What’s the biggest street in Huddersfield (HD3)?

Well my recent articles about Huddersfield’s most moved street in the last 3 years and the Monopoly board article (the one where I listed the most valuable streets) caused quite a lot of interest locally, so I decided to see what else I could find out about the HD3 postcode area, and I have been able find out the biggest streets in the Huddersfield (HD3) postcode area.

Don’t worry, I will get back to some hard-hitting articles about the lack of new homes being built in Huddersfield, the trials and tribulations of being a Huddersfield buy-to-let landlord and the future of the Huddersfield property market .. yet in this article because of the previous positive comments, I wanted to give you what you, the Huddersfield homeowners and Huddersfield landlords asked about and wanted!

The biggest street in HD3, when it comes to the number of houses on it is New Hey Road, with 744 homes. In second place is Quarmby Road with 237 homes and in third is Longwood Road with 218 homes.

Not surprisingly. the most valuable street of the top 20 biggest streets is New Hey Road at £132.9m with an average value of £179,000 per property.

The street with the greatest number of movers in the last 3 years is also New Hey Road, yet its saleability rate was only 11.6%, with Blackthorn Drive having the highest saleability rate of 23.2%.

The full breakdown can be found in this chart below.

Street/Road	Number of Properties on the Street(s)	Total Value of Properties on the Street(s)	Average Value of Properties on the Street(s)	Number of Properties Sold on that street(s) in last 36 months	Saleability/Turn-over Rate in the last 3 years (# Houses divided by sales)
New Hey Road	744	£132,893,000	£179,000	86	11.6%
Quarmby Road	237	£30,546,000	£129,000	30	12.7%
Longwood Road	218	£23,483,000	£108,000	22	10.1%
Laund Road	211	£38,179,000	£181,000	28	13.3%
Longwood Gate	182	£25,136,000	£138,000	24	13.2%
Stoney Lane	162	£20,517,000	£127,000	12	7.4%
Scar Lane	160	£17,567,000	£110,000	20	12.5%
Blackthorn Drive	155	£32,412,000	£209,000	36	23.2%
Sycamore Avenue	145	£15,541,000	£107,000	5	3.4%
Goldington Avenue	144	£26,643,000	£185,000	11	7.6%
Crosland Road	141	£27,645,000	£196,000	14	9.9%
Halifax Road	141	£26,281,000	£186,000	19	13.5%
Wellington Street	139	£14,087,000	£101,000	22	15.8%
Prospect Road	136	£20,879,000	£154,000	26	19.1%
Chesil Bank	128	£12,717,000	£99,000	2	1.6%
Equilibrium	125	£16,690,000	£134,000	14	11.2%
Yew Tree Road	119	£23,139,000	£194,000	17	14.3%
Willwood Avenue	117	£11,362,000	£97,000	2	1.7%
Rufford Road	117	£12,225,000	£104,000	13	11.1%
Victory Avenue	117	£11,471,000	£98,000	6	5.1%

Note – if the same street name appears more than once in the postcode  - the number of houses has been amalgamated and averaged accordingly.

Yet, did you really think I wouldn’t get at all serious ..

The basic rudiments of the Huddersfield property market remain principally healthy in many parts of Huddersfield, yet the existing political environment means that the vital element of confidence has been diminished slightly in certain parts, and that is triggering a minority of potential property purchasers and house-sellers to vacillate, yet with unemployment at an all-time low, a record number of people with a job, ultra-low interest rates and decent mortgage availability (with the Banks and Building Societies tending to drop mortgage rates instead of increasing them), those Huddersfield first time buyers (and especially Huddersfield buy-to-let landlords) who have adjourned their next house purchase because of perceived political uncertainty should be reminded that talking to many of my fellow Huddersfield agents they have more homes on their books than at any time for the last three or four years, so there is a greater choice of Huddersfield properties to call your next home/BTL investment with a potential of securing a great property deal in the next month or so.

Irrespective of what happens with Brexit, Huddersfield people will still need a roof over their heads and as I have mentioned on a number of occasions, I have proved beyond doubt we aren’t building enough homes both locally in Huddersfield and nationally. If supply is limited and demand increases (as the population grows and we get older), prices in the medium to long term can only go in one direction. Upwards!

So, whatever happens with BoJo and Brexit – why wait, because once we get over that hurdle, there will just be another hurdle and another hurdle and by which time – we will be in 2029 and you would have missed the boat. We survived the Global Financial Crash, 3-day week in 1970s’, hyperinflation etc etc …  yet the choice is yours.

How Many Huddersfield Homeowners Have Paid Their Mortgage Off?

The Government’s Annual Housing Survey is 50 years old this year.  It has taken a snap shot of the UK’s property market every year since 1969 and in the recently published report for 2018, it wasn’t a surprise that owner occupation is still the most predominant tenure, yet now more people own their home without a mortgage rather than having a mortgage as the number people buying their first home (obviously with a mortgage) has declined since the Millennium.  The report also shows homeowners (mortgaged and owned outright) are, on average, older than renters and between the homeowners themselves, those who are mortgage free are older than those with a mortgage.

Looking at the most recent of data for Kirklees, I wanted to see how we compared to the national picture. Therefore, focusing on the main 4 tenures of owned outright, owned with a mortgage, social housing (i.e. Council Housing and Housing Association) and private rented, this is what I found out...

Kirklees - Tenure by Age
Age	Owned Outright	Owned with Mortgage	Social Housing	Private Rented
Age 24 & Under	3.7%	10.2%	25.8%	60.3%
Age 25 to 34	6.0%	43.3%	15.0%	35.7%
Age 35 to 49	12.1%	57.4%	13.1%	17.4%
Age 50 to 64	40.3%	36.7%	13.2%	9.7%
Age 65 to 74	67.9%	8.3%	17.0%	6.9%
Age 75 +	67.2%	4.1%	20.2%	8.5%

Looking at the stats, you can see that homeownership in Huddersfield and council area as a whole (both owned and owned with a mortgage combined) is lower in the 25yo to 34yo age range compared to 35yo to 49yo, yet roll the clock back to the 1980s and opposite was the case.

So how many local homeowners have paid off their mortgage?

47.5% of Huddersfield and Kirklees homeowners are mortgage free, yet of the 35,672 households that are owned by 50yo to 64yo in Huddersfield and the Kirklees area, 47.7% of those people still have a mortgage.

As most people bought their first house in their early to mid 20’s back in the 1980’s, this shows that a lot of Huddersfield and Kirklees people must have re-mortgaged in the past and extended their borrowings (otherwise they should have paid their mortgage off now).

The other thing that concerns me is the 4.1% of the Huddersfield and Kirklees over 75yo homeowners that have a mortgage.

If you amalgamate the national historic ranges going back to 1977 (see the graph below “UK Households with a Mortgage by Age – 1977 to 2018” and note the age bands are slightly different to the recent local stats because they were carried out under different government departments), you will see the number of people who own a property with a mortgage has been dropping since the Millennium, yet nationally the number of people who own a property has remained roughly the same, even with the growth of the private rented sector.

Reports in the industry suggest that in the next ten years that will increase, as nearly 1 in 5 homeowners will be still paying off their mortgage after retirement. One of the reasons behind that will be the legacy of interest-only loans and delayed first-time buying as we become more and more like Germany in our house ownership models, where people naturally rent their homes until their 50’s and then buy when they inherit money from their parents.

In the meantime, demand for Huddersfield rental properties will only increase … so good news for Huddersfield Buy to Let landlords and indirectly Huddersfield homeowners as well.