Housing shake up in the 2018 budget

More help for first-time buyers and plans for homes on the High Street have been announced.

Presenting the Autumn budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond said a ‘turning point in our nation’s recovery’ has been reached and vowed that the era of austerity was ending.

Most first-time buyers of shared ownership properties will now no longer pay stamp duty, under the measures.

Chancellor Philip Hammond also said that the Help to Buy scheme would end in 2023 – an extension of two years.

Mr Hammond said the housing market needed to be fixed, adding it was key to boosting UK productivity and living standards.

The UK is facing a shortage of housing. The number of homes on the market is at a 10 year low and fewer people are taking out mortgages.

Mr Hammond promised an extra £500m for the Housing Infrastructure Fund – a pot of money that local councils can apply to for help with building homes.

This extra cash should help build 650,000 more homes, he said.

The government has also struck deals with nine housing associations to deliver 13,000 homes across England.

And the chancellor wants to see more SMEs – small and medium-sized enterprises – building houses, so has announced up to £1bn of British business bank guarantees.

Mr Hammond also said he was providing money to help up to 500 neighbourhoods to allocate land for housing and sell the homes to local people at a discount.

He also confirmed that the cap on councils, which limits their ability to borrow money to build council houses, would be scrapped. Theresa May had already promised the cap would be scrapped in her Conservative Party conference speech.

Mr Hammond’s announcements come after analysis earlier this year suggested that house-building across half of England was slower than it was before the 2008 financial crash.

Source: BBC news