Which Street in Huddersfield has seen the most homeowners moving in the last 3 years?

Lots of people say moving home is one of the top ten most stressful events in your life. Fortunately, there is a way to mitigate your stress. In a nutshell, start as early as you can, plan ahead and do everything you can to make it easy on yourself, your family and even the family pet. As an agent in Huddersfield, my team and myself have been helping homeowners, landlords, buyers and tenants move, sell and let their Huddersfield homes for many years. So I thought I would share some top tips for making your move as stress free as possible – then find out which streets in Huddersfield have moved the most in the last 3 years.

The first tip is to plan ahead and write a list; because whilst it is taking between 15 and 20 weeks at the moment from finding a buyer to moving, those few weeks will fly by in no time as day to day life carries on. Next, get yourself a decent home removal company as they are worth their weight in gold on moving day – and if you need to know a good one in Huddersfield - drop me a line and I will let you know who my clients are raving about.

Next, a cluttered Huddersfield home doesn’t sell or let well, so maybe consider decluttering before you market the property. It will sell/let better and when it comes to the move – the job will be so much easier. Know where you plan to put all your important documents (like Passports and Bank PIN etc). Tell your utility providers and it is a good idea to create electronic copies of significant documents by scanning and saving them onto a USB stick and don’t forget to get your mail redirected.

On the day of moving home stress levels will be high and I know you will want to get everything packed away and have the tea on by 5.30pm! Those who have moved many times know that isn’t the case. Be realistic, as it’s doubtful you are going to unpack all your boxes in your new home by the end of the first day.

Make sure to keep your ‘Moving Day Survival Equipment’ close by, change of clothes, wash equipment, cold bottles of water, biscuits, kettle, tea/coffee/milk, crisps (even G&T??) to keep your spirits, morale and energy up – you will be fine.. but it will take a few days to completely unpack and get your new Huddersfield home the way you would like it to be. As long as you have your bed set up and made by the end of moving day - you can have the rest of the weekend to get ship shape. 

So, which street or road in Huddersfield (HD3 to be more precise) has put themselves through one of the most stressful moments in their life over the last 3 years? Which street has seen the most home moves and experienced the trials of moving home.

New Hey Road comes in at the top spot, with 89 home movers in the last 36 months with a total property value of £16,070,000 sold, interestingly there are 744 properties on the road … so have a look at the top 20 and see if your street is in the Top 20!

… but before you go, if you do need any help or guidance about moving home or advice about the current state of the Huddersfield property market, then feel free to drop me a line or read the other articles in my blog on the Huddersfield Property market.

HD3 Street or Road	Number of Properties Sold in the last 36 months	Total Value of Property Sold
New Hey Road	89	£16,070,000
Farriers Way	63	£17,006,000
Dryden Way	41	£10,715,000
Blackthorn Drive	36	£7,528,000
Crosland Fold	35	£9,331,000
Pye Road	35	£9,192,000
Pavilion View	32	£12,287,000
Quarmby Road	31	£4,030,000
Laund Road	28	£5,066,000
Prospect Road	26	£4,021,000
Longwood Gate	25	£3,530,000
Longwood Road	22	£2,414,000
Wellington Street	22	£2,296,000
Anvil Court	21	£5,293,000
Jericho Way	21	£4,716,000
Scar Lane	20	£2,224,000
Laund Croft	19	£6,251,000
Halifax Road	19	£3,645,000
Yew Tree Road	17	£3,306,000
Leymoor Road	17	£1,818,000

The Affordability of Buying Property in Huddersfield

Looking back at the 75^th Anniversary of the D-Day landing a few months ago, it reminded me of the huge changes that have happened to Huddersfield and more specifically the Huddersfield property market since WW2. Back in 1946, the average wage in Huddersfield was just over £5 a week and to buy an average car would cost you just under £600, yet this is a property blog, so...

The average value of a Huddersfield property in 1946 was £819

In fact, in those 75 years, the average Huddersfield house had doubled in price by 1961, then again in 1971, 1975, 1980, 1988, 2000 and 2006. Now a lot of those increases (especially in the 1970’s) were caused by hyperinflation, yet since the start of the 21^st Century inflation has been kept low and since the Credit Crunch (2008/9), whilst property values have been rising, they haven’t been at the rates experienced in the latter half of the 20^th Century.

Now what a property sells for is irrelevant, its whether someone can afford it.

Increases in Huddersfield property values have produced huge increases in equity for many Huddersfield homeowners and Huddersfield buy to let landlords, yet on the other side of the coin also making housing unaffordable for other people. The best measure of the affordability of housing is the ratio of Huddersfield property values to Huddersfield average earnings (i.e. salary/wages). The ratio works on the basis the higher the ratio, the less affordable properties are.

In 1997, the average value of a Huddersfield property was 3 times higher than the average annual wage in Huddersfield, in 2008 it peaked at 6.1, within the next four years it had dropped to 5.3 and since then has slowly risen to 5.8 times higher.

It can be seen that even though property in Huddersfield became more affordable after the 2007/8 property crash (i.e. the ratio dropped), in subsequent years, with house values rising but earnings/salaries not keeping up, the ratio started to rise. This has meant there has been a decline in affordability of property in Huddersfield over the last five years - so for those on particularly low incomes or with little capital, it unfortunately means that buying a Huddersfield home will never become an option.

Therefore, the demand for private rented properties in Huddersfield will continue to grow as many young Huddersfield people are deciding to rent instead of buy their own house (knowing when their parents pass away, the equity built up in their parents property will be passed down - and then they can buy in their 50’s and 60’s - just like it happens in Germany).

Yet, that is many decades away and with fewer Huddersfield people wanting or able to save up the 5% deposit required by mortgage lenders, more and more people are looking to rent. Tie this in with the subtle shift in attitudes towards renting since the Millennium and less people jumping the on the bottom rung of the property ladder, this has driven rents and demand up in Huddersfield over the last few years. Yet (and it’s an important proviso) the type, location and demands of Huddersfield tenants has changed over that same time frame meaning you can’t just make money from buy to let as easily as falling off a log like you did in the early 2000’s.

If you are an existing landlord with us (or even another agent in Huddersfield) or someone thinking of becoming a first time Huddersfield landlord looking for advice and opinion and what (or not to buy in Huddersfield), one source of information is the Huddersfield Property Blog https://huddersfieldproperty.blogspot.com/- or drop me an email or phone call and let’s start a conversation - I don’t bite and I don’t do hard sell ... and maybe, just maybe, I could help you get better returns from your property portfolio.

The Huddersfield Monopoly Board

Board games seem a thing of the past for youngsters nowadays with their consoles and mobile phones yet a family favourite in our household that will bring young and old together is Monopoly.

Mayfair is the square everyone wants to buy and whilst it is the most expensive to buy – it offers the greatest returns. Mayfair was the must have London address when the Monopoly board game was made in 1935 when, at the time, it was the most expensive street to buy houses at £400 each. A member of my family asked me what a property today would be worth in Mayfair and how much it would cost to buy them all. Readers will know I like a challenge. My research shows that a typical house in Mayfair today costs on average £2.8m - whilst the total value of all the property in the Mayfair area currently stands at £11.8bn.

The fun part of Monopoly was to build more houses and ultimately a hotel to extract the maximum rent from the other players who landed on the square. That made me think, instead of looking at the average value of a property on the street, what if we looked at the total value of property on the whole street. So, I carried out some research on all the 327 streets in HD1 and calculated the top 20 streets in terms of their total value of all properties on the street..  and just for fun, colour coded them as if they were on a Monopoly board  …

Monopoly Board Street	Huddersfield (HD1) Equivalent Street	Total Value of all the Homes on the Street
Mayfair	Firth Street	£64,804,000
Park Lane	Kings Mill Lane	£33,263,000
Bond Street	St Johns Road	£26,386,000
Oxford Street	Broomfield Road	£24,923,000
Regent Street	New North Road	£24,264,000
Piccadilly	Trinity Street	£23,442,000
Coventry Street	Oldgate	£20,328,000
Leicester Square	Church Street	£20,252,000
Trafalgar Square	Mountjoy Road	£19,775,000
Fleet Street	Heaton Road	£19,461,000
The Strand	Luck Lane	£19,263,000
Vine Street	Bradford Road	£19,223,000
Bow Street	Gledholt Road	£18,915,000
Pall Mall	Cleveland Road	£18,856,000
Whitehall	Kings Bridge Road	£17,702,000
Northumberland Ave	Grasmere Road	£16,835,000
Pentonville Road	Springwood Hall Gardens	£16,198,000
Angel Islington	Water Street	£15,018,000
White Chapel Road	Victoria Road	£14,489,000
Old Kent Road	Greenhead Road	£14,349,000

Mayfair and Park Lane are represented by Firth Street and Kings Mill Lane. Surprises in the mix include Broomfield Road and Oldgate. They are rightly in the list because of the sheer size of those streets; because whilst the value of those homes are much lower than the posher streets, the total value of the whole street means they make the top 20 list.

Now of course whilst drawing a comparison between a 1935 board game and the actual total house values on those Huddersfield streets and roads provides a light hearted point of view of the Huddersfield property market, it does present a credible picture of Huddersfield’s most popular streets. Next time I will get back to writing an article with a little more seriousness and deeper issues on the Huddersfield housing market … but this week, I hope you enjoyed my little bit of fun!

Only 32.7% of Huddersfield Households are Eco-friendly

Improving the energy efficiency of Britain’s 27.2 million homes, which are responsible for more than a quarter of the country’s CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, is seen as key to tackling the issues of climate change, fuel poverty and our country’s energy security. This is particularly important as in June the Government announced they were going to make the country carbon neutral by 2050, meaning Britain’s homes need some enormous retro-fitting to meet these ambitious climate targets.

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University said it would cost on average £17,000 per property to retrofit an average UK home to make it carbon neutral with renewable energy and insulation (if done en masse and not piece meal). That would cost the Country £462.4bn (interesting when the NHS costs £154bn per year). Now of course 22.7m homes are privately owned so that would be the responsibility of the owners, but if we look at publicly owned council housing, that would cost the Government in excess of £76.5bn - HS2 is ‘only’ £56bn!

The benefits of making homes carbon neutral go further than saving the planet, as occupants would have much lower gas and electric bills (which total £31.824bn per year), warmer households and a much-lower strain on the NHS, which currently spends about £848m a year treating conditions that arise from cold housing. Also, local authorities would have to spend a lot less than the £5.2bn a year for ongoing property maintenance by the installation of extra insulation and renewable energy such as ground source heating, wind or solar panels.

To improve efficiency ratings, last year the Government banned landlords from renting property with an energy performance rating of F and G (the lowest ratings), yet I don’t think there is an appetite to force private homeowners to do this work (although you never know in the future??). Homeowners would be unenthusiastic to take on the bother and cost of such building works, yet the Government could offer incentives and grants, which along with the funds saved on their energy bills could make the plan more appealing?

So, what about eco credentials of the properties of Huddersfield homeowners and landlords?

Every home that has been built, rented out or put on to the market in Huddersfield since 2007 has had to have an Energy Performance Certificate (E.P.C), giving it a rating between A and G (rather like those stickers you see on fridges and washing machines). A is highest rating (i.e. most efficient and greener) and G is the worst energy performance rating. So, looking at Huddersfield first, then comparing us to the rest of the UK, this is the result...

So, 32.7% of Huddersfield homes are in that eco-friendly A to C energy performance banding ratings, which is proportionally 11.86% lower than the national average.

So, what next? Well the Government will endeavour to make the green revolution as painless as possible with technology developments like LED light bulbs, for example, saving greenhouse gases without people noticing. In the future we might have hydrogen central heating instead of mains gas, all have solar panels for electricity, all triple glazed windows and even ground sourced heating ... sounds pie-in-the-sky? Well who would have thought some of the most wanted cars would be electric and hybrid 10 years ago, built by the likes of Tesla?

There is no doubt that the energy efficiency of a property will rise in the coming years as the cost of fuel and people’s opinion on going green changes. You don’t need to spend £17,000 to find out what you can do to make your property greener. Look at your E.P.C and it will tell you what small changes you can make to improve your Huddersfield home’s energy efficiency rating and ultimately save yourself money.

If you want to find your E.P.C rating of your Huddersfield home, go to www.epcregsiter.com

4.8% of all Properties Sold in Huddersfield are New Builds

Of the 10,200 houses and apartments sold in Huddersfield (HD2) since 1995, 1,040 of those have been new homes, representing 4.8% of property sold. So, I wondered how that compared to both the regional and the national picture …and from that, the pertinent questions are: are we building too many new homes or are we not building enough?
Roll the clock back a few years and in 2013 the Government expressed its disappointment that, as a Country, builders weren’t building enough new homes to house our citizens. They promised to hasten new homes building to the fastest rate since the 1980’s when the Country was building on average 168,100 private households a year. The Housing Minister stated he wanted the private sector to build in excess of 180,000 households a year, a figure which seemed unachievable at the time. In 2013, private house building was in the depths of a post Credit Crunch dip, with just 96,550 private new homes being built that year. Yet, in the five years since then, private new-build completions have climbed steadily, rising by 59.5% to 154,100 new home completions in 2018..so on appearances alone, whilst the growth is impressive, the new homes builders haven’t met their targets….. or have they?
In addition to the 154,100 new homes completions in 2018, the private sector also provided an additional 29,700 new households gained from change of use between office, industrial and agricultural buildings to residential homes meaning, last year, the private sector created 183,800 new households. When we look at the public sector, there were 30,300 Housing Association new homes and 2,950 Council houses built last year, meaning after making a few other minor adjustments, the total number of new households/dwellings created in the UK in 2018 was 222,190.
Most of the growth can be credited to an improving economic framework, though continued help for first time buyers with the Help to Buy Scheme has enabled some younger buyers to bypass the issue of saving for a large deposit for a mortgage when buying a home, thus supporting confidence among new home builders to commit to large building schemes. Yet there is more to do. The Government wants the Country to return to the halcyon days of the 1960’s where, as a Country, we were building 300,000 additional homes a year  .. and they want that to happen by 2025, a 36% increase from current levels.
In 2019, the country will create 257,500 households, so we are on our way to meeting that target but maintaining this level of house building will be a test. Even the Governments’ Auditors (the Office of Budget Responsibility) is predicting net additional dwellings will plateau at about 240,000 in the first few years of the next decade.
So, how does Huddersfield sit within this framework?
The UK currently has 27.2m households, of which 2.45m (9%) of those have been built since 1995, whereas in Huddersfield, of the 12,800 households in HD2, 1,040 were built since 1995 (representing 8.1% of all households), meaning Huddersfield has a lower proportion of new homes building in the last couple of decades than the national figures.


I certainly feel there is an over reliance on the private sector to meet the Country’s housing needs. Local Authority’s need to step up to the plate and build more houses, and its true central government has released more cash for them to do just that, but probably only 20% to 25% of what is required. In the meantime, unless the Country starts to build 300,000 households a year, property prices will retain and improve their value in the medium to long term – which is good news for Huddersfield landlords and Huddersfield homeowners.

Huddersfield Homeowners Sell Their Home Nearly 5% Less Than the Regional Average

The average homeowner in the UK moves every 20.2 years…

That average in the 1970’s and 80’s was around every 10 to 11 years; in the 1990’s it increased to the mid-teens (in terms of years) and in the early part of the Millennium, it dropped again to the low teens. When we had the Credit Crunch years of 2008/09/10, that shot up to every 25.3 years and has been steadily decreasing ever since to the 2018 figure of 18.7 years.

The graph shows that as the economy improved after the Credit Crunch, British homeowners started to move home more and may have be taking advantage of higher demand and lower supply in the housing market to sell their homes and move on to the next property. Yet, most Huddersfield (and British) homeowners are more often than not buyers as well, so that cannot be the real cause. As mentioned already, people in the 70’s and 80’s moved a lot more than today.

So why is the long-term average length of time between moves since 2000 still much higher than it was in the preceding 30 years? For existing homeowners, some people have said their lack of an appetite to move home compared to the 1970’s and 1980’s might come down to their mortgages and the need for higher equity to put down on the next house. It is true the number of years you stay in your home determines how much you will pay back on the mortgage you took out when buying it. If you stay longer, you have the prospect to pay back a larger portion of the money you borrowed to buy the home. Interestingly, if you consider someone with a 25-year mortgage on the UK average variable rate of 3.4% for existing mortgage borrowers, borrowed say £200,000 at the start of the mortgage and made monthly payments on that mortgage, it would take 15 years and 1 month to build up over 50% (or £100k) in equity (and 17 years 2 months if interest rates were at their historic average in the 1980’s and 1990’s of 7%) … all assuming there was no decrease in value of the property.

Instead, I think the issue is a lot deeper than that. Firstly, I believe there has been a long-term change in attitude to moving home and this lack of people moving home (compared to the last 30 years of the 20^th Century) is part of a slowdown in the country in social mobility. Interestingly, a million fewer people moved in the noughties (2000 to 2010) than in the 1970’s, after other changes in population have been taken into consideration. You see back in the 1970’s and 80’s, it was expected that people kept moving up the ‘property ladder’ to bigger and better homes (i.e. keeping up the Jones’).

Secondly, there has been a change in attitude to homeownership per se … as 20 to 30 somethings (Generation Rent) have been weaning themselves off the ‘homeownership drug’ for the last 15 years that the baby boomers were addicted to in the 1970’s and 80’s ... meaning there are less buyers at the bottom of the housing ladder to fuel the fire. That is an important factor on the long-term decrease in home moving as buy to let landlords have been buying the smaller style starter homes to house Generation Rent … yet landlords don’t tend to move up the housing ladder after a few years like first time buyers - landlords just buy another property.

So, what is happening in Huddersfield with regard to people moving home?

I have mentioned a number of times in my articles about the Huddersfield property market that the number of people who move home (i.e. the number of property transactions) is a more important bellwether to the health of the local property market.

Therefore, I compared the number of people moving home in Huddersfield to the regional stats of home movers and the country as a whole. I also decided to look at a long-term point of view to judge the Huddersfield housing market, because as can be seen on the first graph, there is often short-term volatility. Looking at the stats...  

Since 1995, Huddersfield people have moved home 4.89% less often than the regional average

Looking at this second graph, 77.6% of the Huddersfield (HD5 to be precise) privately owned housing stock has been sold since 1995 – close to the national figure and interesting when compared to the regional figure of 81.5%. Why? Well I am sure this might be the topic of an up and coming article on the Huddersfield Property Market Blog.