Over the past year, Northern Ireland saw a 14.3% increase in the price of existing housing stock, the largest across all UK regions, according to data released by the Nationwide Building Society.
Development finance lender Blend Network says that despite growing concerns around the cost of living, compared to prepandemic levels the price of existing housing stock in Northern Ireland has rocketed by a third – far above the price increase seen across any other UK region.
Blend is expanding lending operations in this part of Ireland, where it has backed SME property developers since 2018. That year, they funded the largest property loan at the time under HMRC’s Bank Referral Scheme to support a scheme in Bangor.
Philip Anderson, Blend’s area lending manager, says the organisation is a nimble and agile specialist lender where everyone shares a common goal – to support property developers in unlocking the funding they need to build more homes.
“In Northern Ireland, the number of houses being built and delivered is much lower than it should be. The Minister for Communities Deirdre Hargey has spoken of the need to deliver 100,000 homes over a 15-year period. However, the total number of new dwelling completions in the region in the first three months of the year plummeted to 1,571. Funding, or rather the lack of it, is a key challenge for Northern Irish developers,” he said. “We are backed by committed funding lines from family offices and institutional investors. That means our source of capital is flexible, and flexibility is what property developers need.”