Daily Mail attacks housebuilder bosses helping themselves to “mate’s-rates homes”

Building tycoons using discounts to snap up family homes
Bosses of British building firms are buying up homes from own developments They are taking advantage of company perks including staff discount schemes Many of the homes were earmarked for young families and first-time buyers It comes as Britain is currently facing a ‘chronic shortage’ of affordable homes Bosses at some of Britain’s biggest building firms are using company perks to buy cut-price properties at their own developments.

The Daily Mail yesterday highlighted housebuilder CEOs helping themselves to new-build houses as a perk.

Cash has flowed into the housebuilders owing to the taxpayer-fuelled Help To Buy scheme, while:

“Some others have seen their profits inflated by taking cash from leasehold deals attached to the properties,” the paper says.

Pete Redfern, 46, the beleaguered Taylor Wimpey who is said to be worth £20 million, has bought five homes saving himself £80,000.

Curiously, Mr Redfern’s portfolio includes a £709,599 flat at the Mill in West Hampstead, north London.

This was one of the Taylor Wimpey London sites where Roger Southam, the chairman of the Leasehold Advisory Service, controlled the site and was a director of the residents management company until 2015.

Mr Southam and his then company Chainbow was ejected by Taylor Wimpey London and the freeholder Adriatic Land from other sites following the intervention of LKP.

Taylor Wimpey leaseholders ask: if the management company is ours, how do we oust Roger Southam?

Steve Morgan, the Redrow founder and chairman, has bought six homes off his company for £860,000 which failed to failed as affordable housing.

Ted Ayres, who runs Bellway, used a shareholder discount to save £34,000 on a family home at a development in Welling, Kent.

And David Thomas, the 54-year-old boss of Barratt Developments, bought a £579,995 show home in Surrey under a ‘sale and licence back’ deal that allows him to rent the house back to his own company for two years.