The Conservative Party has pledged to help renters buy their home and to give first time buyers discounts.
Boris Johnson yesterday set out his party’s plans for creating ‘more homeowners’ and delivering a ‘better deal for renters’.
Under a Conservative Government, he said, renters will be able to have Lifetime Rental Deposits which can be transferred from one rental property to another, making the process of moving home easier and cheaper.
Mr Johnson also said that under a new First Home scheme, homes will be sold at a 30% discount to local first-time buyers.
‘At the moment renting a property can also be an uncertain and unsettling business, and the costs of deposits make it harder to move. We are going to fix that,’ the prime minister said.
‘A Conservative majority Government will empower renters and give them greater peace of mind.
‘We will end no fault evictions, so that landlords can’t remove tenants without good reason, and introduce Lifetime Rental Deposits so renters don’t have to save up for a new deposit while their money is tied up in an old one.’
The Conservative Party also pledged to build one million homes in the next five years and repeated their commitment to building 300,000 new houses a year by the mid-2020s.
Research by the Centre for Policy Studies has shown that new-build housing completions in England between 2010 and 2019 are set to be approximately 130,000 per year.
That is lower, according to the right-wing think tank, than the 147,000 of the 2000s or 150,000 of the 1990s, and half of the level seen in the 1960s and 1970s.
Robert Jenrick, secretary of state for housing, communities and local Government, said: ‘A Conservative majority Government will make sure we have the homes we need in every part of the country. We delivered one million homes in the last five years and we’ll deliver at least another million in the next five years.
‘We’ll help renters make the leap onto the housing ladder and we’ll provide discounts for first time buyers in their local areas.’
