Did You Miss These Housing Gems in the Autumn Budget 2018?

Valuable housing measures hidden away for borrowers, investors, developers and the housing market

Chancellor Phillip Hammond came up with help for those finding it tough getting onto the property ladder and ways of tackling the housing shortage in the UK. After all, it’s reckoned that 200,000 homes need to be built each year.

The Chancellor unveiled a series of housing measures meant to demonstrate that austerity has ended:

Improving and extending the Help to Buy scheme

First announced five years ago, the Help to Buy scheme was created to specifically to assist people to become first time buyers, as well as helping those with little equity in their home to move up the property ladder.

Although the Help to Buy scheme was due to finish by April 2021, it’s now been extended to end in April 2023 – giving it an extra two years.

Presently, in order to be approved for the Help to Buy scheme, you need to be purchasing a home with a maximum price of £250,000 outside of the London area. The newly ‘tweaked’ price cap understands that there are vast regional house price variations. So, for example, the new maximum price you can pay and still be accepted for the scheme in the South East for home is £437,600, but in the North East it’s now £186,100.

This measure also has the added benefit of giving house builders a significant amount of certainty over their planning over the longer-term. The Chancellor’s hope is that this will spur builders on to build a lot more homes, which should ease the housing stock shortage at lease a little.

Further help for first time buyers

In the previous Autumn, the UK government ended stamp duty for the UK’s hard-pressed first time buyers for homes at up to £300,000, a move that is estimated to have assisted 120,000 buyers.

Now, the Chancellor has axed stamp duty for first time buyers if purchasing a shared ownership property priced up to £500,000 when purchasing 25% to 75% of a property and then paying rent on the rest. This measure is backdated so anyone can benefit who purchased a shared ownership home in the UK between now and last year’s budget.

The Housing Infrastructure Fund gets a further £500 million

Local councils are able to use this fund if they require financial help with building homes in their area. The extra cash is predicted to help build a further 650,000 properties.

£1 billion guaranteed for smaller home building companies

The UK government has created a Home Building Fund worth £3 billion. This is made up from £1 billion of loans for smaller house building companies to help them build 25,000 properties before 2020 and £2 billion for long-term funding for infrastructure. This is designed to help a further 200,000 homes be built on brownfield sites.

Help for housing associations

£653 million was earmarked for nine housing associations, a move anticipated to see a further 13,000 properties being put up across England.

£1.5 Billion to transform high streets

Part of this money is to be used by local councils to turn empty commercial buildings into housing. There will also be an easing of planning permission rules around this, which should see up to 400,000 new homes come onto the market.

With all these housing measures within the recent Budget, now’s the time to purchase your first home or move up the property ladder. So, why not see how an expert mortgage broker, such as Loan.co.uk,  can help you make the most of it.

Chancellor Philip Hammond

Join the discussion