Building the right homes
We strongly encourage the Executive to adopt more ambitious housing targets of at least 150,000 new homes over the next fifteen years to address the significant gap between supply and demand and to reform the planning system to ensure that delivery of new homes, including size, cost and tenure, is evidence-led and responds directly to demand.
The Draft Programme for Government states that a housing supply strategy will be developed to provide a framework for the actions needed to increase supply across all tenures, however, the only solid commitment to building at this stage is for 800 new shared ownership homes per year.
Regulate agents to grow the sector
To improve productivity and the quality of service within the property industry, we encourage the Executive to consider introducing the regulation of property agents. Currently, there are no qualification requirements and few enforceable standards that agents must sign up to, so a key element of regulation must be the requirement to be qualified and undertake regular continual professional development.
The Department for Communities is considering introducing regulations for letting agents like those in Scotland and Wales. Propertymark recommends o all property agents, covering sales, lettings, valuation, non-residential, inventory management and property management should be regulated.
Introduce mandatory CMP
Currently, landlords and tenants have no guarantee that an agent will be a member of a Client Money Protection (CMP) scheme, leaving them at risk of having rent payments and deposits lost or stolen.
CMP schemes require agents to hold all client money in a separate account, protecting money that is owed to or has been paid by the client Additionally, tenants and landlords can claim for any outstanding deposit or rent payments made to be repaid.
Support for energy efficiency
Retrofitting homes in Northern Ireland is likely to be more expensive for landlords and homeowners because the average house prices and rents are lower in the country compared to the rest of the UK.
To make any headway, it is therefore essential that landlords and homeowners are given clear guidance on when energy efficiency requirements will be introduced, and adequate lead time is allowed to retrofit their properties. To ensure that retrofit plans are effective, landlords and homeowners need flexible funding programmes where they can adopt energy-saving measures that will have the greatest impact on their homes at an affordable rate.
