With the average age of a first-time buyer now over 40, the newly announced £250million commitment to a shared equity scheme (SES) for low income households could bring in up to 10,000 more households onto the market.
Jonathan Hook, PwC’s head of construction, said : “This is a welcome boost for the construction industry. If the SES brings more households onto the property ladder it should certainly have a knock-on effect on the overall housing market.
“The announcement of 21 new enterprise zones with the ability of Local Authorities to retain the benefits of business rate growth sounds like a variation on Tax Increment Financing ( ‘TIF’) and is a welcome boost for regions outside London. The changes in planning laws, with ‘a presumption in favour of sustainable development' are also on the face of it very welcome. However, we need to see the detail of how these changes are going to be implemented, and which bits of the current process can be speeded up or avoided.
“It seems as if the Government has listened to industry around the Green Investment Bank, with funding increasing from £1bn to £3bn and an earlier start of 2012.”
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