Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the Greater London Authority have announced a £220m funding boost to accelerate property supply and to help people buy low-cost homes in the Capital.
Mr Johnson has today (7 January) launched two new schemes to help Londoners into affordable home ownership and boost the delivery of new homes.
Shared ownership will be given a further funding boost of up to £180m with the mayor’s First Steps Challenge Fund, which aims to deliver 4,000 new homes between 2015 and 2020.
The fund is part of the £1.45bn that the mayor secured from government for affordable housing delivery in 2015-18.
The money is being made available in the form of an interest-bearing loan or equity investment, to encourage new suppliers to deliver shared ownership homes and greater institutional investment into the tenure. When the funding is paid back it can be reinvested into delivering more homes.
Elsewhere, up to £40m of loan finance has been pledged to Gentoo’s Genie housing product, which means buyers will need no deposit or mortgage to purchase their home and at the end of the agreement customers own 100 per cent of their property.
The scheme aims to deliver 2,000 new homes over the next 10 years, helping people who would struggle to save a large deposit for a mortgage.
This is the first time the scheme is being introduced to London, following Genie’s successful work in the north east of England. The Greater London Authority funding is from the Mayor’s Housing Covenant revolving fund and will be repaid in full within ten years.
Mr Johnson said that shared ownership is crucial in helping the unprecedented numbers of people in London desperate for good quality low cost housing.
“I want the funding announced today to help thousands more Londoners own homes,” he added.
Steve Hicks, managing director of Genie, said that there has been a lack of innovation in the housing market which has left would-be homeowners feeling frustrated and unable to buy their own house.
“This 10 year partnership with the GLA will help customers into a minimum of 2,000 new homes in the capital who otherwise would have struggled to own their own homes, because of the difficult market conditions in London.”
peter.walker@ft.com
