My
parents bought their first house in the 1960’s,
they were in their early 20’s. Interestingly, looking at some research by the
Post Office from a few years ago, in the 1960’s the average age people bought
their first house was 23. By the early 1970s, it had reached 27, rising to 28
in the early 1980’s.
This
year alone, 2,599 people in Huddersfield will turn 28 and 2,693 in 2017 .. and
dare I say 2,810 in 2018 .. year in year out the conveyor belt carries on ..
where are the Huddersfield youngsters going to live?
Ask
a Huddersfield ‘twenty something’ and they will say they do not expect to buy
until they are in their mid thirties - seven years later than the 1980’s. Some
people even say they will never be able to buy a property and the newspapers
have labelled them ‘Generation Rent’ as they are people born in the 1980s who have no hope of getting on the property ladder.
One of the major problems facing young Huddersfield people is the large deposit
needed to get a mortgage .. or is it?
The
average price paid for an apartment in Huddersfield over the last 12 months has
been £100,800 meaning our
first time buyer would need to save £5,040 as a deposit (as 95% mortgages have
been available to first time buyers since 2010) plus a couple of thousand for
solicitors and survey costs. A lot of money, but people don’t think anything
today of spending a couple of thousand pounds to go on holiday; the latest
iPhone upgrade or the latest 4K HD television. That amount could soon be saved
if these ‘luxuries’ were withheld over a couple of years but attitudes have
changed.
Official
figures, from the Office for National Statistics, show the average male in Kirklees
with a full-time job earns £516.40 per week whilst the average female salary is
£426.00 a week, meaning, even if one of them worked part time, they would still
comfortably be able to get a mortgage for an apartment.
I was reading a report/survey commissioned by Paragon Mortgages
from the autumn of last year. The thing that struck me was that when tenants
were asked about their long term housing plans, some 35% of participating
tenants intend to remain within the rental sector and 24% intended to buy a
house in the future, with the proportion of respondents citing the “unaffordability”
of housing as the reason for renting privately increasing from 69% to 74%.
However, time and time again, in the starter home category of
property (ie apartments), nine times out of ten the mortgage payments to buy a Huddersfield
property are cheaper than having to rent in Huddersfield. It is the tenant’s
perception that they believe they can’t buy, so choose not to. Renting is now a
choice. Tenants can upgrade to bigger and better properties and move up the
property ladder quicker than their parents or grand parents (albeit they don’t
own the property). Over the last decade, culturally in the UK, there has been a
change in the attitude to renting so, unless that attitude changes, I expect
that the private rental sector in Huddersfield (and the UK as a whole) is
likely to remain a popular choice for the next twenty plus years. With demand
for Huddersfield rental property unlikely to slow and newly formed households
continuing to choose the rental market instead of purchasing a property. I also
forecast that renting will continue to offer good value for money for tenants
and recommend landlords pursue professional advice and adopt a realistic approach
to rental increases to ensure that they are in line with inflation and any void
periods are curtailed. One such place for advice, comment and opinion is the Huddersfield
Property Blog http://huddersfieldproperty.blogspot.co.uk/
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