Research article

UK Outlook

What's in store for the UK's development land market?

■ With so much uncertainty remaining over the impact of Brexit, land market conditions have yet to settle. However, by the end of the year, after the Autumn marketing season, the state of the land market and its impact on housing delivery volumes will become clearer.

■ In the long term, demand for homes will continue as the number of households continues to increase, even if net migration is reduced significantly.

■ Housebuilders prefer lower risk, smaller sites in areas where house price growth has been maintained.

■ On other sites, sellers will need to be realistic in their pricing to retain interest from cautious land buyers.

■ Those housebuilders that have not been buying land will need to be shortly if they are to maintain and increase their levels of delivery.

■ The HCA’s £3bn Home Builder Fund and £2bn Accelerated Construction scheme is set to help sites to be delivered by providing loans to fund projects and speed up delivery of homes on publicly-owned brownfield land in the case of the latter. A mix of tenures will need to be delivered to ensure absorption on these sites.

■ Build costs are already reported to have risen following the fall in sterling for those sourcing materials from outside the UK. In general this affects all developers, but with potentially least impact amongst the largest housebuilders who can secure UK based supply chains due to their scale.

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