The government has reiterated its commitment to helping more people own their home. Alok Sharma, Housing and Planning Minister, said: “As set out in our Housing White Paper, we’re committed to helping those aspiring home buyers currently locked out of the market to turn their home ownership dreams into reality.” The confirmation came as the
House prices in the UK rose by 4.1% in the year to March, taking the average property value to £215,847. However, the monthly figure between February and March dropped by 0.6%. The number of sales has remained stable for the last three months, but in the year to January there was a substantial fall in
Nearly 260,000 people have bought their home using Help to buy schemes and more than 870,000 have opened a Help to Buy ISA. The latest figures issued by the government show that: over 259,000 completions have taken place using one or more of the Help to Buy schemes, most of these are first-time buyers more
The government has announced new measures to speed up the development of derelict and unused land for new homes. Housing and Planning Minister Gavin Barwell said local authorities across the country will have to produce and maintain up-to-date, publicly available registers of brownfield sites. The new registers will help housebuilders identify sites quickly, helping to
The thought of trying to get on the property ladder as a first-time buyer can be daunting, particularly with the ever-increasing house prices, paying rent or saving for a deposit. This coupled with the acceleration of residential property prices over the last couple of years has made it increasingly harder for first-time buyers to get
Wide-ranging proposals to streamline the process of buying and selling homes have been put forward by the Conveyancing Association (CA). The ideas have been published in a strategic plan entitled, Building the Framework for the Future. It follows on from the CA’s White Paper, Modernising the Home Moving Process, published last year. The proposed measures
The government has announced plans to build thousands of starter homes on brownfield sites across the country. They will be built exclusively for first-time buyers between 23 and 40 years old and sold at a discount of at least 20% below market value. The scheme will be run by the Homes and Communities agency in
The government has announced a series of wide-ranging measures to reform the housing market and provide more homes for people to buy or rent. The measures are designed to help local authorities, developers and small builders to increase the housing stock by reducing obstacles that delay or even prevent developments going ahead. It’s hoped they
The government has announced plans to provide £7 billion to expand its affordable housing programme. Housing providers can now apply for a share of the fund, which was allocated an additional £1.4 billion in the Autumn Statement, to deliver 40,000 new affordable houses across the country. Alongside this extra funding, the government is expanding the
House prices in the UK rose by 6.9% in the year to October, according to the latest official figures from the Land Registry. However, the number of sales dropped by 8% over the same period. The price of the average property is now £216,674. In England, the October data showed an annual price increase of