old Mr Brown will surely fail to reach his pledged 3m new homes target by 2020.
The 3m target was established as the result of two commissioned reports by the government in 2004/2005 called the Barker Reports.
The report noted that 240,000 new homes each year needed to be completed in order to keep up with the growing UK population. In 2007 only 193,000 new homes were completed and this figure dropped to 101,000 in 2008. Current predictions for completions in 2009 are approximately 50,000 as many developers have moth-balled schemes until the UK housing market improves.
I feel that as yet this pent up demand has not been felt in the market and the delay may be 2-3 years in coming as the UK mortgage market is still proving difficult for borrowers. The off plan property investment model has all but dried up until the market improves
