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Reserve half of all homes for Britons to stop foreigners snapping them up, says Philip Hammond aide

Chris Philp MP
Chris Philp MP

Half of all new build homes should be reserved for Britons to stop foreigners snapping them up, a member of Philip Hammond’s Treasury team says today.

Chris Philp, a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Mr Hammond, the Chancellor, says in a report for the Centre for Policy Studies that 50 per cent of all new house or flats should go to domestic first time buyers.

The restriction would apply to any development of more than 20 homes and would cut down on house builders marketing entire developments in the UK to foreign buyers.

This would follow other developed economies, such as Switzerland, Australia, Canada and Denmark, in favouring domestic first time buyers who are not UK-tax resident.

Mr Philp said: “The Government has taken huge steps to increase homebuilding from the low of 125,000 a year left behind by Labour to nearly 200,000 today. But more needs to be done. 

"We need to place home ownership at the front of the policy agenda and make sure that first time buyers get all the support possible to get onto the housing ladder.”

New funding for housing commitments
New funding for housing commitments

In his “Homes for Everyone” report, Mr Philp highlighted a development in Baltimore Wharf, in London's Docklands, where nine out of 10 of 2,999 apartments were sold abroad.

In another development in Manchester 94 per cent of 230 flats went to non-UK residents, more than half of them to a company based in the British Virgin Islands.

Mr Philp said overseas buyers were taking up around 50 per cent of all new-build stock in London, including cheap flats in the suburbs.

But he warned it was "a much larger issue than people imagine", and was no longer confined to prime areas of the capital.

Housebuilding in England peaked in the late 1960s
Housebuilding in England peaked in the late 1960s

Non-UK resident purchasers of flats tend to be predominantly from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Malaysia and some Gulf states, buying "off-plan" two or three years before the properties are even built and often before potential British purchasers have had a chance to look at the scheme, he said.

"By snapping up new build stock off-plan - including cheaper flats that are ideal for first time buyers - non-UK buyers are preventing young Britons from getting onto the housing ladder," wrote Mr Philp.

Arguments that the Government should not intervene in the free market for property "do not hold water", said the MP.