Making better use of exisiting housing stock

Notices

Savings customers - the interest rates on many of our variable rate savings products will be decreasing from 6 January 2025. Find out more

We will be emailing or writing to you shortly to let you know of how these decreases affect you. In the meantime, you can see all of these changes here.
Mortgage customers - our Managed Mortgage Rate (MMR) will decrease by 0.25% from 20 January 2025. Find out more:

From 20 January 2025, we'll be decreasing our Managed Mortgage Rates (MMR) by 0.25%. All on-sale discounted variable product rates and other details, including representative examples displayed on our website, have been updated to reflect these lower rates.
We will be writing to existing customers who have been impacted by this change, shortly, with details relevant to them.
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Rate changes following Bank of England decision to decrease its Bank Rate by 0.25% to 4.75% on 7 November 2024. Find out more

Savings: Interest rates for Windfall Bond and Tracker Savings Bond will decrease by 0.25% from 1 December 2024. We will be writing to all customers individually to confirm the new rates.
Mortgages: Tracker mortgages will change on 25 December 2024 and we will write to customers individually with revised payment details where the new rate exceeds the minimum rate (or ‘floor’) already applying to their mortgage.
(Notice updated 08/11)

At Family Building Society, housing policy is a topic close to our hearts.

In an effort to tackle the housing crisis, the Government’s target to build 1.5million new houses during it’s five year term is welcomed. But as well as building new homes, we, alongside many others in the sector, believe effort should also be on repurposing existing buildings, like empty offices and shops, or developing brownfield sites.

Mark Bogard, CEO, attended a roundtable ‘How to find more homes without building anew’ held by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Led by Eleanor Young, editor of the RIBA Journal, he participated in a discussion with designers, planners and other housing experts.

There are a lot of different initiatives, but until departments, be they government departments or in councils, join up, they're just pulling in completely different directions at the same time. Someone needs to have an overarching vision for planning and delivery (Mark Bogard).

The key themes to emerge from the discussion included:

Make it easier to downsize
Create new housing opportunities in the original new towns
Repurpose existing buildings as homes.

Read the full article here

Architects can help ensure that the right homes are in the right places by talking clearly about cost – and when they put forward different options for schemes that cost different amounts of money, explaining what those differences are in words which make sense to the local authority or to the economist or funder (Christine Whitehead, London School of Economics).

Planning needs to be more visual and architects need to be more place-based. It's important for designers to do work on the wider geographies, beyond the site, and work with other professions, because we do know that the place, as well as good buildings, produces value (Tony Crook, University of Sheffield).

We previously commissioned the London School of Economics to work on a set of independent reports exploring the contradictions and perverse incentives inherent in the current policy framework, putting forward a roadmap for a more coherent, strategic approach. You can view the reports here.

Making better use of existing housing stock

At Family Building Society, housing policy is a topic close to our hearts.