Over half of owners of new builds have experienced problems with their properties, from construction, fittings, and utilities, a survey by Shelter has shown. But unfortunately, this news does not come as a shock to The Debrief, who last week revealed that new-build-help-to-buy-schemes are not actually helping at all.
The report showed that eight in ten working families still can’t afford a home – even with the Help To Buy scheme – and that those who do end up with a new build are often left in unfinished or poorly built houses.
Exactly what happened to one young woman who moved into a new build in London and last week told the Debrief how fixtures and fittings were missing, left hanging from ceilings and unfinished when she moved in, and the developer was unresponsive to her complaints.
Shelter suggest the reason for the lack of affordable and quality housing is because of the competitive way developers and builders acquire the land: ‘speculative’ developers squeeze their costs to pay the most for (and ‘win’) the land, and in return produce unaffordable housing. ‘Competitive pressure therefore works against the public interest,’ the report says.
At the same time, the government have released their annual English Housing Survey, which shows that 195,000 less people owned a home in 2016 than in 2010. And the number of private rented properties has grown by 1.17m in the same six years.
It’s very clear the government aren’t doing anything to help get people on the property ladder, let alone the decent property ladder. Instead, their laissez-faire policy is resulting in too much competition, inflated prices, and poor quality. We don’t mean to be all ‘things were better back then’ about it, but with home owner rates at their lowest since 1985 it’s hard to be positive about the current state of housing affairs.
Of course, there are lots of suggestions as to what to do now to help the situation.
In a statement, John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, said: ‘Theresa May says she wants a country that works for everyone, so she should back Labour’s plans to build thousands more affordable homes to rent and buy, improve rights for renters and end the scandal of rough sleeping’, and Shelter have suggested new building plans to benefit the public.
The charity says ‘we are rightly proud in Britain of our heritage: our historic market towns, our universities, our pioneering Victorian engineering. We know we can build beautiful, genuinely affordable homes. We can connect them to places of work and build them along with good new schools, medical facilities, public spaces and high streets. None of this is impossible. We’ve just got to get back into the habit.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.