Boris urges developers to stop offering London homes to foreigners first
Boris Johnson will urge developers and investors this afternoon to sign up to a new deal to stop giving buyers living abroad the first chance to buy London homes sold before they’re built, in a bid to get more Londoners onto the housing ladder.
Speaking at Mipim, the property’s industry annual conference in Cannes, the London Mayor will say that 50 housebuilders and developers – including UK’s second biggest landlord British Land and Capital & Counties, the group regenerating Earl’s Court – have agreed to market their homes to Londoners first, or at least at the same time as overseas.
“There can be no doubt that the cost of getting on the London housing ladder is higher than at any time in recent memory and the sense of frustration is growing, and many people feel a sense of particular rage about one thing – that there are times when new homes in London are actually being marketed overseas before Londoners get a look in,” Johnson is expected to say.
“It cannot be right that people in great Asian capitals should be able to look at images of new London properties and put down cash – before Londoners even know that the opportunity is there. These homes are not there as a new kind of asset class, like old masters or diamonds or bullion. They are there as part of the living infrastructure of the city," he added.
Johnson will defend overseas investment as essential to delivering homes in London.
“Would it really be sensible to reject investment from Qatar, when Qatari Diar is responsible for the Olympic village of which 50 per cent is affordable? Should we say goodbye to the Dutch and American pension funds that are helping us to develop Elephant and Castle?,” he will say.
Baroness Jo Valentine, chief executive of London First, which represents many of the capital’s biggest developers, welcomed the agreement yesterday saying:
Overseas buyers are an important part of the London property market – many purchase off-plans, playing a critical role in helping house builder’s funds the early stages of development. But there needs to be a level playing field and people in the UK should not be prevented from accessing property that comes onto the market. We also have to recognise that many of our members already give UK buyers the same chance to buy as anyone else, which is why they have so readily put their names to the concordat.