Andy Sommerville, Director at Search Acumen [1], comments:
“2016 housebuilding starts soared to their highest level seen in England since the financial crisis in 2008 – reaching over 150,000 across all dwellings. During a year filled with uncertainty, many thought the housebuilding sector would crumble under the pressure of the Brexit vote but the industry has shown admirable robustness through the dark days. Affordability remains a huge hindrance in our property market in tandem with a clear deficiency in supply, but the government has demonstrated its commitment to housebuilding as the number of new dwelling starts increased by 5% from 2015. Schemes like Help-to-Buy are increasingly linking first-time buyers with new development, which has proved a successful incentive for housebuilders.”
“However, this increase was mainly driven by Private Enterprise activity as Housing Associations suffered a decrease in dwellings started, suggesting more needs to be done in this area of the market. In addition to this, statistics revealing the amount of dwellings completed in 2016 showed a small drop in volume year-on-year, perhaps reflecting the year’s economic turmoil more realistically, and therefore suggests that we cannot expect a flurry of new homes on the market just yet. This being said, with more residential property in the pipeline and future ploys for the housing market included in the White Paper, we can look ahead with more optimism than we’ve had in recent years as the industry continues to tackle our so called housing crisis.”