NEW homes will be almost a third cheaper for local first-time buyers under a scheme unveiled by ministers.
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s “First Homes” plan will take landowners’ profits to pay for a discount of 30 per cent.
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The move, aimed at the lower paid who are battling to save to buy a home, will lop an average of £100,000 off the asking price of a typical home.
And the discount will be locked in to the property’s price to ensure it is sold on at well below the usual asking price, to help the first-time buyers of the future.
As well as locals, forces’ veterans will be prioritised for the house purchases along with front-line workers such as cops, nurses, prison officers and teachers.
The plan, a Tory manifesto promise, is the first in a major drive by Boris Johnson’s government to get more young people on the property ladder and solve Britain’s chronic housing crisis.
Dubbing the plan “genuinely life-changing”, Mr Jenrick said: “Many who are seeking to buy their own home in their local areas have been forced out due to rising prices.
“A proportion of new homes will be made available at a 30 per cent market discount, turning the dial on the dream of home ownership.”
The Sun Says
THE new “First Homes” plan could be a game-changer for young people priced out of owning property.
We wouldn’t normally back a state scheme to carve off developers’ profits to subsidise homes.
But the market has failed a generation, rapid action is needed and builders’ takings are vast.
Soaring prices and Help To Buy sent their margins into orbit.
The giants have squeezed out small rivals and release new builds slowly to keep prices up. Their bosses make mind-boggling salaries.
It’s payback time.
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s imaginative plan will cut prices for local first-time buyers by a third — a huge difference.
But the Government must ensure hundreds of thousands of affordable homes get built this way.
Previous over-hyped initiatives have produced derisory numbers.
Long-term we need a bonfire of planning restrictions, more developers able to compete and far more houses built.
Campaigners warned the new homes must not come at the expense of losing new social housing.
Polly Neate, boss of Shelter, said: “The country desperately needs more low-cost homes which are genuinely affordable to those people struggling at the sharp end of the housing crisis.
“But, instead of offering a route to building additional low cost homes, this policy simply puts at risk the social homes currently being built.”
