Connells’ New Homes division in the South has seen a huge increase in the number of new homes developments coming onto the market in recent months, according to its regional director for New Homes, Tom Bateson. Indeed, in the last month alone, Connells New Homes has been instructed on 26 new developments across the South of England.

Connells attributes the upturn to the surplus of demand over supply for properties in the current housing market, a feature which has dominated since the start of the year. Housebuilders have striven to respond to greater demand from buyers with areas such as Basingstoke, Dorchester, Southampton and Andover seeing the greatest concentration of new homes building activity.   

“Connells works with most of the region’s housebuilders, from large national developers to smaller, local builders,” says Tom. “We’ve seen a huge number of new sites coming onto the market in recent months, indeed September was our busiest month for new instructions of the year so far. This is undoubtedly the result of growing momentum in the new homes market as the year has progressed, as well as Connells’ position as one of the region’s leading agents for new homes with dedicated new homes experts.”

Interestingly, the South of England has seen a wide spread of new homes developments from just a couple of new homes on a site to large scale developments for hundreds of homes. The Government’s changes to permitted development rights allowing greater flexibility to change commercial to residential new homes sites has opened further opportunities for housebuilders in 2014 and Connells’ land and new homes teams have played a key role in advising builders looking to develop former commercial sites.

“The need for more new homes is well documented, so giving developers the opportunity to consider commercial as well as residential land has been a key stepping stone this year,” says Tom. “As an example, we recently sold a collection of 63 new apartments in Basingstoke at Wella House which was a former commercial site. These properties were sold in a matter of weeks demonstrating the huge, and often untapped, demand for new homes in the South.”