Image: legalandgeneral.com
Legal & General (L&G) is now expected to deliver its first factory-built homes in the third quarter of this year, later than previously planned.
The company aims to produce thousands of homes a year across eight production lines from its factory in Selby, near Leeds.
It unveiled its first modular housing prototype, a two-storey, two-bedroom home in July last year, when it said it expected to deliver its first homes in the first half of 2018.
However, a spokeswoman told Construction Manager that the first homes would now be delivered in the third quarter of the year – most likely at some point between the end of August and September – as L&G continued with the pre-production process and testing.
"We have got a strong pipeline lined up for 2019. The factory didn’t exist a couple of years ago so we are just making sure that everything is absolutely in place and ready to go. We are very much of the mindset that we don’t need to rush something out."
L&G announced its modular plan in 2016, saying its 550,000 sq ft facility would be the world’s largest modular housing factory. It aims to deliver 3,500 homes a year.
Meanwhile, L&G announced two appointments to its housebuilding arm, Legal & General Homes.
Chris Sly has been appointed as the new finance director, joining from Berkeley Homes, while Matthew Stubblefield has been made the company’s new health and safety officer.
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Let’s imagine that this is a factory producing no-frills jet aircraft, let’s call it the Legal & General Early Bird airline aimed at discount flyer’s everywhere. Allow me to ask you a question: “Would you purchase a flight ticket?” and for millions the quick answer is ‘No’. And so, it is with prepack houses, the USA and Canada have attempted to sell the homes arriving on a truck idea for years, and they’ve all flopped. Why? Because even low income, first time home buyers want quality, they want visible tradition and workmanship with sizable living space and kerb appeal. For this good reason: Legal & General cannot make this concept work, and within 10 years the adverse word-of-mouth backlash against their dolls house ideas will force this factory into closure. For instance, would you want to buy a used pre-pack home, wait 15 years and you can have a choice of thousands, all unsellable and spoken about as unwanted trailer trash communities. I predict that quick-build will fall flat on its face, and all over Britain these quick-build housing emergency homes will be empty, abandoned and vandalised. Another problem will be that the mortgage debt will be far greater than their expected resale value and people will hand in the keys and walk away.
The cost of housing is dominated by planning gain. When this changes the cost of a plot of land big enough for a house from less than £1000 to nearly £200,000 then the building cost becomes much less important.
Were the govrnment to change the planning system to minimise planning gain then construction costs would become much more important.
We could aim at starter homes for £30,000 not £300,000. Of course that might cause house prices to fall and trouble some banks