Rent-to-buy housing company plans to deliver 5,000 affordable homes by 2020
Leading affordable Rent-to-buy housing company Rentplus has welcomed today’s Government announcement pledging almost £7bn to make house building a priority and to build more than 400,000 affordable homes.
During the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor announced a package of measures including £200m for 10,000 new homes that tenants can live in for five years at reduced rents while they save for a deposit. Tenants will then have the option to buy their home.
Rentplus has launched a new affordable rent-to-buy housing model that closely matches the Government’s criteria to deliver these homes. Rentplus provides a very significant additional benefit to the affordable rent: Rentplus tenants are also given a deposit to bolster their own savings when they buy their home.
Rentplus Chief Executive, Richard Connolly, said: “We welcome the Government’s commitment to prioritise a national programme of house building and to give a generation of affordable renters the opportunity to buy their home for the first time.
“The Rentplus model is ideally placed to deliver the Chancellor’s plans for 10,000 rent-to-buy homes at affordable rents. We have already received support from the government, the HCA, and the LGA; we’ve met more than 80 local authorities and have relationships in place with housing associations and developers across the country as well as having more than £90m of institutional funding in place with more to follow.
“We are already on course to deliver a minimum of 5,000 affordable rent-to-buy homes by 2020 and following today’s announcement, although we recognise there needs to be a balanced mix of housing tenures that includes social housing and affordable rent, we believe Rentplus can play an important role in further increasing the supply of affordable homes and enabling people to achieve their aspirations of home ownership.”
The first Rentplus homes are currently being built at developments in the South West of England and the first tenants to benefit from the model are expected to move into their homes in February 2016.
Rentplus is funded by institutional investment, meaning any government money spent on rent-to-buy homes would be bolstered by additional ongoing investment to support the delivery of the programme.
Rentplus homes are available at affordable rents (up to 80 per cent of local market rent) for periods between five and 20 years. Once the rental tenancy has finished, residents are given the opportunity to buy their Rentplus home and will be given a ten per cent deposit by Rentplus.