A total of 20 new affordable homes at the Samarès Nurseries site, an Andium Homes project, are due to be completed next year – but will go on sale before the end of 2018, as part of a commitment to build 2,000 new homes by 2025.

Jonny Gough, head of financial planning at Andium, said that 240 inquiries had already been made for the new homes but another 35 new units should be built for purchase within the next two years.

‘The initial 20 which are due to be delivered in phase two in October 2019 are going to be the first [newly built] first-time buyer affordable units that we offer,’ he said. Phase One will consist only of rental units.

He said that a further 15 affordable flats at Belmont Court in town and another 20 houses at Samarès Nurseries were expected to be available by August 2020.

‘So that is 55 units by 2020. There will be 40 three-bed homes at Samarès and the units at Belmont Court will be a mixture of one-, two- and three-bedroom flats.

‘We are hoping to put 20 units up for sale at the end of the year. We can’t guarantee what the prices will be but if you look at the ones we have sold at De La Mare they were for around £335,000, which is very affordable compared to the average house prices which were recently published.’

He added that Andium also hoped to sell 40 units from its existing stock during this year.

At the end of July Andium had 1,098 Islanders registered on band five of its Affordable Housing Gateway, which is for people who wish to buy a reduced-price property.

Stephen Lilley, from Andium, said that the work at Samarès Nurseries, which will also include 160 rental units, was on schedule.

‘We will have 20 one-bed flats, 89 two-bed flats and then we will have 91 three-bed houses when it is completed. We started in May and we are looking to complete in August 2020,’ he said.

‘We are very much on programme. We are looking to get as many of the foundations for the units built as possible before the winter and the weather changes for the worse.

‘These are 200 units of the 2,000 which we are building by 2025 as part of our strategic business plan. We have got 770 of those 2,000 currently on site at various stages.’

Other projects currently under development by Andium include Le Squez phase four, which is for 151 units, and a 160-unit project at Ann Court.

The developer of the Samarès Nurseries site is GR Langlois and the contractor is Houzé Construction.

Last week Economic Affairs Scrutiny Panel chairman Deputy Kirsten Morel said that avenues other than building new stock need to be explored to provide affordable housing for Islanders.