Partnerships between government agency and large housing associations seeing more affordable-rent and shared-ownership homes built
Large housing associations are using the financial backing available through signing long-term partnership deals with Homes England to ramp up the proportion of affordable rent and shared-ownership homes they build.
Securing £190m through the strategic partnership with the government agency has meant housing association Optivo has been able to bring forward pure affordable-housing schemes that do not require cross-subsidy from open-market sales, its chief executive Paul Hackett told Housing Today.
The timing of such partnerships has been helpful, not least because of the downturn in the housing market, in part caused by fears around the UK’s departure from the EU, due in three weeks’ time.
The Regulator for Social Housing recently highlighted that sales risk was a chief Brexit-related concern for housing associations.
Hackett said that boards of housing associations, often reliant on such funding from private sales, did not have the same risk appetite for investing in such activity as before.
“Clearly consumer sentiment is very subdued but to blame it entirely on Brexit is wrong. We are clearly in a down cycle, but the situation has been very much exacerbated by Brexit.”
Optivo was still seeing “strong” reservations and sales rates, he added.
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