P2P platforms highlight role they can play in tackling the housing crisis
Bosses of peer-to-peer property lending platforms have backed parliamentary recommendations to tackle the housing crisis and highlighted the role that the P2P sector can play.
The cross-party Lords built environment committee’s ‘Meeting housing demand’ report said the government must address the barriers that exist to building new homes and increase housing supply.
The report said small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) housebuilders should be supported by reducing planning risk, making more small sites available and increasing access to finance.
It said planning departments require more resources to avert an emerging crisis and the UK needs more up-to-date, simpler, clearer and transparent local plans.
Stuart Law, chief executive of Assetz Capital, agreed with the report’s findings and said planning needs to be made simpler, easier, quicker and less costly. He said that permissions need to be given out “as if housing matters”, rather than limiting them.
He added that P2P platforms can play an important role in supporting housebuilders and helping to fight the housing crisis at a time when “the banks are pulling back” their lending.
Read more: Assetz Capital refutes Halifax prediction of slowing house prices
“We need to help alternative finance grow to fill the gap banks are causing,” Law said.
“It’ll be so hard to borrow from banks over the next few years so alternative finance is critical and needs government support.
“If the Lords are on the side of this, that’s good, we need more people shouting about these problems.”
Similarly, Lee Birkett, chief executive of JustUs, highlighted that planning is one the “biggest areas in need of urgent transformation” to ensure it can be fit for purpose to tackle the housing crisis and said that P2P platforms can play a “huge role” in addressing the problem.
“The scale of the distribution of capital from P2P platforms is a huge role, with modern open banking and paperless e-signature documentation that can save months,” he said.
Read more: Planning, materials and labour shortages threaten SME housebuilders
A spokesperson from Invest & Fund said that it would be useful if all parties come together to review the current “lengthy and regularly problematic” planning processes to make it quicker and slicker, and underlined that P2P can play a “massive role” in solving the housing crisis.
“The demand for our expertise and product is exploding,” the spokesperson said.
“Homebuilders need access to capital at a leverage point that will support their ambitions and suit their experience, and that’s why a full spectrum of financial products across the market is so important.”
Meanwhile, Yann Murciano, chief executive at Blend Network, highlighted access to finance, a lack of transparency and the rising costs of construction materials as key issues SME housebuilders are facing.
Read more: Is property P2P taking over?
“SME property developers and small construction companies that we speak to often complain about the lack of transparency in the property market, from lack of transparency in the cost of materials and inflation, to the lack of transparency in terms of finance between different lenders,” he said.
“This lack of transparency seems to be a lot more acute for SME property developers than for the large PLCs who have access to loads of real time data and resources.”
