New Builds

[Nat6999]

Really daft question, there is a new housing estate being built in my area by Miller Homes, as the land was bought from the council a proportion of the properties have to be given over to a housing association to be rented or sold under shared ownership. My question is what happens on a new estate, are properties occupied as they are finished or does everyone have to wait until the estate is complete? There are 138 houses on this one, it's almost a gated community, no through roads & as Miller Homes describe it a boulevard to get in to the estate.

Usually done in phases with staggered moving in dates, so for example one side of our estate have been in about 4 years, the street over from ours about 2, us and our neighbours for several houses around around 1 year. And they are still building, final people due to be in in Jan.

It's a funny estate, used to be university playing field, enclosed on all sides by back gardens of surrounding road's properties. Miller Homes bought two bungalows on main road to knock down for access, it's hard to work out how they will phase the building from what I can see on my frequent trips past to have a nosey, they don't look to be only building on any particular part of the site. Roughly how long does it take from the first property sales release to the properties to be ready for completion & moving in? Sorry I'm asking loads of questions but I've never seen a new build I'm interested in before, I'm hoping for one of the affordable homes to rent.

I don’t get why it’s,strange or like a gated estate. Nearly all new build estates are ‘self contained ‘ in that there is usually one access point. They are usually built on the fringes of existing areas.

It can be a relatively short time until,people move in. They can build houses very quickly. They might surface the roads and things like that right at the very end.

It is in the area where it's been built, most of the area is houses built from 1920 - 1950, there are only probably 20-30 houses that are any newer & they were probably built around 1970 at the latest out of around 2000 homes, it's a very old area I've lived in or very close to all my life.

as the land was bought from the council a proportion of the properties have to be given over to a housing association to be rented or sold under shared ownership.

Actually it's now standard for any development of more than a few houses to have to have housing association and shared ownership properties incorporated, for the builders to get planning permission regardless of who owned the land before.

They usually prep most of the site and then the houses get sold in blocks as they are built. The developer should have a site plan on their website, which often shows which will be the housing association and shared ownership ones. Housing association ones will be rented as soon as that section of the development is ready. I would talk to the housing association about when they think it's likely the first ones will be available and just keep looking.

The only land that is getting sold round here for building new homes on is where they have closed schools & college sites then sold the land off. It's taken nearly 2 years for Miller Homes to get planning permission for the site I'm interested in as locals living around the site have been fighting to get it stopped.

The proportion of Affordable housing is set at the planning stage and needs to be in line with what is set out in the adopted local plan. The amount can be reduced if the developer can demonstrate that the site would become unviable. In some circumstances the amount is increased but this will require the agreement of all parties. Sometimes a commuted sum is paid in liue of the affordable housing being built on the development site.

The council will have agreed a sum for the land.... It may be on open market terms or the developer may be procured to build out a particular type of housing eg Affordable or Extra care. The amount paid and to whom depends on what the value of the built out scheme is when off set against build cost. Which in turn depends on the land values for the area, remediation costs, income (rent or sale), construction cost and loads of other things.

The sequencing of the site will depend on the site size, shape, sales rates, utility connections, workforce and materials.

Quite often the HA ones are finished first as the cashflow is optimised and this will reduce the financial costs.....however where the off plan sales are bouyant it may make more sense to build the open market sales units first. A housing association will get void losses if they take handover before they can put people in them so will not take handover if they don't have tenants ready or the units cannot be accessed safely. The developer doesn't get paid until handover so they will do their best to ensure the sequencing enables safe access.

A lot of housing developments in my area over the last so many years have been on previous school sites.

Anyway in terms of the OP my experience is that individual HA properties on a large estate are released in the phases like any other development. Developments that are just HA (so smaller sites) are released when all completed. (Though there may still be a stage process of development)