Breaking the Cycle: This Developer Increased Completions by 38%

Despite falling housebuilding targets and completions, Southern housing associations have just completed a record 1,300 homes. 

This is on the back of a wider £2.3bn plan to build 10,000 homes over the next seven years. The increase from Aster Group was just below 40% year on year, setting a new benchmark for others to follow. 

Stimulating growth in this sector is essential, and the unaudited update could go a long way toward proving that reaching ambitious targets is still achievable. The newly built 1300 homes add to the growing list of 32000 owned by the association.

Growing the stock to this size has comfortably placed them in the top 10 developing associations after a major increase from 939 homes in the previous year. 

Further investment will see £2.3bn assigned to deliver 10000 homes over the next seven years, and 4000 by 2025. 

Focussing on affordable and social rents, over 50% was assigned for this tenure and 446 were built for shared ownership, just 17 for market rent. 

Amanda Williams, chief investment officer at Aster Group, said: “With the cost-of-living crisis continuing to bite, our focus is on making sure we’re maintaining our diverse pipeline of new affordable homes across our regions and ultimately delivering excellent services to the customers living in them so they can live comfortably and with certainty, now and into the future.”

This is welcomed news across the sector as an escalating number of associations are scaling back investments due to financial issues and supply chain issues. Echoed across the G15 Group last week, members were warned that developments will be cut by up to 33% without further government support.