Tag Archives: city
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
Record December for house prices in Scotland
Scottish house prices have increased by £6,700 in the last 12 months to hit a six year high, nearing the pre-recession peak, the latest index report shows. Prices in December increased by 0.3% and year on year price growth is up 4.2%, taking the average house price to £165,075, according to the Your Move Scotland house price index. Total home sales in 2014 were 11% higher than 2013, led by the first time buyer market and despite falling oil prices property values in Aberdeen have seen some of the strongest annual growth, up 10%. Indeed, average house prices in Aberdeenshire and the Shetland Islands both reached new records in December, while overall Scottish house prices reached a crescendo at the end of 2014, ending on a high note with an all-time record December. ‘After the brief unsteadying influence of the independence referendum, house price growth has firmly fallen back into a steady rhythm, and values climbed 0.3% in December,’ said Christine Campbell, regional managing director of Your Move. She pointed out that values have risen 4.2% or £6,688 in a year, taking them to the highest level seen since June 2008. Standing at £165,075 in December, this means the average house price in Scotland is now just £440 shy of the pre-recession peak, and households across the country are beginning to taste the fruits of the economic revival. ‘Speculation has been running wild as to the effect of plummeting oil prices on Aberdeen’s housing market. However, the city actually witnessed the biggest annual jump in house prices on mainland Scotland, up 10% in the past 12 months, equivalent to £20,438,’ explained Campbell. ‘Aberdeen is also holding its ground as one of the most expensive places to buy, and during December the city recorded the highest price paid for a property in Scotland throughout the whole of 2014, at £3million,’ she pointed out. ‘Growth is making its way beyond these urban economic centres though, and the Shetland Islands joins Aberdeenshire in setting a new record house price in December. Stronger activity at the bottom rungs of the ladder has pushed the average price for a terraced home in the Shetland Islands up from £106,000 in the fourth quarter of 2013 to £156,000 in the fourth quarter of 2014,’ she added. Demand from first time buyers means that at the lower end for affordable starter homes sector flats have become the most frequently purchased type of property in Scotland. Sales of flats between July and December 2014 have seen a 6% rise on the same period a year previously. Argyll and Bute saw the biggest year on year increase in transactions during the second half of the year, with flats sales up 28%. The data shows that overall, the total number of home sales in Scotland during 2014 was 11% up on 2013 but the majority of that progress was made in the busier first six months of the year, showing an increase of… Continue reading
Demand sees average rents in UK go up, especially at end of 2014
A slowdown in the sales market in the UK during the last six months of 2014 saw a demand for rental accommodation grow with average rents up 1.8% during the year. But this headline figure hides what has actually been happening towards end of the year as there was a 4.2% rise in average rents for new lettings, according to research by Countrywide Residential Lettings. There were 7% more would be tenants registering during the second half of the year than they did during the traditionally busier first half. The firm says that movement of households between the sale and rental markets has had an impact on shaping growing demand in the second half of the year. Indeed, the data shows that 14% of households that moved in England last year, moved between the owner occupation and the private rental sector, broadly in equal numbers. The increase in demand from tenants for rental properties is reflected in the growth in average rents. For newly let properties, the rate of annual growth ran at an average of 3.7% during the first six months of 2014, rising to 4.2% during the final six months. It was a similar story for sitting tenants for whom rents increased from 1.7% to 1.8% over the same period. 26% of tenants who chose to renew their contract at the end of 2014 saw their rent rise 2.9% over the year. Alongside the relationship with the sales market, the nature of the lettings market means it is highly seasonal. Much activity is concentrated within a few key times of the year. In city centre markets, the summer months tend to see particularly high levels of activity, the time when students seek property for the forthcoming year. In the heavily dominated student markets of Birmingham, Bath, Cambridge, Oxford and Liverpool, over a third of lets are made during just two months in the summer. For many investor landlords, this represents the best time to market their property to let. Outside of the city centre, where three times the proportion of homes are let to families with children, activity in the rental market is closely correlated to school terms. Given the longer timescales involved, properties have to be secured well in advance of the September term. April, May and June represent the three months when 35% of lets are made in the year. Conversely, half terms and the first few weeks of September see activity levels decrease, with the number of registering tenants, viewings and agreed lets all running at two thirds of the average over the year. ‘The sales and rental sector are closely linked with thousands of households moving between the two tenures every year. In the second half of 2014, we saw a decrease in the number of tenants actively looking to buy. This has kept demand for rental accommodation at a high, allowing more landlords to stand firm in the face of attempted negotiation… Continue reading
