Would it surprise you to know that in some parts of Huddersfield,
predominantly prosperous areas with high proportions of mature residents, the housing
crisis is not one of supply so much as dispersal of that supply? Theoretically,
in Huddersfield there are more than enough bedrooms for everyone - it’s just they
are disproportionately spread among the population, with some better-off and more
mature households living in large Huddersfield homes with many spare bedrooms, and
some younger Huddersfield families being over crowded.
Yet it is not the fault of these well-off mature residents
that this is the current situation. Let’s be frank, Huddersfield doesn’t have
enough housing full stop (otherwise we wouldn’t have the large Council House
waiting list and all the younger generations renting instead of buying), but
up until now it hasn't been clear that Huddersfield actually also has the
wrong types of properties.
We're not building the smaller homes in Huddersfield that are
needed for the starter homes and we aren’t building enough bungalows for the
older generations, so they can be released from their larger Huddersfield
homes, thus allowing those growing Huddersfield families to move up the ladder.
Looking at the stats for Huddersfield, and HD1 in
particular...
When I compared Huddersfield (HD1) with the regional stats
of the HD postcode, the locality has proportionally 133% more apartments, yet 65.8%
less detached homes. Looking nationally, Huddersfield (HD1) has proportionally 96.1%
more terraced/town houses and proportionally 67.5% less apartments.
I am finding that there has been a shortage of smaller townhouses
and smaller apartments being built in Huddersfield over the last 20 years, because
most of the new builds in the last couple of decades seem to have been either
large executive houses or the apartments that have been built were of the
larger (and posher) variety, even though demand for households (as life styles
have changed in the 21st Century) have been more towards the lower
to middle sized households.
The builders do want to build, but there's a deficiency of
building land in Huddersfield, and if there's a shortage of building land, then
of course new homes builders build whatever gives them the biggest profit. The
properties that give them the largest profit are the biggest and most expensive
properties and they certainly are not bungalows as they take up too much land. So
who can blame them?
Yet would it surprise you to know that it’s not a lack of
space (look at all the green you see when flying over the UK), it’s the
planning system. Green belts must be observed, but only 1.2% (yes 1.2% -
that isn’t a typo) is built on in this country as a whole with homes - we need
the planners to release more land (and then force/encourage builders to build
on it - not sit on it). Another problem is that of the smaller new homes that
have been built, most of them have been snapped up for renting, not owning.
So, what’s the answer? Build more Council houses? Yes,
sounds great but the local authority haven’t enough money to cut the grass
verges, let alone spend billions on new homes in Huddersfield. The Government
did relax the planning laws a few years ago, for example for changing office
space into residential use, yet they could do more as currently new homes
builders have no incentive to build inexpensive homes or bungalows that the
system needs to make a difference.
So, what does this mean for Huddersfield homeowners and Huddersfield
landlords?
Changing the dynamics of the Huddersfield, regional and
national property market will only change in decades, not years. The simple fact is we are living longer, and
we need 240,000 to 250,000 houses a year to stand still with demand, let alone
start to eat into 30 years of under building where the average has been just
under 170,000 households a year.
That means, today as a country, we have a pent-up demand of
2.25m additional households and we need to build a further 4.2m households on
top of that figure for population growth between 2019 and 2039. So, irrespective
of whether we have short term blip in the property market in the next 12/18
months, investing in property is, and always will be, a great investment as
demand will always outstrip supply.
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