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Home Group launches new sales arm
One of the UK’s largest housing associations has launched a new sales arm.
Home Group, which manages 55,000 homes, has set up ‘Persona’, which is intended to grow the association’s outright sales market. The organisation aims to build 10,000 new homes by 2021/22, half of which will be for sale.
According to customer research carried out by Home Group, 87% of its 120,000 tenants want to own their own home. Persona is targeted at them as well as first-time buyers struggling to get onto the housing ladder.
Home Group is involved with a variety of large-scale partnerships with developers and local authorities around the country. In the last financial year, it signed eight new joint ventures and partnership deals.
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In August of last year, the association launched a homeownership scheme intended to help tenants raise money for deposits. This included a Help to Buy ISA, with Home Group matching the government’s 25% contribution to top up tenants’ savings.
Brian Ham, executive director of development at Home Group, said: “We’ve got planning consents or are close to getting planning consents on all of those first five sites. Of the 10,000 homes over the next five years, we’ve got about two-thirds of the plots under control, either on land that we own or they’re in joint ventures or they’re legally optioned up with planning to secure.
“So we’ve got a 65% visibility on where the 10,000 homes over the next five years come from, which is a massive step forward from where we were in previous years, where we were a little bit more programme-driven and now we’re really looking two or three years ahead.
“Our research showed that house buyers value excellent customer service and see buying a house as something ‘special’. We have therefore created a customer proposition that offers affordability, quality and a personal touch.”
Turnover from sales across the sector was £2.8bn in 2015/16, the HCA reported in February of this year. This was an increase of 39% from the previous year. The Homes and Communities Agency has warned housing associations that appropriate risk management must accompany an increase in market sales.
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