Locals will have first choice on new homes in their area under “revolutionary” Labour plans to help first-time buyers.
Foreign speculators will face steep financial hurdles to prevent them snapping up properties before they come onto the open market.
The moves are part sweeping reforms aimed at tackling Britain’s housing crisis with the biggest programme of council house building since the Second World War.
It promises 100,000 new council homes and 50,000 new build “affordable” a year by the end of the next Parliament.
New rules will ensure developers are forced to build homes at prices people can afford,
Recent figures showed the top ten UK builders were sitting on land banks of more than 700,00 plots with planning permission or as “strategic holdings”, waiting for property prices to go up.
The Labour plan would place new conditions on local council planning permissions to ensure builders work to a new legal definition of “affordable”, which the party claims has been too high under the Tories.
The new definition will be linked local incomes and local social rent, which works out at about half the level of market rents.
It means the price of a starter home would be slashed by up to half in most areas.
In Boris Johnson ’s own constituency of Uxbridge the price of a new build would be reduced from an average of £350,000 to £190,000.
(Image: Getty Images)
In Preston it would go down from £233,873 to £139,917 and create a saving of £9.396 on a 10 per cent deposit.
International purchasers who buy up property on the drawing board only to leave it empty as an investment will have to pay a levy to discourage profit only purchases.
More than a million people are currently stuck on council waiting lists with record numbers of young adults forced to live with their parents because they cannot afford to buy their own home.
Official figures show that last year the number of Government-funded affordable homes for social rent
Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey said: “Helping young first time buyers is a priority. Labour’s new discount homes will give hope to aspiring first-time buyers who have been failed by the Tories for too long.”
