London residential planning applications boom in 2015
The number of planning applications for new homes approved by London authorities in the first quarter of 2015 accelerated by nearly three-quarters on the preceding three-month period.
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As the capital city attempts to reduce the housing deficit, where a constrained supply of new homes and surging demand has squeezed house prices to astronomical levels, 11,870 homes were given planning permission, according to the study of all planning applications decided across the capital’s 32 boroughs and the City of London by estate agency group Stirling Ackroyd.
This quarterly amount represents an annualised figure of nearly of nearly 48,000 new homes across Greater London, nearly 20,000 more homes per year than the equivalent rate of approvals in the fourth quarter of 2014, or a 73% increase.
As the tap has been loosened on this initial stage of the house building process, the number of new housing starts has also improved in London.
The annualised number of housing starts in the first quarter 2015 of 38,200 was more than three times that of the preceding quarter and up 54% compared to the number of starts in the same quarter last year.
“If this pipeline of new property comes to fruition, it will represent exactly the heavy-duty, industrial scale of response needed to start filling the housing hole," said Andrew Bridges, managing director of Stirling Ackroyd.
“Things are finally going in the right direction, yet in fact, government targets may not be set high enough. Our analysis shows London needs to build an average of 57,000 new homes a year just to cope with expected population growth over the next decade."