Affordable housing: expanding the horizon

This will be a year of change for the affordable housing market with many housing associations diversifying into outright sale to reinforce their managed stock.

The need to diversify using HCA grant funding to provide stock for help-to-buy/shared ownership, along with the importance of providing affordable housing outside of their normal geographical areas, brings with it many challenges.

The geographical spread of registered provider affordable housing will grow across the North West and will focus into areas providing housing sale-led sites. In effect, this will cross-subsidise and promote more affordable homes allowing registered providers to meet increased demand. Consequently, partnerships will need to be formed between registered providers who already exist in areas where there are new ones developing.

The Lane End Group is currently work in such partnerships; framework registered providers are already realising a partnership approach is both more strategic and beneficial in this fast-moving market. Larger sites are becoming focused to give a pipeline of consistency in sales led areas. The realisation of the need to provide continuity of percentage of affordable homes to be developed on sites is apparent.

In this ever-changing market, with Brexit on the horizon, it is critical that the registered providers create a pipeline of development opportunities along with partners to ensure a consistent flow of development into the future.