According to Knight Frank, the new Mayor of London’s main pledges to residential housing in the Capital include help more Londoners afford their own homes, design developments with crime reduction in mind as well as protecting green spaces.

Boris Johnson’s housing manifesto contains several detailed policy pledges: release Greater London Authority-owned land and £130m from the Regional Housing Pot to launch a new ‘First Steps Housing Scheme’, which will be open to first-time buyers frozen out of Government schemes; work with the boroughs to build 50,000 more affordable homes by 2011; invest £60m from the Regional Housing Pot to start renovating the capital’s 84,205 empty properties to help low-income Londoners; incentivise the boroughs to release dormant housing to those stuck in bed and breakfast accommodation; work with local councils to deliver more family-sized homes and increase shared ownership schemes for low-income families by a third amongst others.

Liam Bailey, Knight Frank head of residential research, said: “The main policy areas being articulated surround the objective to improve affordability. There is a problem here, in that targeting one group over another in terms of access to housing or the receipt of subsidy does little more than shift the affordability problem around the population. Pouring subsidy into the system without raising development volumes will actually harm other groups by raising the cost of housing generally.

“The ambition of Boris to raise the volume of housing completions in order to ease London’s housing crisis is about to hit the market reality that over the next few years overall development volumes will be far lower than national and local government would ideally like due to market conditions. The number of year-on-year new build sales have been at least 25% lower so far in 2008, if purchasers continue to find difficulties in accessing mortgage finance, sale numbers will remain low and developers will not be encouraged to bring land forward for development.”