Fixing our Broken Housing Market?

The Housing White Paper, 'Fixing our Broken Housing Market', was released yesterday. Points worth noting include:

• Target to build 1 million new homes by 2020 (250,000 a year)
• ￡3bn fund to help smaller building firms compete against major developers
• Support for pre-fabricated off-site construction (cheaper, more efficient construction. It's not all post war/communist style high rises, pre-fab can be high quality these days!)
• Encourage institutional investment in the Private Rented Sector
• Lifetime ISA to help first time buyers save for deposits with 25% bonus on <￡4,000 of savings a year
• Incentives to landlords for ‘family friendly’ three year guaranteed tenancies to increase stability and security
• Councils required to honestly assess/plan for housing need e.g. first time buyers/retirees downsizing
• Reduce time allowed between planning permission and start of building from 3 to 2 years
• Green belt protection not weakened apart from exceptional circumstances

Housing policy in the UK has had notoriously limited impact on the market in the past, and targets (such as the house building objectives which followed the Barker Report) have proved difficult to meet.

But many of the above ideas are sensible, and directly target relevant issues in the market.

The key will be in the implementation... So what impact will the policy ideas outlines in the Housing White Paper really have??

Read more here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/590043/Fixing_our_broken_housing_market_-_housing_white_paper.pdf