5 days to go until the election – who will you vote for?

Like many people that I speak to, I haven’t a clue who to vote for in this coming election so I’ve made a conscious effort on this occasion to read...

Like many people that I speak to, I haven’t a clue who to vote for in this coming election so I’ve made a conscious effort on this occasion to read the manifestos of the three main parties. Working for Robinson Reade means that I have a particular interest in the housing market so this is where I have started.

Over the next few days I’ll be summarising the main points of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats views from their manifesto around housing. Having read through each of them, the most striking thing about all of them is the lack of a housing headline. I find this quite surprising given the lack of housing, difficulty for young people to get on the housing ladder and the rise in homelessness in recent years.

Today, we’ll look at the Conservative manifesto. For the Conservatives, ‘home ownership is a core conservative value’ and that they state that they will strive to ‘rebalance the housing market towards more home ownership whilst ensuring fairness for the new generation of renters’

The headlines for the housing part of the manifesto are:

• Bring in a Better Deal for Renters – including abolishing no fault evictions and bringing in a lifetime deposit which moves with the tenant.
• To ‘encourage a new market in long term fixed-rate mortgages which slash the cost of deposits’ – therefore allowing more people to get on the property ladder
• ‘offer more homes to local families’ by ensuring that councils are able to discount homes by a third for local people who otherwise could not afford to buy in the area.
• ‘Maintain our commitment to a Right to Buy for all council tenants’ and they state that they have extended the Help to Buy Scheme from 2021 – 2023
• Reform shared ownership in order to make it fairer and more transparent by introducing a single standard for all housing associations.
• Continue to reform leaseholds including implementing a ban on the sale of new leasehold properties, restricting ground rents and ensuring redress for tenants.

I think most people agree that more houses need to be built to ensure that there is enough housing going forward and the Conservatives state that they have delivered over a million homes over the past five years (note – delivered not built). To their credit, they do agree that this isn’t enough and the manifesto sets out how they expect to deliver another million houses ‘across all tenures’ over the next parliament.

The manifesto talks about ensuring that infrastructure is in place before new houses by amending existing planning laws, they want to give communities more say on what design of house is built in local areas and building safety is noted as a priority further to the tragic events at Grenfell Tower.

For those wanting to build their own houses, the Conservatives pledge to help find plots of land for them and for them to access the Help to Buy Scheme. They are also looking to help those wanting to buy the council property they live in and , for those looking at the environmental factors of new housing, the Conservatives are supporting the creation of new homes where environmental factors are taken into consideration (they even state that all new streets should be tree lined), they will protect the Green Belt and they will ‘encourage innovative design and technology to make housing more affordable, accessible and suitable for disabled people and the disabled.’

Although the Conservatives like to encourage home ownership they also acknowledge in their manifesto that not all are able to afford to buy their own home. Boris Johnson has already promised to bring forward the Social Housing White Paper which will ‘set out measures to empower tenants and support the continued supply of social homes’. There are also plans to renew the Affordable Homes Policy and to enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act.

These measures, the Conservatives state, will be paid for by imposing a stamp duty surcharge on non UK resident buyers.

Read the full manifesto here: https://vote.conservatives.com/our-plan

So, there we have it … the Conservative’s pledges for the housing market…. Watch this space for Labour’s plans next and then the Liberal Democrats….

Thanks for reading … if you would like to chat about anything lettings, please give us a call – we’d love to get to know you!

Emma Macgregor MARLA

Lettings Manager

PS: if you are looking for a ‘smart let’ (www.robinsonreade.co.uk/quick-let-or-smart-let/) call us today on 01489 579009 or email us at lettings@robinsonreade.co.uk for honest, expert and friendly advice.