Lots in the Sunday Papers on this with Civil Servants conducting a ‘fundamental review’
Consider a ‘strategic site’ 10,000 units plus – being considered as part of the new style of joint strategic plans. It needs major transport investment to make work, the private landowners failed for decades to finance this and deliver the homes needed.
A good example being Horsham North – where under the existing the ‘Pointe Gaude’ principle to threaten the existing landowners with CPO at existing land use value – and so got the whole site at well under market post-planning price.
Such sites are the norm for strategic sites. Almost all of them require large scale infrastructure to be develop able at all.
All such sites, and indeed all Garden Communities face a problem, cash flow.
They will be highly indebted in the first years, hit peak debt then pay it back with land sales.
Meanwhile we have a considerable cohort of first time buyers struggling to afford a deposit amidst ever increasing house prices.
Now lets say the development corporation for the site set up a mutual building society for those first time buyers, The deal would be this for every £ saved towards a deposit the state would match this with say 25P for sake of argument used to purchase a share of the home – which could be staircased later, with the house ringfenced for say 25 years to qualifying first time buyers and the purchases used to repay the states share.
These savings would then provide the mutual with n income for day one to fund the upfront infrastructure, with 25P of state funding used to leverage 75P of private sector investment. The project would be self funding, and not push up house prices because of the qualification restrictions and because the uplift in land values had been captured by the state. It cuts out developers from being able to capture land value increases.
Does this need legislation, im pretty sure no. It could be done under existing rules and legisaltion. All it needs is some good suitable sites – only around 1 million homes worth in the CamkoX corridor for starters.
if you only had to save £15k max for a deposit in such a ‘Help to Save for Homes’ scheme would it be popular? There is a clear historical paralell,
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions 