That isn’t a typo, of the 69,144 households in Huddersfield, 20,007 of
those properties don’t only have one spare bedroom, but two spare bedrooms! …
and it is this topic I want to talk about this week, my Huddersfield Property Market
Blog readers – because this could be the cure for Huddersfield’s housing crisis. The fundamental problem of the Huddersfield housing
‘crisis’, is the fact that the supply of homes to live in has not historically
met demand, increasing property values (and in turn rents), thus ensuring home
ownership becomes an unattainable ambition for the twenty something’s of Huddersfield.
Call me a realist, but it’s obvious that either demand needs to drop or
supply needs to rise to stop this trend getting worse for the generations to
come. Don’t get me wrong, I admire
Downing Street’s plans to build 200,000 starter
homes which will be offered to first time buyers under 40 with a minimum
20% discount price. However, the
building of starter homes on current building sites, where new homes builders already
have to build a certain number of affordable ‘starter’ homes at the moment
under a different scheme, does not increase the stock of new ‘starter’ homes,
it simply replaces one affordable scheme with another.
One option that could resolve the housing crisis is if the Government literally
looked closer to home, concentrating on matching households with the
appropriate sized home.
In Huddersfield, 45,019
households have one spare bedroom and of these, 20,007 have two or more spare
bedrooms.
This compares to 3,389 households in Huddersfield that are overcrowded (i.e.
there are more people than bedrooms in the property).
Looking specifically at the homeowners of Huddersfield, 17,411 owner
occupied Huddersfield houses have one spare bedroom. Now having a spare bedroom is not considered
a luxury. However, in addition to those 17,411
households with one spare bedroom, there are on top, a further 17,471 owner
occupied Huddersfield households with two or more spare bedrooms.
Therefore, I am beginning to see there is the spare capacity in the Huddersfield
housing market. Principally, I will concentrate
on the group that makes up the bulk of this category, the owner occupiers of
large properties, in their 60’s and 70’s, where the kids flew the nest back in
the 80’s and 90’s. They call it
‘downsizing’, when you sell a big property, where the extra bedrooms are no
longer required, to move into a smaller and, usually, less expensive property.
However, there are many explanations
why these individuals do not downsize. These people have lived in the same house for
30, 40 even 50 years, and as one matures in life, many people do not want to depart
from what they see as the family home. Much
time has been invested in making friends in the area and it’s nice to have all
those rooms in case every grandchild decided to visit, at the same time, and they
brought their friends! But on a more
serious note, more and more people are beginning to downsize earlier, but in my
opinion, not at a fast enough rate. As
the years go one, we will have a situation where younger families will be
living in smaller and smaller houses, whilst all the large houses with a couple
of 70 something empty-nesters rattling around them! I believe the Government should put more weight
behind downsizing, because with the right incentives, many could be encouraged to think again and make the
spare rooms available.
.. and it would have to be incentives, as the using the stick (instead
of the carrot) would be political suicide for any party, especially the Tory’s. One option is to allow retired downsizers not
to pay stamp duty on the new property, saving them thousands of pounds and
another for the planners to work with builders to build not only starter homes
for under 40’s, but also have housing built just for retired downsizers ... or
is this one step too far in ‘social engineering’?
The fact is not enough properties are being built in Huddersfield, and
with population rising at a faster rate, something needs to be done. However, I believe the Huddersfield
population (and in fact the whole of the UK) is slowly turning into a more
European model of house ownership. In
Europe, most people rent in their 20’s and 30’s, only buying in their 40’s and
50’s, when they inherit money from the sale of their late parent’s property. That
works particularly well in Germany and I can’t see why it can’t work here. In the meantime, there is an opportunity in
the coming 20 years for people to supplement their pension by buying smaller
properties to rent out, as that is where the demand will be in the next few
decades in Huddersfield. For even more
thoughts on the Huddersfield Property Market – visit the Huddersfield Property
Blog http://huddersfieldproperty.blogspot.co.uk/
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