MortgagesApr 17 2015

Home ownership goal slips further away for FTBs

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Home ownership goal slips further away for FTBs

Affordable homes for first-time buyers have become harder to obtain, as Office for National Statistics data revealed a 1.6 per cent slowdown of private house building so far this year.

The latest ONS house building statistics revealed that, comparing the three months of December 2014 to February 2015, with the previous three months, September to November 2014, construction output fell by 3.2 per cent.

Repair and maintenance and all new work decreased by 7.7 per cent and 0.3 per cent respectively.

This flies in the face of not only promises from all the main political parties to build more new homes, but also calls from the industry to help get more people onto the housing ladder.

Last year, the CML called on government to do more to encourage housebuilders, while Duncan Kreeger, director of lender West One Loans, said the lack of affordable housing demonstrated the need for “smarter approaches to make more imaginative use of the buildings we already have”.

Adviser view

Andy Frankish, new homes director for national firm the Mortgage Advice Bureau, said: “The slowdown in private housebuilding for a fifth successive month will do nothing to ease first-time buyers’ fears that affordability pressures are here to stay unless politicians take decisive action.

“Short-term schemes to help with deposit savings and mortgage access are all very well, but we also need a long-term commitment to new ways of increasing housing stock.”