New house builds at an all-time low

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The National House Building Council, which registers all new starts, says that only 171 private homes were started in the capital in February - a 15 per cent drop on the previous record low of 200 registered in January.

It is also only 20 per cent of the number of new homes being built this time last year, when 938 private homes were started.

The situation in the rest of the South-East is equally dramatic with only 517 homes started in the region in February, down from 1,385 in the same month last year.

Nationally, the NHBC received only 7,931 applications to start new homes in the private sector in the three months to the end of February - 72 per cent lower than the 28,533 registrations in the same period a year ago.

The NHBC's chief executive Imtiaz Farookhi said: "The private sector continues to be worst affected, with applications to build new homes in this sector almost three quarters lower in the three months to the end of February than the same period a year ago."

The number of completions in both private and public sectors totalled 26,918 in the three months to the end of February - a third lower than the same period a year ago.

The average number of daily sales of new homes in the UK from December to February was only 333 - 37 per cent lower than the 525 sold daily in the same period a year ago.

The huge falls have been caused by the lack of availability of mortgages and the fact that would-be buyers still expect prices to come down further before committing to buy.

In February a Parliamentary committee concluded that the Government's target of three million new homes to be built by 2020, two million of them by 2016, is now totally unachievable, as it would require housebuilding to be three times the current rate.