In the year to end February 2018 new build house prices rose on average by 9.7% across the UK which is up on last year’s figure of 5.3%
Political Events
The Government’s aim is to deliver 300,000 homes per year by the mid 2020’s, up from last year’s figure of 217,000. They are now undertaking an overhaul of the National Planning Policy Framework to encourage the parties involved to speed up the delivery of new homes. Developers will be more accountable for delivering infrastructure and affordable housing, and Local Authorities will be made accountable for houses delivered rather than numbers planned for. Councils will get more freedom to build on brownfield land and to extend upwards, and a clearer system to analyse housing need and define developer contributions is promised.
The spring statement included an update on the investment programme of at least £44 billion over the next five years that was promised in the Autumn 2017 budget. Financial support to small house builders via the Housing Growth Partnership is to be doubled to £220 million. London is to receive £1.67 billion to build another 27,000 affordable homes by the end of 2021-22. The Government is working with 44 areas on their bids into the £4.1 billion Housing Infrastructure Fund.
The New Build Property Market
We have looked at the most recent annual house price change data from three leading indices: Nationwide, HM Land Registry / ONS and LSL Acadata. The results are shown in the table below where HM Land Registry / ONS data is used to show the average house price at regional level from the 2007 peak and the latest average price. The next column shows the percentage change from this peak to present and the final column shows the average house price change over the past year as derived from the above mentioned indices.
Whilst there are some quite significant differences between the reported price rises for each region, the picture is clearly one of a wave that has now spread out to the regions from London. But that said, prices in London are now over 60% higher than the level they were at in 2007 which is more than fifteen times the growth seen in the Northern regions. The main growth has now moved away from the regions that have seen most growth to date....
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The North / South divide excluding Greater London can be seen below:
Click here to view an interactive price-change map
