020 7538 0102
26th June 2015
The City of London Corporation, which is landlord to 2,000 households, plans to increase its stock of housing by a third by constructing new homes on its existing estates. The City Corporation built most of its housing estates in areas such as Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Lambeth between the 1920s and the 1960s. It intends to extend those estates as well as looking at how to add housing to its other landholdings, which include Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest. The Corporation’s new homes will be for sale or rent at market rates, meaning they will not need any public subsidy.
Financial Times (26/06/2015)
26th June 2015
The Evening Standard notes that Zone 2 districts ringing central London's most expensive areas are riding high as home buyers seek cheaper, yet well connected postcodes. A recent study places Bethnal Green top of its list of best value for money areas in Zone 2. Prices are 40% cheaper than the Zone 2 average, while travelling time to the main employment centres is just eight minutes. Holloway, Caledonian Road and Finsbury Park are regarded as the Zone 2 areas with the best potential, and New Cross is highlighted as the best Zone 2 area for transport.
Evening Standard, Homes & Property (25/06/2015)
26th June 2015
Seasonally-adjusted figures from HMRC show that a total of 98,540 homes were sold in May, down 3% on a year earlier. Meanwhile, the figures showed that the first nine months of 2014 saw property being sold at the fastest rate since before the financial crisis. Some 1.7m homes were sold in 2006, at the height of the property boom. This fell to 848,000 in 2009, but rose to 1.2m last year.
BBC News (26/06/2015)3
19th June 2015
The Evening Standard explores the Greenwich Peninsula and new developments such as the £275m Enderby Wharf project, which has almost 800 new homes, a hotel, and a cruise ship terminal, on a nine-acre site. Forty-six of the apartments will be available on a shared-ownership basis. Meanwhile east London continues to be first choice among young buyers, with 10,000 starter homes bought in this part of the capital in the past year. It says the good transport links at Stratford are attracting young buyers to seek out the pockets of east London that are still affordable. Canning Town in particular has a number of developments worth looking at, including East City Point and Rathbone Market.
Evening Standard (17/06/2015)
19th June 2015
Lord Bob Kerslake is to chair a new London Housing Commission set up to develop a “radical portfolio of solutions” to the capital’s housing crisis. The commission, which will report next March, will seek to develop a plan to double the number of new homes built in London to about 50,000 a year. Lord Kerslake said London was building less than half the homes it needed to sustain its growing population: 18,000 last year against the necessary 49,000. He warned: “Londoners are missing out on opportunities: delaying having families, being forced to rent for longer and many are locked out of home ownership completely”. He also argued that London’s lack of housing was a threat to the capital’s international competitiveness. “If it becomes too expensive to live in London, why would businesses come here?...The place will suffer", he explained.
(17/06/2015)
19th June 2015
The average cost of renting a flat or house in London has reached £1,500 a month, according to a new survey. The data shows that rents have risen by 12.5% across the country in the past year with tenants on average asked to pay £751 a month outside the capital. Its survey also shows rental costs over the past three months have gone up five times faster than tenant income. Only three regions in the country have shown a fall in rental prices – the north west, East Anglia and Yorkshire and Humber.
The Guardian (16/06/2015)