How much will a home in Forest City cost?

On current costings, a four-bed family home in Forest City is expected to sell for under £350,000, a three-bed for around £230,000, and a two-bed for around £180,000. For comparison, the average terraced house in Cambridge—22 minutes away by rail—costs £494,000 on the official UK House Price Index.

These are not small homes. The four-bed is 1,720 square feet over three storeys with a private garden, far larger than a typical British new build. The prices are possible because the land is bought at close to farmland prices—secured through voluntary options before city status inflates its value—and because building at city scale drives the cost per square foot down to a fraction of what South East developers pay. The price covers everything, including the land, and still returns a profit to the development corporation. No subsidy. Just cheap land and scale.

Buyers own their home; the Community Land Trust owns the land beneath it. Because homes can only be sold back to the city, the discount can't be flipped for profit—it's passed on, permanently, to the next generation. We focus on the four-bed because a large part of our mission is to enable young people to have families again; the lack of affordable four-bed homes is a major contributor to birth-rate decline in Britain.

Around 30% of homes will be for rent, so the city works for people at every stage of life, not just buyers.