The Christmas season didn't do much to dent Scottish planners' workload, with a total of 1244 units approved in December. In the housing associations table, Garston Urban Village scored a major approval, and Persimmon and George Wimpey made headway in the private sector.

Approvals into the new year dwindled virtually across the board – with none in Northern Ireland – but London had a much better January. In the private housebuilders table the Gladedale Group got the most green lights at 247 units.

A mild season and plenty of work kept new-build completions buoyant in November and December, with the South-east particularly healthy. But the winter chill set in across the country with the January snow …

This is the second of our buyer data pages, based on SmartNewHomes' New Homes Demand Index, a monthly monitor of demand for new homes in England and Wales. Below is the average price homeseekers were willing to pay in their region between November and January. Prices tended to even out slightly with a 12.6% drop in London and a boost in East Anglia, plus a lowering in demand for penthouses countered by an increase in terraces.

Methodology

The New Homes Demand Index is based on enquiries recorded on the SmartNewHomes.com website and records the price people are willing to pay for new homes, by region and type of property. If willingness to pay is increasing, then clearly demand for new homes is improving and this is likely to lead to higher realised prices and better deals for housebuilders. The Demand Index also tracks migration between regions. By subtracting the number of users based in a region from the number of searches in that region, one gets a net balance that reflects an overall propensity to move out of or into a region. SmartNewHomes.com is a registered subsidiary of Smart Media Services, a marketing business working exclusively within the residential property sector. With more than 5,000 new homes from more than 1,600 developments on line, the site represents the largest database of individual new homes on the internet. SmartNewHomes.com currently attracts more than 400,000 visits a month.

Postscript

This data is provided by Glenigan, the development monitoring service. More than 10,000 new UK housing projects are tracked by Glenigan and this information is used by housebuilders to quickly spot new sites and to identify potential land sales as soon as they become available. For details contact Marcus Oughton, projects editor: marcus.oughton@glenigan.emap.com For a FREE TRIAL to Glenigan's service visit:

Related files/tables