Garden Communities, Urban Extensions and Strategic Land

Property Market Analysis

Maidstone Borough Council

Our Role
AspinallVerdi was appointed by Maidstone Borough Council to provide viability advice in respect of the three proposals to deliver new garden communities in the Borough. Consultants Stantec (formerly PBA) was also engaged on the project to provide advice on planning and infrastructure provision.

  We were specifically commissioned to: engage with Garden Community landowners, strategic land promoters and developers; carry out a high-level appraisal of the New Garden Community proposals; and make recommendations in respect of the viability and deliverability.

Work Undertaken

We consulted with the site promoters, landowners and developers to understand the proposals in terms of market/uses; financial viability and funding; infrastructure; S106 allowance; delivery mechanisms, existing use values, expected premiums and minimum land value expectations.

 We made appropriate adjustments to moderate the assumptions and inputs provided by the developers and appraised each of the Garden Communities.

 In order to ‘de-risk’ delivery of the New Garden Communities from the Council’s position, we analysed the buffer / surplus compared to the scale of the S106 obligations and strategic infrastructure required to deliver the scheme.

Outcome

AspinallVerdi used a bespoke MS Excel model to test the viability of sites of up to 5,000 units. This enabled to provide robust advice to the Council on the viability of the schemes and whether the allowances for infrastructure, affordable housing and policy were sufficient to cover their proposals

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