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Property boss calls for Minister to visit region

A leading businessman has added his voice to calls for the government’s housing minister to visit the North East to see for himself how national housing policy often overlooks the region.

Property boss Ajay Jagota, of South Shields-based sales and lettings firm KIS believes national policies like Help to Buy are responsible for “getting the North East housing market moving again” but London-centric measures like the Mortgage Market Review may have “slammed on the brakes”.

Bill Midgley, Chair of Newcastle-based Leazes Homes, this week accused the government of “neglecting” housing in the North East and showing “a lack of understanding of the problems faced by our region”.

Inviting housing minister Brandon Lewis MP to the region he said: “We have a very specific situation here in the North East and successive London-centric policies have failed to acknowledge this over recent years.”

Ajay, founder and Chief Executive Officer of the UK’s most innovative sales and lettings business, wrote to then-Housing Minister Kris Hopkins MP in July to invite him to the region, repeating the offer to Mr Lewis when he succeeded him in the role later that month.

His concern was that new rules, known as the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) and introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority in April to ensure that borrowers could afford to pay back loans, would make it harder for people in the region to get mortgages.

Mortgage approvals have subsequently fallen by 16%.

Ajay said: “This summer the North East housing market was as strong as it has been in at least 6 years. Then it began to slow down. In the past two months it’s shrunk.

“I’m fully behind most national housing policy -Help to Buy was crucial in getting the North East housing market moving again - but the Mortgage Market Review was unnecessary for the North East and seems to have slammed on the brakes again.

“In my invitation to Brandon Lewis his summer I warned him that treating London problems as a national ones wouldn’t just cool the property market but cool the entire economy, and it’s starting to look that I was right.

“Affordability of mortgages was never the issue in the North East – things weren’t broke but they were fixed anyway, and now it seems to be getting harder for people in the region to get mortgages, which obviously makes it harder to buy and sell homes.

“That’s why it’s important that Brandon Lewis comes to the region to see what the situation is on the ground, and to hear from people like Bill Midgely and myself who know the region inside out how the government can target polices and resources better.”

KIS manage properties for landlords in every corner of the North East from branches across Tyne and Wear, and were named Letting Agent of the Year in the 2013 Landlord and Letting Awards. The firm expanded into residential sales in 2014.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ajay Jagota .