Invest & Fund calls for overhaul of housing market
Invest & Fund has said that the affordable housing marketing needs an overhaul “rather than a liquidity crunch”.
The property lender was responding to a report which found that Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities handed back £1.9bn back to the Treasury in the last accounting year.
The department said that it couldn’t find projects to spend it on.
However, Invest & Fund rejected this, writing that “when the goal is to build more homes, without considering the full picture, this seems bewildering, but the reasoning behind these touches on some of the points we have discussed over the last 12 months in these blogs; the issues are the broken mechanics of a system that needs overhauling, rather than a liquidity crunch.”
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The company said that housing sector investment needs to be done in “much more targeted and nuanced way.”
According to Knight Frank’s 2023 wealth report, private investors have outpaced institutions as the biggest buyers in real estate, investing anywhere from £5m and £25m.
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“Distressed assets in order of desirability, commercial real estate with its challenges in the post-Covid world, student, and university accommodation, with its opportunity for large yields, and in residential housing, the rental market is the main draw,” wrote Invest & Fund in a blog on the company’s website.
Looking ahead, Invest & Fund said it does not “buy into the narrative of a cliff-edge house price collapse based on the single factor of retail mortgage rates when a dozen factors create set pricing in the market.”
Referencing the Halifax Monthly index, which reports a 0.1 per cent drop in June, and a decline in value of 2.6 per cent year on year, the data suggests some resilience in the new build property market, with the annual price growth up by 1.9 per cent.
The average property price now sits at £285,932.
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