Homebuyers warm to May’s approach
Houses are earning more than t heir owners. With mortgage rates at record lows and the EU referendum a blip not a slump, the property market is booming. According to the latest Land Registry and the Office of National Statistics, the average UK house climbed in value by £2,400 in May, compared with April. Agents admit that some buyers and sellers stalled their plans in the wake of the EU referendum but their places were taken by other buyers looking to get their foot on to the property ladder. The average property price in London exceeded £472,000 in May.
“With a new government in place earlier than expected, people can draw confidence from the certainty Theresa May’s administration will now provide,” says Paul Smith from estate agent Haart.
“Our advice for people is simple — mortgage rates are at record lows and now is a fantastic time to buy a house, as long as you borrow only what you can afford. The market may have slowed but first-time buyers, second steppers and downsizers have all the same priorities as they did before the referendum.”
Some think that Mrs May’s govern- Preston Bennett has just one flat left to sell at Cherry Tree Place, Harrow ment should provide more than certainty; it also needs to provide housing. Land broker Aston Mead says that the government should set its sights on building 300,000 homes each year, rather than the 200,000 target under David Cameron’s leadership. A new report from the cross-party House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, entitled also indicates that the current target is not high enough. Last year only 160,000 new homes were completed in this country.
“The last time the UK built more than 200,000 homes a year it was postwar, and there was a massive coun- cil housing programme under way,” says Charles Hesse, land and planning director at Aston Mead. “So we need radical changes in the way that we approach house-building, to enable construction to take place at a much faster rate.”
Hesse wants to see a national housebuilding fund to finance public sector commissioning, more government “bravery” about building on green belt, and land owned by local authorities released to developers.
“In London alone there is enough public-sector land to build at least 130,000 homes,” he says. “Many authorities are not planning for enough houses and they are not getting enough challenges from the planning inspectors about how to do it. And if that means an intervention from central government, then so be it.”
New homes schemes are selling out all over the capital. There is huge demand for the kind of properties built by WE Black at Cherry Tree Place in south Harrow, where only one apartment now remains for sale.
This second-floor, two-bedroom, two-bathroom home is part of a new development of 10 apartments in Corbins Lane. It is priced at £395,000 and is available from new homes specialist Preston Bennett.
FLAT-SHARING in London is on the increase, with renters staying in multi-occupancy homes for longer. That’s the conclusion of Spareroom. In the five years to 2014, flat-sharing rose by 186 per cent for those aged 35 to 44 and by 300 per cent for those aged 45 to 54.
At Tipi, a rental development in Wembley Park, the two- and threebedroom apartments are designed for flat-sharers, with bedrooms of equal size, a bathroom for each bedroom and rents that include all utilities and superfast broadband.
Tipi’s two-bedroom, twobathroom apartments have a kitchen, living room and terrace or balconies, plus shared social spaces and an acre of private landscaped gardens. The shared lounges in its first two buildings have a pool table, HDTV with Sky Sports and kitchenette. A residents’ gym and on-site cinema room are due to open in the autumn.
Apartments range from studios to three-bedrooms, furnished or unfurnished and start at £1,700 pcm, including utility bills and 40Mb/s broadband. There are no agency fees.