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The news of various property taxes has been met with mixed reactions; however, there are still reasons to be very optimistic about the property markets, nationally and particularly in the West Country.
Mr Sunak has promised a multi-year investment of nearly £24 billion to build new homes. He has also confirmed that £1.8 billion would be spent on developing 1,500 hectares of brownfield land, which is thought to unlock one million new homes and £11.5 billion investment through the Affordable Homes Programme.
Whilst the West Country has many brownfield sites, there will still be the demand to build on greenfield sites near many of our villages. This is often met with local objection; therefore, we must support the development of brownfield sites first. If you require assistance with unlocking the potential of a brownfield site, Stags has a Planning and Development department which can help you with this.
Here in the West Country, there is clearly significant demand for affordable housing and, whilst this £11.5 billion investment sounds substantial, I wonder how much of this we will see in our region? This, coupled with the increasing obligation to build to the new ‘green standard’, will certainly increase the cost of building new homes to start with. In fact, the cost of building materials has risen recently, so developers are being faced with increasing costs in most directions. Consequently, current house prices are predicted to remain at the recent increased levels due to the ever-increasing costs of building them.
One point of certainty is that New Homes sales in this beautiful part of the world will always be met with good levels of demand, despite the increasing costs to build them. Recently, we have seen a huge rise in interest and reservations for the various New Homes sites which we currently market. For example, sites in both South and North Devon are priced at both ends of the market, from a one-bedroom apartment agreed at £150,000 in Totnes to £850,000 high-end apartments at Lynmouth. There is significant interest from buyers in the local area, who are selling older homes to purchase the more energy-efficient new homes, and from those buyers who are coming to the West Country in order to relocate their families or looking at buying investment or second homes.
For further information please contact James Baker, Stags Partner and Totnes Branch Manager on 01803 865454 or click here to find your local Stags branch.
