With names such as iPad and i-Life, the next generation
of starter homes aims to be cutting edge as well as compact.
But will it solve the problem of affordable housing?
David Cameron may lose more votes for his party than
he gains after suggesting that planners and rural communities
were "bananas" for resisting developments of
affordable housing. He believes the not-in-my-backyard
(Nimby) mentality contradicts social justice and wants
to encourage more of a Bimby (build-in-my-backyard) attitude
in order to meet the housing crisis faced by many communities.
The Conservative leader's chorus is music to the ears
of David Pretty, the chief executive of Barratt, who has
just launched an initiative to help struggling first-time
buyers. He recently called for every town and village
in the land to allocate a couple of redundant acres for
housing, and earlier this week the company unveiled plans
for the iPad, its answer to the need for affordable housing.
At just 380 square feet, with a stylish living space
and fully-fitted kitchen area, separate bedroom and proper
bathroom, the iPad takes its name from the iPod, the MP3
player which allows you to squeeze all your favourite
pieces of music into one handy unit. The house builder
believes the compact iPad, which it describes as a "real
home" priced at £80,000, will sell like hot
cakes. The company plans to build at least 1,000 of them
every year.
Barratt spent two years developing the iPad. While the
initial phases will be built within small apartment blocks
the builder says there is no reason why they should not
be built as low-rise groups, comprised solely of iPad
homes.
There are three designs, one of which is described as
"traditional", for the village environment;
there are also "neo" and "contemporary"
designs, with features such as circular windows for the
urban scene.
The first 30 iPads are nearing completion in Middlesbrough,
with prices starting at around £80,000; they are
unfurnished but include kitchen appliances. Another 170
are soon to be built on six other sites and so far there
are another 1,600 in the pipeline on 40 sites across the
country. Closer to London, the starting price will be
around £100,000. "Our iPad homes are not 'bed-sits'
or micro flats - they are proper homes that will enable
a lot of first-time buyers to take their first steps into
home ownership," says Pretty.
Competition for this market, meanwhile, is hotting up.
Hiding under wraps in "Jim's shed", a hanger-like
building in deepest Leicestershire, is the prototype of
another small home. "Jim" is James Wilson, son
of the eponymous founder of David Wilson Homes, the fifth
largest house builder in the country. James and a team
of designers that included the Changing Rooms presenter
Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen, spent months agonising over every
square inch of their new range of low-cost, starter homes.
"I lay awake at night working out how to make best
use of every tiny corner and provide light and space.
In the end we decided that the only way to finalise the
plans was to build a couple of the little homes and move
around within them," says Wilson.
The result is the i-Life range; six designs welcomed
recently by housing and planning minister Yvette Cooper,
who declared that a way had to be found to build more
homes without sacrificing quality. "There has been
an alarming fall of 40 per cent in the number of first-time
buyers in the past 12 months. I reckon that if we do nothing
about the situation, within 20 years only a third of couples
will be able to get a home of their own," she told
the Sunday Telegraph.
The units are also very spacious. The designs, all energy
efficient, range in size from 300 to 677 square feet.
The smallest, incorporating a fold-down bed, starts at
£65,000.
The prototypes measured 378 and 450 square feet, but
felt much larger due to the high ceilings that take full
advantage of the roof space. The bedroom and shower room
(with the washing machine) are on the ground floor, with
living accommodation upstairs.
The studio-houses are built back-to-back; the high, inside
wall accommodating the kitchen area, leaving the outside
walls for large windows and a balcony, further adding
to the impression of space. "However small the site,
it is important in today's busy lifestyle to have what
we call 'amenity space', a private outside area that is
at least large enough for a table and chairs - somewhere
to relax and enjoy a glass of wine after work," says
Wilson.
The great height of the upstairs living room allows for
the inclusion of a mezzanine floor, approached by a fold-down
ladder. This is described as a storage area, but owners
will doubtless find a multitude of uses for it, perhaps
as a computer room, library or television area.
Extra light is provided in some of the i-Life homes by
a landing floor of transparent toughened glass, so mother-in-law
might prefer to wear trousers when visiting for the first
time.
The small homes were part of a much larger study called
Project Life, carried out by the company in conjunction
with the University of Nottingham's School of the Built
Environment. The project included an intimate study of
a volunteer family, the Parnells, who lived for six months
in a spacious research house in Sheffield. Instead of
cameras watching their every move the family, parents
and two daughters, wore radio tags to monitor their movements
around the house.
The first batch of the new homes, which will be slightly
larger, two-bedroom properties, will start at £109,000.
These are to be built at Balderton, in Nottinghamshire;
but planning approval is also being sought for the £65,000
studios. So far, consent has been given for 100 units,
but the firm hopes this will rise to 500 by the end of
the year.
Wilson is by no means the only UK builder to address
the growing problem of prices. Redrow has launched its
Debut range of one and two-bedroom starter homes. With
prices starting at a little over £50,000 the company
is, like Wilson, determined to stop buy-to-let investors
snapping them up, and they have introduced a popular equity
sharing scheme. The houses also received top rating for
energy efficiency from the British Research Establishment
and now the company plans to build at least 2,000 annually
over the next five years.
But will this new generation of affordable homes be acceptable
to the Nimbys, particularly in rural areas? David Pretty
believes so. "A site or small group of sites of up
to two acres could put around 35 to 40 starter homes in
every town and village in rural Britain. This would be
sufficient to give local young people and key workers
a start on the housing ladder."
However, the stance being taken by the Cameron-Pretty
alliance could prove to be a slippery banana skin. Those
defending the interests of country communities poured
scorn on the proposals. It is true that the sons and daughters
of the few remaining ploughmen in the country will never
be able to afford their own home - but it was ever thus.
Historically villages grew by about one dwelling every
decade and that was usually a tied cottage for a farm
worker. Now there are very few farm workers, or indeed
any workers of any kind, living in the parishes.
"This is a half-baked notion. Building a lot of
houses for sale would do nothing at all to tackle the
long-term shortage of affordable rural housing in the
countryside," insists Henry Oliver, of the Campaign
to Protect Rural England. Oliver, CPRE's head of policy
for planning and local government, says that the problems
should be solved not by building homes for sale, but by
providing homes that are available for subsidised renting
or part-ownership, in perpetuity.
While most rural communities would welcome some new residents,
Pretty may find that it is the size and scale of his dream
that could prove to be its own undoing.
iPad, Barratt (0845 60 80 100, www.barratthomes.co.uk);
i-Life, David Wilson Homes (0800 234 455, www.dwh.co.uk);
Debut, Redrow (01928 755 600; www.debutbyredrow.co.uk)
First-time buyer facts
Couples must find an average £24,000 deposit for
their first home.
The average first purchase has now reached £137,000,
with parental help averaging £17,000. Prices in
the south-east are the most expensive.
Pressure on housing is increased by the astonishing rise
in the number of "home-aloners". According to
figures produced for John Prescott, the divorce rate will
add 150,000 every year to the numbers living alone, with
single-parent families increasing by 13,000. Overall,
no fewer than one in three households are now single.
The report to the Deputy Prime Minister, disputed by
conservation groups such as the Campaign to Protect Rural
England, suggests that 5 million extra homes will be needed
in the next 20 years.
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