Isla MacFarlane

Kier Property and Housing Growth Partnership have announced a joint venture partnership to develop residential sites across the UK. The five-year deal, worth £80m on a 50:50 joint basis, will focus on residential developments in urban brownfield sites, initially across the South East of England. Part of Lloyds Banking Group, Housing Growth Partnership (HGP) is a social impact investor, focused on providing support to the regional residential development and housebuilding community to help tackle housing challenges in communities across the UK. The joint venture’s objective is to regenerate urban brownfield sites, delivering new homes connected to the needs of local towns and communities. The partnership will acquire sites with or without full planning permission and targets building 2,000 homes for sale and […]

The latest market analysis from estate agency Chestertons compares May 2022 to the same month last year and reveals a 57% uplift in buyer enquiries whilst the number of available properties to buy has declined by 14%. The continued imbalance between supply and demand, says Chestertons, will put further pressure on the capital’s housing market and property prices. Further evidence that house hunters will continue to see increasing property prices is the May house price index released by Halifax this month. According to the index, UK house prices increased again in May, with the average now standing at £289,099. In London, which has seen the strongest inflation over the past decade, the average cost for a property has reached £541,942. Richard Davies,

The latest data from leading construction industry intelligence provider, Barbour ABI, indicates that April’s downward trend has continued into May and could signal the end of the post-Covid construction boom. Barbour ABI’s Snap Analysis looks at the data for planning applications, planning approvals and contract awards for the previous month and gives a holistic picture of activity in the construction industry over the short, medium and long term. Tom Hall, Barbour ABI’s Chief Economist said: “April saw a fairly dramatic fall in activity from high levels to a more mixed picture. May’s data was a continuation of this new trend and indicates that construction may well be in a new, lower phase of activity after its post Covid-19 expansion – most likely due to

Shared ownership provider SO Resi has launched a new development in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, that uses the latest in construction and microgeneration technology to create homes that are greener, warmer and cheaper to run. Unveiled last weekend, SO Resi Hope Green comprises a total of 153 new homes – 138 two-, three- and four-bedroom houses and 15 two-bedroom apartments – the vast majority of which will be operationally zero carbon. In a UK-first, four of the homes are guaranteed to have no energy bills. Kush Rawal, Director of Residential Investment at SO Resi, said: “At a time that many people are struggling with high energy bills, it is pleasing to launch the first and largest operational net zero carbon development in the UK.