House prices in England and Wales are continuing to rise strongly, according to the latest figures issued by the Land Registry, house prices in April rose by another 0.2%, pushing up the annual rate of increase to 8.5%. This was the fastest rate of growth since September 2007 and the Land Registry has said that the cost of the average home in England and Wales now stood at £165,596.

We have blogged previously about increases in house prices and how this clearly has an impact on the affordability of decent homes for those entering the market. The soon to be announced stringent budget cuts will inevitably reduce further the availability and as such the affordability of a new home. Those of us who are at the sharp end of procuring new affordable homes know that delivering a new home on a social rent basis is a major challenge but this is the form of tenure that many local authorities deem as being truly affordable.

The coalition government has announced a number of ?housing and community? themes aimed at encouraging those in a social rent home to purchase equity in that home, promoting shared ownership, raising the stamp duty threshold for first time buyers, trying to find a solution to bringing empty properties back into use, using local trusts to deliver affordable housing and encouraging the development of rural housing through the ?Home on the Farm? initiative. We will look at these in more detail when that detail is more forthcoming.

So to summarise, house prices continue to increase - squeezing affordability, the ability of the HCA to deliver its housing target will be restrained with the inevitable capital spending cuts and some of the plans to change the planning system could well make it even harder to achieve planning consents for affordable housing schemes.

So it?s business as usual !!

It's Simply Housing.