Half of Huddersfield Homeowners Move Again Within 6 Years and 27 Weeks – Why?

 In Britain, there are 27,071,500 households, of which 17,044,450 are owned, which are worth a total of £3,925,865,212,950 (£3.92 trillion). Over the last 5 years, an average of 86,096 properties sell each month, meaning just over a million UK households move home per year. Therefore, the average British homeowner moves every 16 years 5 months.

 

These statistics refute a common hypothesis that British neighbourhoods are becoming more fleeting and transitory. On the face of it, they appear to show that, once you have succeeded to buy a property you can call home, there isn’t much motivation to move again.

 

So, aren’t people moving home so much?

 

Could it be put down to a certain sense of complacency or apathy to moving home? Whereas we might love our home in Huddersfield, most of you (including myself) still want to ‘better our lives’ with a bigger house, better area etc, which typically requires us to climb up the Huddersfield property ladder.

 

Yet with Huddersfield house prices having risen by 195.1% in the last 20 years, the cost of going up the next rung on the Huddersfield property ladder is prohibitive.

Everyone harks back to the 1980’s, when we had an upbeat booming property market as a backcloth, Brits moved home every eight years; so now with the average at just over 16 years this equates to each British homeowner moving around three to four times in their adult lifetime. Maybe we should all call our homes ‘Dunroamin’ and be done with it!

 

Or does it? 

 

We have all heard the phrase ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’ … well the stats mentioned above hide some amazing features of the British property market. When homeowners get into their 50’s and 60’s, their tendency to move home drops like a stone. The average length of time a homeowner without a mortgage moves home is 24 years and 7 months (and just under 7 out of ten outright homeowners i.e. without a mortgage are 65 years old or older). 

 

Yet, homeowners with a mortgage move on average every 10 years and 11 weeks.

 

So, whilst I cannot determine who has a mortgage and who doesn’t, I can look at how quickly people move home in Huddersfield.  I have looked at the last 50 property sales in Huddersfield, and I have found some interesting findings.

 

On average Huddersfield homeowner only move every 14 years

and 9 weeks.

 

Nothing interesting about that you might say, when compared to the national average ... yet the devil is in the detail.

 

There appears to be a two-speed Huddersfield property market … look at the top 25% of Huddersfield home movers, and then the next slice … these Huddersfield people are moving home really quickly, yet the gap for the next two slices widens tremendously.

 

·         Top 25% quickest Huddersfield home movers move every 2 years & 39 weeks

·         The next 25% quickest Huddersfield home movers move every 10 years

·         The next 25% quickest Huddersfield home movers move every 18 years & 21 weeks

·         Whilst top 25% slowest Huddersfield home movers only move every 25 years

 

When looking at the properties that fall into the later bands (i.e. the ones that don’t move/sell so often), they tend to be the larger properties where the homeowners have lived for 25/30 years plus.

 

The lesson we all should learn is that once people get into their 50’s and 60’s, their propensity to move home drops considerably. This means the properties on the lower rungs of the Huddersfield property ladder do appear to sell quickly (as they are occupied by younger homeowners) yet once Huddersfield people get older, their tendency to move diminishes. This puts a roadblock on the younger generation wanting to buy the larger Huddersfield properties these mature homeowners live in.

 

What is holding the older generation back from selling and downsizing to free up homes for families that desperately need them? Some of it will be apathy, some of it will be holding on to the home that they brought their family up in, yet the bottom line is…

 

46.5% of the homes owned in Britain have

two or more spare bedrooms.

 

As a nation, we need to rethink how we can encourage older homeowners to sell their large homes to release them to the younger families that desperately need them. Some suggest tax breaks, yet the Government won’t be in the mood to give huge tax breaks as the measures to protect the economy over the last 12 months will ultimately need to be paid back.

 

One thing I do know, we as a Country have seen (and will continue to see) a lot of demographic change together with an increasing elderly population, so it’s not just about how many homes we build, but whether we are building the right kind of homes the older generation will want to move into.

 

Interesting times ahead for the Huddersfield property market!

 

If you have a Huddersfield property to sell or let in the coming weeks, months or years and would like to know how this and other factors will affect you and your property ... without obligation, don’t hesitate to give me a call or drop me line.

 

The Busiest December for the Huddersfield Housing Market Since 2006

 

Over the last six months, the Huddersfield Property Market has been flourishing. As soon as an estate agents ‘For Sale’ flag went up, neighbours would be checking out Rightmove to see the internal pictures and compare the asking price to their own home (go on .. admit you do that too – every Huddersfield homeowner does). Flabbergasted by optimistic asking price tags, those same Huddersfield homeowners stand open-mouthed to see a sold slip added to the board a few weeks later.

 

Property values in Huddersfield are 7.6 per cent higher than

a year ago.

 

The newspapers are full of stories of this mini property market boom, which has been fuelled by the Stamp Duty Tax cut, which ends on the 31^st March 2021. Not only has it pushed up values in Huddersfield, but it has also theoretically brought forward house moves from 2021 into 2020.

 

The most up-to-date transaction figures (i.e. the number of people moving home) endorse it too. In the UK, 137,200 property sales/transactions took place in December, the highest number of sales/transactions in December since 2006 (when it topped 149,200 transactions, only for it to fall to 32,700 transactions in December 2008 at the height of the Credit Crunch).

 

 

The exact figures from the Land Registry for Huddersfield won’t be available for another six weeks or so, yet in December 2019, 292 properties changed hands in Huddersfield. Looking at anecdotal evidence of for sale board changes, my database and the portals, I believe we will end up around 394 to 409 Huddersfield property sales/transactions for December 2020.

 

So, how does all this compare to other years?

 

The number of UK transactions continued to be relatively stable between November 2019 and March 2020. That decreased by around half in April/May 2020 compared to April/May 2019, triggered by economic impacts relating to the public health restrictions introduced. Since the first lockdown was lifted in the late spring, sales/transactions have increased steadily upwards each month, mirroring the relaxing public health restrictions for the property market during the summer and autumn of 2020 and introducing Stamp Duty Tax Holidays.

 

Before we all get the Champagne corks flowing, what the December national figures (and the corresponding provisional Huddersfield stats) don’t tell us, is that April to December 2020 transactions ended the year 13.7 per cent down compared to April to December 2019 transactions — the lowest since 2012. Don’t get me wrong, 13.7 per cent is impressive given that we are in the middle of a recession and even more remarkable considering there was a 48.7 per cent fall in transactions in 2008 (compared to 2007) when the Credit Crunch hit.

The biggest question though, is, how much of the urgency since the summer to buy property can be credited to the …

 

·         existing pent-up demand that built up in 2018/9 and was starting to be released in the ‘Boris Bounce’ in January/February 2020

·         new demand from home workers looking for bigger properties

·         people moving out of the big city centres

·         the Stamp Duty Tax cut

 

— or a mixture of all four?

 

Nobody can categorically know whether the UK property market would have ricocheted as quickly without the Stamp Duty Tax cut.

 

Talking to many buyers, sellers, agents and solicitors in the Huddersfield property market over the last three or four months, the anecdotal evidence I have collated from those people seems to imply that the outbreak of activity in the Huddersfield property market has mainly been put down to the lifestyle factors (bigger house with office space etc) and pent-up demand, meaning the Stamp Duty Tax Holiday is seen as the icing on the cake for most people. Yet, there will be some buyers, whose motivation has been purely to save money on the tax duty. Overall though, in the vast majority of house purchases, this allows us to be reasonably hopeful about what will happen once the Stamp Duty Tax Holiday is withdrawn on the 31^st March.

 

However, some newspapers are preaching a story that the property market will collapse without a Stamp Duty Tax Holiday extension. Nobody can argue that a phased withdrawal from the Stamp Duty Tax Holiday would be better than some homebuyer’s sales falling through, when the tax holiday finishes in late March. Even if your motivation isn’t to save money on the tax holiday, it could be the motivation of a buyer in your chain – meaning it becomes your issue. Nobody knew in July, when the tax holiday was announced, that we would get another two national lockdowns with the inevitable delays from remote working by solicitors, mortgage providers and local authority search departments. My advice to all people currently sold subject to contract is to ask the question, “What if we don’t complete the sale by the end of March?”. Better to sort it now than have a nasty surprise in the last week of March.

 

All property taxation is long overdue for reform, from Stamp Duty to Council Tax. When Margaret Thatcher tried to change local Rates to Poll Tax in the late 1980’s, those who are old enough can remember the Poll Tax Riots, hence the nervousness of any party since to make any changes. There is no way the Government will abolish Stamp Duty when it raises between £11bn to £13bn a year, yet with all the upheaval we have experienced in the last year, there could be an appetite to change the way property is taxed.

 

The Government has already spent £271bn on interventions due to the pandemic and needs every penny so that it can start to repay those debts over the coming decades.

 

I have a feeling most Huddersfield property buyers and sellers would compromise on the price they pay for their next home to cover the cost of the Stamp Duty Tax after April, rather than lose the chance of owning the forever home they longed for during the first lockdown.

 

Therefore, don't be alarmed when we see property values ease slightly in Q3 2021 when the price paid for property reflects the lower price to account for the Stamp Duty that will need to be paid from the 1^st April.

 

If you are a Huddersfield homeowner or Huddersfield buy to let landlord and you would like a chat about where you and your Huddersfield property stands in the current Huddersfield property market, don’t hesitate to give me a call or drop me a line.