Marc von Grundherr, Director of Benham and Reeves, commented: “Disappointing to see such a brief mention for the UK property market in today’s Budget.
"The Chancellor has chosen to give the sector a bit of the cold shoulder with just a handful of headline figures, clearly believing his job is done having fuelled house prices to record highs via the recent stamp duty holiday.
"We need more homes to satisfy our ever-growing appetite for homeownership and an insignificant level of brownfield development is more of a slap in the face than it is an outstretched hand
"As for the £11.5bn pledged for 180,000 affordable homes, it’s a start, but hardly news given it was announced by Robert Jenrick a year ago.
"It simply isn’t enough and with the government consistently failing to meet their previous housebuilding targets, it will be a miracle if we see a brick laid on brownfield land or a meaningful level of affordable homes delivered in our lifetime.”
Managing Director of Barrows and Forrester, James Forrester, commented: “Time and time again we’ve seen the government pledge to fix the housing market using recycled rhetoric and funding from previously announced initiatives. Today was no different and reading between the lines, we can expect to see them continue to over promise and under deliver in their attempts to address the housing crisis.
"While Boris Johnson might not be a fan of recycling, his chancellor certainly is and so the 180,000 new homes pledged today is certainly no step forward.
"The only bone thrown to a nation of ravenous homebuyers starved of housing stock has been a scrap of properties built on brownfield sites.
"According to the MHCLG, there are some 36,000 hectares of brownfield land across England alone, enough to deliver over 1.3m new homes. So even if the government does make good on its promise, it’s just a fraction of what they could, and should, be building.”
John Phillips, national operations director at Just Mortgages, said: “As expected, the Budget was light on news for those in the property sector. There was some positive news, with significant funds allocated for building new homes on brownfield sites, but the benefits of this will not be felt for years.
“While some may have been calling for a review of stamp duty, the lack of action is actually a positive for the market.
“Last year transactions were artificially inflated by the tax savings and the pandemic, and since stamp duty has returned, the urgency has dropped, but demand has remained.
“In the coming months, we will start to get a true reflection of the state of the mortgage market. Lenders are sending positive signals with the number of 95% LTV products currently available. While some surveyors are rightly cautious, the abundance of low deposit products suggests lenders do not feel a price crash is imminent.
“The imbalance of buyers and sellers backs this position up. There are still over ten buyers for every one property listed, and although a sizeable sum has been allocated for new homes, these will take years to build and in the meantime, prices will continue to rise.
“The Chancellor’s latest Budget may have been light on news for those in the mortgage market, but in this instance, no news is good news.”
Steve Collins, CEO of affordable housing provider Rentplus, said: “Any new investment in housing is to be welcomed but the current funding is still well short of what is needed to provide the affordable housing required to meet demand. Given the Chancellor’s wish to control spending, the only way to deliver the number of new affordable homes needed is through a significant injection of institutional funding. Privately funded housing providers are already stepping in to fill this gap but there is the potential for many more millions to be invested.”
“Homes England and the National Housing Federation have called for more institutional investment in the social housing sector. This must be supported by the Government being clearer on its support for alternative tenures to Help-to-Buy and Shared Ownership. Innovative programmes such as affordable rent to buy are not only already adding to the supply of affordable housing but are also widening access to homeownership to those on lower incomes. These and other schemes are ready to be scaled up with the encouragement of government and all at no cost to the taxpayer.”
Steve Seal, CEO, Bluestone Mortgages, comments: “The Chancellor’s commitment to investing in the housing market is welcome news for all, however, it needs to be backed by a realistic and credible plan to deliver on the critical need for housing. Further government investment to build affordable homes will support the younger generation and low-income families locked in rental cycles to take their first steps onto the property ladder, while the £5bn fund to remove unsafe cladding will help prevent homeowners from becoming property prisoners. But, speed is of the essence, and we must see the government deliver on these promises quickly.”
Tomer Aboody, director of property lender MT Finance, says: "The economic growth and reduction in unemployment forecast by the Chancellor are hugely positive and encouraging, particularly as we are still dealing with the knock-on effects of a global pandemic.
"Cladding is a huge and deeply unfair issue, which is hitting many people hard. Making further funds available to deal with the cladding crisis is welcome and will help those people trapped in their homes with an additional 4 per cent tax on developers with profits of more than £25 million. This will help those homeowners who are unable to sell or refinance due to factors completely beyond their control. However, the government must continue to monitor the situation and do more if necessary.
"Fairer and lower business rates for the high street from 2023 are extremely welcome. This should increase the productivity of local high streets, encouraging more shops and therefore more employment, as well as keeping communities together by persuading people to shop locally."
Chris Druce, Senior Research Analyst at Knight Frank, said: “Today’s Budget set out the road beyond the pandemic against an improving UK economic picture. It did so without introducing any significant speed bumps for the UK housing sector, which should continue its journey back to normality in the coming months, with the frenzy of the stamp duty holiday fading in the rear-view mirror. After what is set to be a record year for UK property transactions, supply should gradually improve in the coming months as sellers capitalise on the market’s current strength, and incremental interest rate rises help to moderate the high demand that has persisted since the market reopened. We expect house price growth to finish 2021 in the single-digit range, as the property market returns to more seasonal patterns.”
Anna Ward, Senior Research Analyst at Knight Frank, said: “The government’s confirmation of a £1.8bn brownfield fund will help alleviate some of the impact of the pandemic on new homes output. As ever, the devil will be in the detail. There are questions marks over how quickly this can be rolled out and which areas it will target to help ease housing shortages.”
Mike Scott, Chief Analyst at estate agency Yopa, said: "Yopa welcomes today’s Budget announcement of further investment in housing, but we look forward to seeing more details, and in particular how much of the announced investment reflects genuine new money rather than the reiteration of spending that has already been announced. The crisis of the pandemic should not be allowed to overshadow the long-running housing crisis caused by decades of under-building."
Miles Shipside, Rightmove’s property expert, says: “Competition among buyers for homes available for sale is at the highest level ever recorded over the past twenty years, so building enough new homes to satisfy demand is critical to prevent further heady price rises. We’re still waiting to hear about more areas that will benefit from the First Homes Scheme, which launched with a couple of properties back in June, so we hope to hear more detail, and soon, on the areas that will benefit from the 180,000 affordable homes pledged today.”
Rod Lockhart, Chief Executive Officer - LendInvest, comments: "With the government still falling short of their pledge to build 300,000 new homes, the allocation of £24 billion for housing and £1.8 billion in funding to finance more homes on brownfield land is a welcomed move - how this funding will be distributed is key, however. What we need to see is the government funnelling this support to SME developers, who must not be forgotten in favour of the large housebuilders as core contributors to the UK’s housing stock."
Richard Pike, Phoebus Software sales and marketing director, says: “This was never going to be a budget that really tackles our housing shortage, the Chancellor had much bigger fish to fry after the pandemic. There was the usual nod with the announcement of further investment to help development on brownfield sites, which acknowledged the fact that we are woefully behind the government’s target to build 300,000 new homes per year. While the £24bn multi-year settlement sounded good, when spoken out loud, we will need to see exactly how that money is to be carved up and over how many years.
“The good news is that all the forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) have improved with the economy set to grow faster than at first predicted, and unemployment unlikely to rise above 8%. This all points to a quicker recovery which in turn should have a knock-on effect on confidence. Now we just have to sort out the problem of supply and the market may have a chance to continue to bounce along, even if it doesn’t grow at the rate it did during the stamp duty holiday.”
