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The government’s commitment made in 2017 to build 300,000 new homes per year has been well documented. Two years down the line, although the numbers are falling short of the goal, the future looks positive for the new build industry. 

In the year ended June 2019, 173,660 builds were completed, 8 percent more than in the previous year. Private new build completions were 7 percent higher than the previous year, and housing association completions were 12 percent higher.

At present, the amount of new properties being built each year is higher than the number of new households being set up over the same twelve-month period. A new household is formed, for example, by children leaving home to live in their own property, or by couples separating to form two households where previously there was one. The Office for National Statistics estimated in 2018 that the number of new households per year will be 159,000. Even factoring in a possible post-Brexit slowdown in building, construction is likely to continue to substantially outstrip the new households figure. 

Government strategy 

In October 2018, the government revisited its pledge of the previous year and stated that it was committed to delivering 300,000 homes per year by the mid-2020s. This was accompanied by suggested reforms designed to improve the planning process and deliver investment where needed.

New permitted development rights allow larger extensions and building upwards from existing properties, while development and land acquisition rules are to be made clearer in respect of the creation of new towns and garden communities. 

It is also intended to allow Local Authorities to sell surplus land and develop more brownfield sites.

The government recently announced in August 2019, its intention to provide £600 million of new money via the housing infrastructure fund towards the building of 50,000 new homes in five high-demand areas in London, Bedfordshire and Essex, along with accompanying infrastructure and public services. This is in addition to the £1.3 billion already allocated to 76,500 homes.

Quality will be important, following former housing minister Kit Malthouse’s claim that much of the homes being built now will soon be ripped down and bulldozed as unsuitable. The Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission has been set up to tackle the challenge of poor-quality design and build. Its recent interim report, published in July 2019, has started defining proposals to ensure that future builds are beautiful, sustainable and designed to meet people’s needs.  

Future developments 

As well as new build on vacant land, unused retail space is likely to be made more widely available for residential development. Online shopping accounted for 18 percent of all UK retail sales in 2018, with over 2,400 stores closed on the top 500 high streets that year as well as units on larger out of town retails parks becoming vacant. Local Authorities have been reluctant to grant permissions for change of use in case of a future upturn in retail fortunes, but if the downward trend continues it is likely that more retail space will be released.

Creating mixed developments helps retail sectors thrive, by bringing in homes alongside shops and restaurants. A return to more traditional designs of high streets with public squares is happening in some areas, with different architects being brought in to design different blocks to provide visual variety.

London developments are leading the way with innovation, with the canalside site at Fish Island Village combining a social enterprise campus providing working space for local creatives with one, two and three bedroom homes.

The older generation continues to increase in number, with households headed by someone aged 65+ estimated to account for 88 percent of growth from 2016 to 2041. The government is keen to see more later living accommodation built and intends to give greater encouragement to developments by ensuring that suitable sites are made available to a wide range of developers.  They want older people to be able to choose from a range of housing options, including retirement and care homes. This in turn would bring larger family homes onto the market as older people move to more appropriately sized accommodation. 

Newly built social housing figures remain low, with councils now preferring to target funding towards affordable housing. Part of the reason for this is the higher rents payable for affordable housing, typically 80 percent of the standard market rate, as opposed to social housing where rents are just 50 percent. Local authorities, particularly in the South East, are setting up their own housebuilding companies to combat lack of council homes, with profits from the sale of full-priced new build homes paying for construction of new social housing. 

The number of affordable homes being built is rising as councils insist developers include a number within larger developments. In 2017, the number was up 11 percent on the previous year to 53,572. 

With many younger buyers struggling to afford to buy a home outright, more co-living developments are being designed, with hotel-sized rooms for each resident together with shared spaces. These are designed as a solution primarily for the younger generation, who can benefit from shared amenities and leisure spaces and live within a community. The developments are designed to be a step up from shared houses. 

The new ‘green standard’ 

In October 2019, the Housing Secretary unveiled a new green standard for all new build homes, aimed at cutting carbon emissions for future generations.

The Future Homes Standard, as it will be known, will ban gas boilers and other fossil fuels from new homes by 2025, instead requiring builders to install cleaner heat sources such as solar panels or air source heat pumps, to cut carbon emissions by up to 80 percent. Stronger building regulations will also be implemented to reduce the carbon footprint.

Local Authorities are now expected to produce their own design guide, reflecting the unique setting, character and history of their area, to ensure that developers build attractive, well-designed homes that suit their locale.

It is also intended to reform the planning system to make it faster and more efficient. A simpler system will allow Local Authorities to process applications more quickly, benefiting both developers and individual householders who want to extend or modify their homes. Local Authorities will issue their own design codes, setting out the characteristics of well-designed places and demonstrating what good design means in practice.  

New build work for Lawyers 

With residential construction continuing to increase year on year, acting for developers or their buyers is a good target market for property solicitors. However, dealing with a new build purchase can be an onerous task for the conveyancer. The amount of paperwork is substantial and the checklist is long, including checking planning applications, road and sewer agreements, common parts maintenance agreements, NHBC inspections, building regulations approval, access rights, completion requirements and more in-depth checks on the site on which the property is being built, for example in respect of flooding or environmental contamination. 

As well as this, agents and developers can pile on the pressure, demanding a 28-day exchange period or loss of the reservation fee and, potentially, the buyer’s chosen plot. 

Solicitors aiming to take on a substantial amount of new build work in the future can create systems of work around the special considerations required and dedicate staff members solely to this type of conveyancing to ensure a good workflow. Building a good name with developers and agents when it comes to new build is likely to result in more referrals and repeat business. On-site sales teams will be happy to find a conveyancer who understands the pressures their developer faces to keep to a rapid turnover and ensure deposits are received on time.

There are also opportunities to act on the acquisition and sale of part-exchange properties for builders who offer this service. Again, this is a specialised service, as the seller will have no personal knowledge of the property and will need to complete as a matter of urgency to release locked-in funds. 

Summary 

There is much to be positive about in the realm of new build, with increases expected in all areas of residential construction and improvements in the planning system anticipated. As sustainability issues become increasingly important, builders will need to consider environmental impact as well as whether their designs are aesthetically pleasing and suited to the community they serve.

It promises to be an exciting time for developers, as pressure to stop building identikit homes, reduce carbon footprint and the requirement to best utilise available space forces more innovative thinking. For those prepared to take on the challenge of building the homes that people really need, the future looks bright.

With the government aiming to build hundreds of thousands of new homes over the next few years, the current planning trend is not sustainable. The creation of new garden towns and villages offers an attractive option for some of the housing needed, with strong infrastructure provided alongside new homes, meaning less travel and less congestion in nearby towns. 

The current system

Piecemeal planning consents mean that many current new build homes are tacked on to the edges of existing towns and villages. Builders include a minimal amount of infrastructure in their plans, simply relying on that which is already in place. As communities sprawl outwards, those in the new homes need to make car journeys into the town centre to access amenities such as health care, schools and shops, adding to congestion and parking problems.

The town or village residents are opposed to the new development, which takes away the nearby areas of countryside that they value and overburdens the historic centre. New build therefore gains a reputation for ruining traditional communities.

Landowners cash in on owning land around settlements, knowing that theirs is the next property that builders will be able to obtain planning permission for, raising prices. Builders, having paid a high price for the land, squeeze in as many homes as they can, minimising outside space and creating houses with unattractive proportions and tiny gardens.

The garden community solution

What people really want, when buying a new home, is a decent and affordable property, in a strong community with local facilities and a good school. Garden towns could provide this, with small commercial units provided alongside living accommodation. The modest unit size would allow for easy change of use, from retail to office to café, as well as meaning a low rental cost and minimal, if any, business rates.

What constitutes a garden community?

The government defines a garden community as having the following characteristics:

• A new, purpose-built settlement or large extension to an existing town
• A community with a clear identity and attractive environment;
• A mix of homes, to include affordable and self-build

The stated aims include;

• Job opportunities;
• Green space and public areas;
• Provision of roads, buses and cycle routes;
• Provision of schools, community and health centres;
• Long-term stewardship of community assets.

Advantages of garden community living

Done properly, the garden community provides a vibrant, mixed-use environment with an attractive and functioning centre, public areas and the capacity for future growth. It should also be self-sustaining, meeting many of the residents’ needs locally, including schooling, health care, shopping and dining. 

Travel should be possible by walking, cycling, rapid transit or park and ride, thereby cutting congestion. By situating the new community away from existing towns and villages, not only is traffic to those centres kept at a manageable level, but the countryside surrounding them is maintained and the historic nature of older settlements preserved.

While residents of garden communities will still travel to large shopping centres and leisure facilities, the daily journeys to work, school and local shops can be made without adding to traffic problems in existing towns. This will offer a better quality of life for residents than those living on housing estates on the outskirts of busy towns, where traffic to the centre is increasingly slow.

By including smaller units for retail and other commercial use, the community will be assured a variety of independent shops, cafés etc. as well as offices and creative work spaces.

Policy needs

Much national policy is now in place. My Garden Village proposals were adopted by Government in 2016, the New Towns Act updated in the following two years, and further supportive updates to the National Planning Policy Framework just this year. 

For the country to benefit from new garden towns and villages, as well as protecting existing historic communities, best practice is Local Authorities working to put local plan policy in place to set out the key criteria they will require to support new settlements around placemaking, community infrastructure, and mixed use. 

Often, landowners will willingly cooperate, but need to understand that land value needs to reflect the need for this placemaking investment – on land that otherwise only has agricultural value. But where landowners won’t accept this, they need to bear in mind that the updated New Towns Act has made it quicker and easier for Local Authorities to acquire agricultural land at existing use value for larger new settlement proposals. 

Either way (and working with land owners is likely to be preferred in most cases),  the key is that this is land otherwise holding only agricultural value as it is not on the edge of town – and capturing part of the value uplift of development permission to create the needed infrastructure and community place making of a 21st century market town or village is the ‘price’ of the right to build these homes. So Local Authorities need to make it clear that planning consents will only be granted if the community needs are met within the proposals. 

Large scale strategic planning will be needed to put together a garden community proposition. The authorities should consider proactively seeking out suitable land, and landowners and communitiers need to know this scale of proposal will only happen with the right infrastructure and great placemaking – that’s the difference this approach brings.

Government support

The government’s second “Garden Communities” prospectus, published in August 2018, expresses clear expectations of quality, following the Garden City principle. Funding of £2.85 million has been put aside to support the development of 19 new garden villages, creating 73,554 homes. In February of this year, £9 million was put towards existing garden community projects, to try and speed up planning work. The following month, the government announced £3.7 million towards five new garden towns set to provide 64,000 homes, with the funding going towards planning consent work, specialist surveys and less profitable parts of the infrastructure build. In total 43 new Garden Towns and Villages have now got official government support since the policy was adopted in 2016 – to deliver more than three quarters of a million new homes. Many more are under consideration.

In summary

The garden community is just one part of the new build policy that the country needs in order to have enough housing stock for the future. Alongside it, we also need urban regeneration and carefully controlled urban expansion, with sufficient facilities to prevent them becoming simply dormitory extensions.

The creation of new settlements offers a good quality solution for the future. They will offer larger, affordable, pleasant homes with good-sized gardens and an attractive environment combined with a sustainable, economically vibrant town or village centre. When the land has been acquired at low cost, there is more scope to include a variety of premises for small entrepreneurs to open the local shops, cafés and pubs that make historic communities so sought after. The inclusion of basic units will encourage local workers such as plumbers, electricians and accountants to open there, bringing more services and helping the town or village become more self-sustaining. 

If Local Authorities can learn how to support the planning of these new garden communities, they will be able to provide the homes that people really want.

With thanks to Lord Taylor of Goss Moor

When you add a new case using a Title Number the digital map outline will either display the Freehold outline in green or Leasehold outline in purple.

You will also see the type of Title along with the Title number displayed in the outlines box on the right-hand side of the screen.

Keep people who need to know in the know! You can select up to five people and have them receive notifications, delivery time updates and queries  - a real time-saver and great for holiday cover.

Terrafirma’s updated Ground Report – Coming 1st October

Terrafirma’s updated Ground Report will be available to order on tmconvey from October 1st. Pricing remains unchanged.

This will be the first domestic search product to give an accurate prediction of properties which are likely to suffer clay-related shrink-swell movements or be affected by nearby tree roots – including an insight into the possible long-term effects of a changing climate on subsidence risk.

Sample report: Click here to see a sample report

About the report

The updated Ground Report includes a simple-to-understand guide to the potential amount of ground movement and the zone of influence of large trees, providing clear guidance on the scope of building surveys and subsidence insurance for affected properties.  

It includes:

·An additional clay subsidence summary on the front page, highlighting recommended actions for the purchaser.

·Terrafirma’s unique sinkhole alert now forms part of the front-page location map, highlighting recorded collapses near to the purchasers’ property.

·A revised Natural Ground Perils module which identifies the likely risks from slope movement as well as any mapped landslide areas.

· A new comprehensive Clay Subsidence module.

Pricing: Unchanged at £50+ VAT

If you have any questions, please get in touch with your Account Manager or our friendly Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571 or helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk

 We all know it pays to get the mapping part of the search equation right and that sometimes you need to manually map your own areas of interest before merging them into a single extent. 

Previously there was no way of going back after merging but now with our ‘Undo Merge’ function you can have another go if the result wasn’t quite what you were looking for. 

‘Undo Merge’ becomes available immediately after a user has either clicked ‘Merge Selected’ or ‘Merge Visible’. It will rollback to the previous ‘unmerged’ state.  

We’ve also added an allied piece of functionality to the ‘Edit Outline’ panel , ‘Reset’, allowing users to reset any modifications to an outline and return them to the point at which they started editing.

1. User selects 'Edit Outline' 

2. User edits outline 

3. User select 'Reset' to rollback changes in current 'Edit' session 

Click 'mapsearch' on the Home Screen and then 'VIEW MAP'

Once you have located the property you are presented with the option of doing a Companies House search on the right-hand side.  

You will see a summary page first and click on the Company Registration number to take you to Companies House 

If you don’t want to set up a case but still want an accurate quote for your Con29, remember that you can request any relevant optional enquiries by just ticking the appropriate boxes in the Quick Quote tool.

tmgroup are inviting residential property specialists to events in Reading and Liverpool in October to join expert led discussions on improving the home purchase process and delivering better quality housing. 

Speakers include; Beth Rudolf from The Conveyancing Association, Paula Higgins from the Home Owners Alliance, Alan Milstein from RSPA & Sebastian O’Kelly from Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. 

We are currently running an early bird offer of £20 per ticket. All money raised will be donated to the charity Emmaus 

The events will provide the opportunity to hear from guest speakers on a range of topics to discuss; 

•What does the consumer really want from a property transaction?

•What really caused the Ground rent scandal? What will the reforms deliver? What more needs to be done?

•How do we make regulation work across the transaction?

•How do you provide quality homes for all within the North West/ Thames Valley?

•How do we provide quality rental for all?

•Habitable HMOs is this just a pipedream? 

From these events delegates will get be able to take away suggestions and ideas on cross sector collaboration as well as the opportunity to network with local experts after the event

Event Details

• Reading: 10th October 2019 (3.45pm - 7.30pm)

Reading Town Hall, Blagrave Street, Reading, England, RG1 1QH

Click here to register for Reading  

• Liverpool: 15th October 2019 (3.45pm - 7.30pm)

Malmaison Liverpool, 7 William Jessop Way, Liverpool, Merseyside, L3 1QZ

Click here to register for Liverpool

For more information, please contact Hannah Dukes at marketing@tmgroup.co.uk 

With the Land Registry now requiring registration applications to be made within 14 days of completion, tmgroup’s post-completion service streamlines the processing of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) payments and AP1 forms to keep you in control.

Recent figures reveal the average time to complete registration across the industry is between 20 and 22 days. tmgroup analysed the average turnaround time for customers using their post-completion service and found it to be around 7 days.

Average times varied across the regions, with the South West fastest at 19.7 days, followed by East Anglia at 20.4 days. Slowest were the North East at 23.5 days, followed by the North West at 22.5 days.

Using tmgroup’s post-completion services could reduce the time taken to register property sales and transfers for many firms by around two-thirds. Benefits of using the fully integrated system include the following:

No need to enter data

The required information is automatically populated into the relevant forms from the tmgroup system. This means no time spent copying data across and working out which fields need to be completed. 

With completion of the SDLT form and AP1 being quick and simple, tmgroup users can make their applications as soon as the transfer document is received. This helps prevent any delay in the registration process and subsequent problems, for example where the buyer may wish to serve notice on a tenant or enforce a right contained in the title. 

Save time

As well as automatic completion of the relevant forms, the system only displays the fields that need to be filled in, which helps in trickier transactions, for example where part of the property is leasehold or only part is to be transferred. This means that users don’t have to browse through the entire document to find the right boxes to complete.

Completed forms and the current status of the case are visible to all team members, even across different offices, so it is easy to stay on top of cases, respond to buyer queries and manage work in the event of staff absences.

With the SDLT5 form sometimes returned to tmgroup users within seconds, there is the opportunity to cut application times to the absolute minimum. The faster a property transfer is registered, the lower the risk to the new owner from the registration gap. 

Reduced risk of error

Automatic population of data fields takes away the risk of human error in transcribing information. 

The system shows dates, times and submission status as well as any requisitions raised and records of conversations with the Land Registry. Timely prompts give notice of impending cancellation deadlines, meaning the risk of having to reapply is reduced. 

Missing information is highlighted at the time the forms are completed, minimising the number of requisitions and delays.

tmgroup is an approved software partner of both HM Revenue & Customs and HM Land Registry, meaning it is always up to date. It is secure and compliant, with data being encrypted so that anyone outside of your firm or the relevant government bodies is unable to view it.

Thoughts from one of our clients

Once our tmgroup users have tried the post-completion services, they really appreciate how easy it is to conclude a transaction. Victoria Follows, a partner in the property department of Hand Morgan & Owen explains. “We like the tmgroup platform and find it very easy to use. It is colourful and easy to find your way around. I also find it very useful to be able to see everyone’s cases, so if a colleague is off sick or on holiday, I can continue to progress their SDLT and AP1 submissions and meet our tight deadlines.

“The support from the tmgroup team is also fantastic and I can’t commend them highly enough. The Helpdesk is great and our Account Manager is superb. Everyone is just so willing to help.”

If you have any questions about how to fully utilise the post-completion service, please get in touch with your Account Manager or our friendly Helpdesk team on 0800 840 5571 or helpdesk@tmgroup.co.uk