The economy will reward housebuilders that build flexibility into their delivery model as conditions threaten to dampen confidence in the build-to-sell sector.
Lord Bob Kerslake, chairman of Peabody and former chairman of the Homes and Communities Agency, praised a “policy alignment that eluded us over the past year”, which has shifted the emphasis from home ownership to different types of tenures, and has created opportunities for collaboration between public and private sector housebuilders and local authorities.
However, economic forecasts will “impact on the confidence of people who build for sale”, he said.
“We are more likely to make progress [in addressing the UK’s housing shortfall] by building in flexibility for the things we are uncertain about, particularly build to sell. Economic changes have forced the need not to put all your eggs into the sales basket in order to move forward in a positive way.”
Kerslake was speaking at a roundtable hosted by Estates Gazette, in partnership with Savills and Barr Ellison, at Savills’ London headquarters.
The experts around the table panned the previous government’s Starter Homes initiative, but welcomed reports that the government was looking to expand the programme to include a wider set of tenures.
Lucian Cook, director of residential research at Savills, cited the need for “additionality” of housing stock, rather than forsaking one for the other.
“Anything that cannibalises existing stock is bad, and Starter Homes would cannibalise Help To Buy. Build to rent particularly meets that core deficit of demand for good quality and relatively standard accommodation, and that’s where we need to see an explosion of innovation,” he said.
A full analysis of the roundtable, including a podcast of the headline points, will be in the 10 December Estates Gazette.
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