Housing crisis or housing opportunity? This year across the UK we are expected to provide between 150,000-170,000 new houses. This is about 35-40% down on the governments target of 300,000. The demand for these houses is still rising albeit at a slower rate than in 2022-2024 as net migration has slowed down. Rental demand is increasing very quickly as due to high mortgage rates buying and owning a home is less affordable. So why aren’t more houses getting developed? One of the countries biggest brownfield developers The Berkeley Group announced that it would largely stop buying new development sites for the time being .. why? They cited a few key reasons summarised below 1) not achieving the returns they are after due to higher tax, higher regulation and stagnant or reduced property sales values. 2) planning challenges and delays 3) Rising and high development costs due to the building safety act (affects big high rise developments), increased environmental requirements, construction inflation, trade shortages, rising Section 106 contributions to the council 4) Less demand to sell developed property due higher mortgage costs etc Theses are challenges affecting all developers but they affect large developers much more especially the new building safety act. What does this mean? There is a big opportunity for the SME developer to convert existing empty or commercial buildings in good areas and retain as rental properties. Better to be the solution than the problem. On today’s episode of the financial freedom podcast we talk about the solutions and the big opportunities that exist today to buy, develop, rent, refinance. Tune in now! Youtube: https://youtu.be/lJPcdNrbL6I?si=lSwaN7SgWs8Zg3wl Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1kCIZtCQIxTxN8q5gtxM5z?si=IBwYP5jhQ8iWKLget_69yg&utm_source=copy-link Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-financial-freedom-podcast/id1753228761?i=1000776224659

Posted by Tim Witt at 2026-07-10 09:33:21 UTC