Some of these policies could have major implications on your clients, be they buyers, landlords or your tenants, so it’s worth making sure you input to government policy where possible or are ready to inform and protect your client base of possible changes to come.
Coalition’s new build sale (awaiting your input)
This government is clearly still supportive of the idea of home ownership. As property prices have been in an upward direction of the last 18 months in most areas (not all) especially for those in London, getting on the ladder has been tough.
Over the last 30 years there has been help through shared ownership, where people part buy and part rent, but that hasn’t had a huge uptake – nor until recently decent availability levels. Then there is Help to Buy 1 where people can buy a new build with a 20% ‘loan’ from the government which is free of charge for five years and Help to Buy 2 which has been a bit of a red herring.
This scheme allows people to borrow 95% of the money needed to buy a home, but Building Societies were offering pretty much the same deals before this scheme was introduced and have been seen since. Borrowing via the scheme also stops owners from having the flexibility to rent out the property.
And these different options are already confusing first time buyers, as I know from the large number of property clinics I have run with first time buyers this year. Rather than help to reduce this confusion, this new government idea will just add another option, announced during George Osborne’s Autumn Statement, to help more first time buyers on the ladder.
Your input is required by 9th February 2015
Called the “Starter Homes scheme” the idea is to “free up the planning system to help to provide more low cost, high quality starter homes for first time buyers – without burdening the tax payer.”
The aim is to deliver 100,000 starter homes to be built in the next five years. The idea has now been put to consultation, so it’s worth taking a look to see if there is anything you can contribute to help make sure this idea gets off the ground or give reasons why it might not work.
Summary of the proposals
The idea is to introduce a new ‘national Starter Homes exceptions site planning policy’ for sites which are under-used or unviable and make sure the planning obligations or conditions that they can only be sold to FTBs and they are done so at a “minimum 20% discount below open market value”.
Part of funding the supply of this initiative is by taking away section 206 and other contributions – and you may or may not agree with this. What is interesting is they are looking at creating a register to gauge interest in these homes and are asking the question “Do you have any views on how this register should work and the information it should contain?” Is this something that should be done by agents or developers or others locally?
Where are we now?
Currently this is under consultation, in other words they need views from those in the property industry about local demand in your area, how well you think the provision can be policed or indeed how long the properties should have a restriction placed on them and what role different people in the property industry can take on to help in its deliver.
For more information and to provide information for the consultation: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/stepping-onto-the-property-ladder
Kate can be contacted via www.designsonproperty.co.uk
