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Plans for over 400,000 new homes in London announced
The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has set out plans to help London meet its need for over 400,000 homes, including the establishment of a London Land Commission. The new commission, based at the Greater London Authority, will be tasked with identifying public sector brownfield land that is no longer needed in London, to help ensure that all of the capital’s brownfield sites are developed by 2025, and help meet its target of over 400,000 new homes by 2025. The Land Commission’s work will pave the way for hundreds of thousands of new homes in the capital on brownfield and public sector land and the Chancellor and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, also confirmed the creation of nine new Housing Zones on brownfield land. The Housing Zones will be in Greenwich, Bexley, Barking and Dagenham, Wandsworth, Harrow, Hounslow, Lewisham, Ealing and Haringey and will have access to funding set aside to deliver affordable housing. Osborne explained that the Housing Zones are a new approach being used by the government, to get new homes built quickly and this investment will support and accelerate the construction of up to 30,000 new homes, of which around a third will be affordable homes. ‘We face massive demographic pressures in our city and it is absolutely vital that we build the high quality stock of housing we need to cope. We will not solve the problem without massively expanding the supply of housing and the plans confirmed today will help do that, which is fantastic for our city,’ said Johnson. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said that the measures for London will help regenerate brownfield land, provide more homes and protect the Green Belt around the city. Continue reading
Rents in England and Wales up almost 3% in last 12 months
Residential rents in England and Wales increased by 2.8% in the last year to an average of £763 and are now 16% higher than in 2010, according to the latest rental index to be published. The data also shows that over last five years rents have grown by an average 3% per year but after inflation is taken into account this amounts to just 0.6% annually, the buy to let index from Your Move and Reeds Rains shows. In absolute terms, the average residential rent across England and Wales has grown by £107 since January 2010, to reach £763 as of January 2015. This amounts to an average annual rent rise of 3.0% over the last half decade. However, this represents a real terms increase of 0.6% per annum when adjusted for inflation over the same period. Most recently, rents have fallen on a monthly basis, down 0.6% between December 2014 and January 2015. On an annual basis, rents are 2.8% higher than was seen last January. ‘The nature and affordability of UK housing is transforming before our eyes. In the last five years the private rented sector has successfully absorbed an unprecedented influx of tenants, while rental prices have broadly tracked inflation,’ said Adrian Gill, director of estate agents Reeds Rains and Your Move. ‘As ever, the devil is in the detail but as this growth accelerates, even more investment will be necessary for the industry to keep up. So we need more buy to let landlords to help solve the crisis in demand for homes to rent,’ he explained. He pointed out that it is also important to recognise that these figures don’t float in a hermetically sealed chamber. ‘Many other aspects of finance and the housing market feed into this sector. Rents represent a landlord’s attempt to recoup investment at a reasonable market rate dictated by consumer prices, inflation, and basic principles of supply and demand. Over the long term, rents also tend to reflect higher house prices,’ he said. ‘In real terms, rents have risen only incrementally. But any real and sustained growth in rents should offer a clear lesson. As with the purchase market, the only clear way to make rented housing dramatically more affordable is to build far more homes, far more quickly than is currently the case. And until this happens, landlords are likely to continue to earn double digit returns on their investments,’ he added. Eight out of 10 regions saw lower rents in January 2015 than in December 2014. Only the East of England and the North East defied this downward trend, with 1.3% and 0.7% monthly increases in market rents, respectively. The dominant movement towards lower rents in January was led by a 2% month on month drop in the South West, closely followed by the North West with a 1.7% drop, and the East… Continue reading
Irish house prices expected to continue rising in 2015
New mortgage rules and the recently announced quantitative easing programme will have a game changing impact on investor demand for residential property in Ireland, according to a new analysis. International property advisor Savills expects that house prices will continue to rise in 2015 due to an overall shortage of supply relative to demand. However, because compounding price growth over the last two years has raised baseline prices, the percentage rate of growth will be more moderate than before. The Irish Central Bank’s new mortgage rules will channel demand into the rented sector leading to further rental growth, according to John McCartney, director of research at Savills Dublin. He pointed out that this, and falling deposit yields due to quantitative easing, will attract investors despite the expiry of Capital Gains Tax Incentives last December. ‘By increasing the down payment that is needed to qualify for a mortgage, the Central Bank rules will inevitably lead to first time buyers spending longer in rented accommodation,’ he said. ‘This guarantees a stable platform of demand which will undoubtedly encourage landlords to invest. At the same time, investors will be driven into property by low returns on cash deposits, and these are being further depressed by quantitative easing,’ he added. He explained that while these factors will continue to attract large institutional investment into ‘multi-family’ residential blocks, they will also lead to continued buying activity by smaller retail investors. However, according to Graham Murray, director of residential at Savills, the profile of these investors is changing dramatically. ‘We are really seeing a changing of the guard. On one hand, the recovery in house prices has provided the opportunity for many of the accidental boom time investors to exit the market and, reflecting this, investors were our second biggest seller group last year,’ he said. ‘At the same time, there is a new breed of more professional, yield driven landlords flooding into the market. In fact this new generation of investors represented our biggest single group of buyers last year,’ he added. Contrary to the popular opinion, Savills believes that the Central Bank mortgage rules will do nothing to reduce the rate of house price growth and will only result in a change in the mix of buyers. ‘By diverting demand into the rented sector the new rules will lead to stronger rental growth. In time this will attract investors who will compete with everybody else to buy properties. Therefore the new measures will do nothing to soften house price growth by curtailing demand. They will simply increase the ratio of investors to first time buyers,’ said McCartney. Elsewhere in the report, Savills notes that declining affordability in Dublin, combined with demographic trends, will lead to increased demand and sharper house price growth in the commuter counties of Wicklow, Kildare and Meath. ‘Prices outside Dublin have been rising at an accelerating rate for the last nine months. This is set to continue as demand is… Continue reading
