Nearly 13 babies have been born for
every new home that has been built in Kirklees since 2012, deepening the Huddersfield
housing shortage.
This discovery is an important
foundation for my concerns about the future of the Huddersfield property market
- when you consider the battle that todays twenty and thirty somethings face in
order to buy their first home and get on the Huddersfield property ladder. This
is particularly ironic as these Huddersfield youngsters’ are being born in an age
when the number of new babies born to new homes was far lower.
This will mean the babies being born now, who will become
the next generation’s first-time buyers will come up against even bigger
competition from a greater number of their peers unless we move to long term
fixes to the housing market, instead of the short term fixes that successive
Governments have done since the 1980’s.
Looking at the most up to date data for the
area covered by Kirklees Council, the numbers of properties-built versus the
number of babies born together with the corresponding ratio of the two metrics
…
It can be seen that in 2016, 9.83 babies
had been born in Kirklees for every home that had been built in the five years
to the end of 2016 (the most up to date data). Interestingly, that ratio
nationally was 2.9 babies to every home built in the ‘50s and 2.4 in the ‘70s.
I have seen the unaudited 2017 statistics and the picture isn’t any better! (I will share those when they are released
later in the year).
Our children, and their children, will
be placed in an unprecedented and unbelievably difficult position when wanting
to buy their first home unless decisive action is taken. You see it doesn’t
help that with life expectancy growing year on year, this too is also placing
excessive pressure on homes to live in availability, with normal population
growth nationally (the number of babies born less the number of people passing
away) accumulative by two people for every one home that was built since the
start of this decade.
Owning one’s home is a measure many
Brits to aspire to. The only long-term measure that will help is the building
of more new homes on a scale not seen since the 50’s and 60’s, which means we
would need to aim to at least double the number of homes we build annually.
In the meantime, what does this mean for
Huddersfield landlords and homeowners? Well the demand for rental properties in
Huddersfield in the short term will remain high and until the rate of building grows
substantially, this means rents will remain strong and correspondingly,
property values will remain robust.