Panic Buying in the Brighouse Property Market?

 Would it surprise you that there are 85% fewer properties for sale today in Brighouse than a decade ago? Property values are much higher than a decade ago and the property market at the moment in Brighouse is on fire. In all my years as an agent, I have never seen it like it is at the moment. Many people are saying it’s reminiscent of 1988 when dual-MIRAS relief was abolished by Nigel Lawson, as people are paying top dollar for property, because they are buying property like there is no tomorrow.

 

69.8% of properties on the market in Brighouse are sold stc

 

In a ‘normal property market’, that figure would be between 30% to 40%. There is no rhyme or reason behind it because it’s not as if we are going to run out of property to sell (unlike the panic buying of loo rolls last year in the supermarkets). With such a buoyant Brighouse property market, being adept to state what your Brighouse property is worth is exceptionally problematic.

 

This is further exacerbated by the lower-than-average properties on the market at the moment. To give you an idea of the issue…

 

there are 65 properties for sale in Brighouse today,

compared to 433 a decade ago.

 

When there aren’t many properties on the market, some estate agents, to gain your instruction, will value your Brighouse property by giving you an over inflated suggestion for the asking price. Why do they do that when the considered wisdom is estate agents only get paid once they sell it?

 

Well would it surprise you that many (not all) estate agents pay their employees a bonus to put your property onto the market and then pay a further bonus when they get you to reduce the asking price? Some estate agents know the fastest way to get your property to market is to be optimistic on the asking price to secure your property for sale, then work on you to reduce your asking price after it has been sitting on the market for a few months.

 

Nothing wrong with that you might say, I want to get the most for my Brighouse home (and it is indeed the job of the estate agent to get the best price for their client). If I believe it is worth testing the market at a slightly higher asking price, I will suggest that, yet will always explain my thinking and if we have over cooked the asking price, we can swiftly realign it after a couple of weeks.  

 

Yet because many estate agents are disposed to suggest over inflated asking prices to the house seller just to secure their business (i.e. overvaluing) but not manage the property for month and months ... this in turn causes Brighouse properties to sit on the market and not sell.

 

In the best property market for 20 years, 13 of properties for sale in Brighouse have been on the market for 4 months or more. Overvaluing is widespread among Brighouse estate agents.

 

Most Brighouse homeowners will ask three or four estate agents to value their Brighouse home and take the middle figure when they want to sell. Yet, if all (or most) of your Brighouse estate agents are over optimistic and they all give you a ‘gilded lily’ price to secure your instruction to sell your home (i.e. overvalue), then that middle figure will be too much.  Most Brighouse estate agents know they don’t win the business (i.e. secure the listing) if they tell the homeowner what they don’t want to hear.

 

So, what is the risk of overvaluing?

 

There is a potential massive cost to putting your Brighouse home on the market at too high an asking price. Your estate agent will tell you that your Brighouse home is worth a certain figure and then lock you in to a 16-week sole agency agreement (sometimes longer) which you cannot get out of early. If you are getting around two or three viewings a week, and the pictures and marketing material are half decent, then your pricing is about right, meaning in this market you should be sold (subject to contract) within a month to six weeks.

 

Yet, if your Brighouse home has an over optimistic asking price (i.e. it is overpriced), you might only have a handful of viewings in a month and no offers. As the weeks and months go by, your overpriced Brighouse home makes similar homes to yours (i.e. your competition) look really good value for money. That’s when you will get the price reduction call from the agent.

 

How many times have you seen a property that has been on the market a while and you have wondered what’s wrong with it? Also, to add insult to injury, the portals tell you how long a property has been on the market, adding weight to that argument. 

 

The longer your property stays on the market, the desirability

of your Brighouse home drops.

 

You will end up selling your Brighouse home but only after a handful of price reductions, yet at what cost? Firstly, in those lost months, you would have missed out on many properties that you fell in love with yet couldn’t buy because your home was languishing on the market with no interest (this is backed up by consumer champion Which, who said that if you have to reduce your asking price by 5% or more, it adds an extra 64 days to the sales process).

 

Secondly, you will end up selling your Brighouse property for less than if you had placed the property on the market at a realistic asking price from day one (again backed up by Which). This is because buyers think there is something wrong with it, so as the homeowner gets fed up, they accept a lower offer to get their property sold.

 

Finally, because you take less for your property, your choice of the next property to buy will also be curtailed, meaning your dream home move might be more of a nightmare?

 

The best advice I can give you is to search the portals, make sure you look at properties that are also sold stc (which can normally be found by clicking on the filter section of the search on the portal). Then ask a couple of straight-talking trusted friends to do the same and compare your property to the competition that is both on the market and sold (stc).

 

Compare their locations, number and size of the rooms and size of plot and ask them where they see your property against those. Carry out the same exercise yourself (of course you will be slightly biased) and take a bellwether from all those figures. Then ask a number of Brighouse agents to value your property and if you feel any are being overly optimistic challenge how they get to their figure and get them to qualify their belief in that figure – is their valuation realistically achievable in the market at the time? As we all know markets change and property prices go up and down and ultimately a property is only worth what a buyer will pay for it – this all requires careful consideration.

 

I can assure you most of the estate agents in Brighouse are decent people, who want to do the best for you. All I ask is you do your homework and look at the sale of your Brighouse property through the eyes of a cold-blooded buyer.

 

If you would like to chat about selling your Brighouse home do give me a call.

 

Over 1 in 4 Huddersfield Properties Being Sold with No Chain So is it a good idea to rent in between moving home, to be chain-free?

 Moving home is said to be the third most stressful thing you can do, so if you can do anything to reduce that stress, so much the better? When buying your next Huddersfield home, being chain-free can certainly reduce your stress and offers many advantages over other buyers (and some disadvantages).

 

So, what is a chain? A property chain is made when there is a line of home buyers and home sellers linked through their property transactions e.g. a Huddersfield first-time buyer purchases a property, the sellers of that property then buy another property, and those sellers then buy another property, so on and so forth. Each home sale and purchase are reliant upon the success of every property in the so called ‘chain’. This means if there is one hiccup on one of the properties, every sale and purchase along the whole chain would collapse. No wonder everyone is on tenterhooks when there is a long chain involved.

 

Yet Huddersfield buyers who sell their home before searching for a new Huddersfield home considerably reduce their stress levels because they are not needing all the ducks to ‘line up in a row’ on the sale of their home in order to buy their new Huddersfield home.

 

Being chain-free puts Huddersfield home buyers in an enhanced position to negotiate with home sellers and they in turn may be more enthusiastic to accepting a lower offer.

 

Sounds brilliant this chain-free life doesn’t it? Everyone is a chain-free buyer once … when they are a first-time buyer and if they are lucky enough to have an additional home to move into. The other option is selling your Huddersfield home and moving into rented accommodation, but that will end up costing quite a few thousand pounds (in what many perceive as wasted money) together with the added cost of employing the services of home removers twice (with all the hassle that entails doubled!). However, that is what many Huddersfield homeowners are doing.  

 

31.2 of all the properties on the market today in Huddersfield

are being sold without a chain.

 

I can’t disagree, moving home twice in a short period will be stressful and rent could be perceived as ‘wasted money’, but I have to recommend you look at the bigger picture. It is one of the sturdiest sellers’ markets in a generation, meaning you should get top dollar for your Huddersfield home, knowing that many buyers are keen to complete before the stamp duty holiday ends in the autumn.

 

Then by waiting for the return of stamp duty and for the full roll out on the immunisation programme to give more Huddersfield homeowners the peace of mind to place their Huddersfield home on to the property market, for Huddersfield house prices to cool and the number of properties for sale to increase. Then you could pounce in and buy, with more Huddersfield homes to choose from and at more realistic asking prices.

 

So, does the type of Huddersfield property that is being sold make any difference?

 

·         22.1% of detached houses in Huddersfield are being sold chain-free

·         32.5% of semi-detached houses in Huddersfield are being sold chain-free

·         35.5% of town house/terraced houses in Huddersfield are being sold chain-free

·         34.5% of apartments/flats in Huddersfield are being sold chain-free

·         36.6% of bungalows in Huddersfield are being sold chain-free

 

Of course, these aren’t all Huddersfield homeowners going into rented accommodation hoping to bag a bargain next year. Many of the bungalows are being sold because their homeowner has either moved into sheltered accommodation or sadly passed on and there are Huddersfield landlords selling their Huddersfield buy-to-let rental investments.

 

And don’t get me wrong, there are also risks involved with this type of home buying strategy. Moving into rented accommodation means you are out of the Huddersfield property market. Property values could dip in the next 12 months, yet they still could continue to rise - you are taking a gamble on a dip in the market and it could go wrong.

 

Like most things in life, it depends on your own personal circumstances, where you are in your life, your attitude to risk and your belief on what will (or won’t) happen to property values in Huddersfield in the next 12 to 18 months.

 

If you would like a chat about your potential choices for your home move, then drop me a line.

Huddersfield Property Market: 2011-2021 A look back at the Huddersfield housing market over the last decade

 With all of us completing the Census, a couple of weeks ago, it made me realise profoundly that mine and my family’s life, which from our own point of view seems unique and delightful, makes us all into a series of statistics for the Census gatherers to pore over. To digest and regurgitate facts, figures and trends for those who are interested in the ever-changing social circumstances of these islands.

 

However, the information from the Census is vital to improving our lives - Governments can plan the future with the information it provides and we in turn can wonder about the lives of our past generations with the information provided therein historically if we so wish. 

 

Whilst the information from this Census won’t be published until March 2023, let us have a look at what has been happening in the Huddersfield property market since the last time we completed the Census in 2011.

 

Just to remind you, 2011 saw the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, Mr Cameron was the PM, there was the last flight of the Space Shuttle and Game of Thrones premiered.

 

Whilst in the Huddersfield property market…

 

·         The average price paid for a Huddersfield detached home in the last 12 months has been £302,000. The average value of a Huddersfield detached home has risen by 32.1% in the last 10 years or £79,600

 

·         The average price paid for a Huddersfield semi-detached home in the last 12 months has been £174,700. The average value of a Huddersfield semi-detached home has risen by 37.9% in the last 10 years or £54,300

 

·         The average price paid for a Huddersfield town house/terraced home in the last 12 months has been £127,100. The average value of a Huddersfield town house/terraced home has risen by 20.2% in the last 10 years or £28,200

 

·         The average price paid for an apartment/flat in the last 12 months has been £109,500. The average value of a Huddersfield apartment/flat has risen by 32.5% in the last 10 years or £30,500

 

 

 

 

 

New properties built in Huddersfield…

 

Irrespective of any dip in Huddersfield house prices or transactions when the Stamp Duty Holiday ends in the autumn, this is a trend that looks set to continue, with no sign that supply of new homes is anywhere near to keeping pace with demand for households.

 

There have only been 2,282 new properties built in Huddersfield in the last 10 years, that’s around 19 a month. That means the population in Huddersfield has risen by 2.41 people for every new home built over that decade.

 

Nationally, the Country has only built just over 180k homes a year over the last decade, 120k less than the national target of 300k. In the meantime, the population has grown by more than 4 million.

 

When looking locally at the size of new build property in Huddersfield, the average property is just under 950 sq. ft., which is 9% larger than a decade ago.

 

Rents in Huddersfield…

 

Whether you are a winner or loser in terms of rental values depends on whether you are a Huddersfield landlord or a Huddersfield tenant.

 

The average rent for a property in Huddersfield currently stands at £823 per month, whilst a decade ago, it was £722 per month

 

This means private rents have increased by 84p a month for the past ten years. Interesting, when compared to the national average of 98p a month whilst in London, rents have grown by £4.64 a month.

 

The next 10 years of the Huddersfield Property Market…

 

The next ten years will also be just as fascinating. To try and predict would be a fool’s game.

 

For example, who would have believed what the Huddersfield property market has done in the last 12 months since the start of Lockdown 1.0. The number of transactions (i.e. people moving) in turn with UK house prices having risen so much in the last year ... all during a worldwide pandemic and at a time of such mayhem and havoc in the UK and world economy, is nothing short of remarkable … the question is – is it sustainable?

 

Read these articles in the coming months and years and I will share with you what is happening to the value of your Huddersfield property, be you a Huddersfield homeowner or Huddersfield landlord.

 

 

Huddersfield First-time Buyers Can Now Buy Using 5% Deposit Mortgages, Yet higher mortgage rates could see Huddersfield buyers paying a lot more each month for the privilege

 Being a Huddersfield first-time buyer in the last 12 months has not been an easy thing. Just before lockdown there were 400 ‘5% deposit mortgage’ deals and first-time buyers were able shop around to get the best deal. When the first lockdown hit, 5% deposit mortgages disappeared, meaning that as many Huddersfield would-be first-time buyers were about to buy their first Huddersfield home in 2020, the rug was pulled from under their feet.

 

Today, you can count on two hands the number of mortgage deals which allow a 5% deposit. Even worse, the number of hoops one has to jump through to get a 5% deposit mortgage is very high (plus you have to pay handsomely for the privilege, with mortgage rates of at least 4.15%).

 

In putting down a 5% deposit, you borrow the remaining 95% as a mortgage. These 95% mortgages (or Loan to Value) were very popular with Huddersfield first-time buyers before the Credit Crunch. Nearly 1 in 6 mortgages were 90% to 95%+ Loan to Value mortgages in 2007 (15.5%), yet as the Global Financial Crisis hit in 2008/9 that dropped to only 1 in 63 mortgages being in 90% to 95%+ range in 2010 – meaning many Huddersfield first-time buyers were unable to buy their first Huddersfield home between 2010 and 2015.

 

 

Yet in the recent Budget, Rishi Sunak has vowed to back the building societies and banks so that they can offer more of these higher 95% Loan to Value mortgage deals.

 

Many people have said this will mean there will a Huddersfield house price boom – especially as Stamp Duty is extended until September

 

This scheme is nothing new as a practically identical scheme was launched by George Osborne in the 2013 Budget with his Help to Buy Scheme. Nearly 1 in 5 houses sold in the year after that budget used this scheme, yet Osborne’s was only for first-time buyers and it was only for brand new homes (not second-hand homes). Whilst there’s no doubt this caused an increase in house purchases, many commentators said it was a backdoor method to keep the country’s new homes builders afloat.

 

The big difference with this new 2021 scheme is that it’s available for Huddersfield second-hand homes as well and is open to all Huddersfield owner occupiers moving home

 

Yet, what will the banks mortgage interest rate charge be?

 

Although no building societies or banks have yet publicised what mortgage rates they will charge, all the High Street lenders including NatWest, Santander, HSBC, Virgin Money, Barclays and Lloyds have stated they intend to offer these 95% LTV mortgages.

 

Under the Government’s mortgage guarantee to the banks, Westminster will guarantee 20% of any mortgage offered at 95% Loan to Value. In principle, that means that building societies/banks should be able to offer the low mortgage rates as those available to people wanting to borrow 75% loan to value.

 

At the moment the average five-year fixed rate mortgage is 3.6% with

 a 10% deposit, but if you have a 25% deposit, you can fix it for

five years at 1.63%

 

However, don’t forget though that the banks will be charged a ‘still to be decided’ amount to use the Government guarantee. On the last Help to Buy Scheme, it was rumoured they were charged 0.9% of the mortgage borrowed, so this cost would have to be passed on to the first-time buyer. I would suspect the eventual rates Huddersfield first-time buyers will have to pay will be somewhere in the region of 3%.

 

This new 95% mortgage/5% deposit scheme is only going to work if the banks and building societies have sensible mortgage rates as it needs to help those Huddersfield first-time buyers it was intended to benefit, who are finding it hard work to get on the first rung of the Huddersfield housing ladder.

 

It all comes down to how anxious the banks and building societies feel about the true long-term effect of the pandemic once the furlough scheme ends in the autumn. Only time will tell.

 

Yet, to give you an idea of the difference the mortgage rates scheme will make on a typical Huddersfield terraced/town house…

 

The average price paid for a Huddersfield terraced/town house in the last 12 months was £127,100

 

Assuming a 35-year repayment mortgage and borrowing that amount on each scenario:

 

·         At the current best 95% LTV mortgage rate (i.e. 5% deposit) of 4.15% mentioned at the start of the article, that would cost £574 per month in mortgage payments

 

·         At the current average 90% LTV mortgage rate (i.e. 10% deposit) of 3.6% mentioned in the middle of the article, that would cost £533 per month in mortgage payments

 

·         At the best 75% LTV mortgage rate (i.e. 25% deposit) of 1.63% mentioned at the start of the article, that would cost £397 per month in mortgage payments

 

As you can see, quite a difference.

 

I have to applaud Rishi Sunak for this initiative, yet will it be ‘fields of clover forever’ for the Huddersfield property market with the new scheme? No, it won’t.

 

It will be a good boost to the Huddersfield (and UK as a whole) property market. Whilst the mortgage guarantee offers a small portion of security for the lenders, it does focus on the riskiest part of the housing market. Many lenders still have cold shivers of the Northern Rock 125% mortgage debacle from a decade ago and those memories still ring true today.

 

The fact is these types of mortgages will be a higher risk, even if the Government are underwriting them with their smaller deposits, which will come through in bank’s and building societies higher pricing for these mortgages. Also, the lenders are already at near full capacity trying to get hundreds of thousands existing property sales and purchase deals through because of the Stamp Duty rush over the last 9 months. I await the rates in early April and will make comment again.

 

If you are a Huddersfield homeowner, potential Huddersfield first-time buyer or anyone involved in the Huddersfield property market and you would like to chat about anything I’ve covered in this article or any of my other articles on the Huddersfield property market, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

 

Huddersfield Home Buyers £11,323,188 Windfall as Stamp Duty Holiday Stretched to September… ...and new 5% deposit mortgages for Huddersfield first-time buyers

The Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced two initiatives to keep the Huddersfield property market firing on all cylinders into 2021.

 

Firstly, the £500,000 zero-rate Stamp Duty band has been extended to the 30^th June 2021. After then it will phase down to £250,000 for an additional three months, returning to the pre-pandemic levels on the 1^st October 2021. Secondly, Mr Sunak announced a scheme that will allow Huddersfield first-time buyers to buy their Huddersfield home with a 5% deposit from this April. Let me look at what each initiative means to the Huddersfield property market.

 

1.     Stamp Duty Holiday extension for Huddersfield home buyers

 

Coming out of the first lockdown in the early summer of 2020, there was a lot of apprehension that the British property market would flounder. Therefore, when the Stamp Duty Holiday was announced back in July 2020 to boost the property market, the deadline was set at the 31^st March 2021.  Little did anyone know of the snowball effect of people wanting to move because of the initial lockdown in the spring of 2020, the pent-up demand following the conclusion of the EU negotiations with the subsequent ‘Boris Bounce’ and then the Stamp Duty Holiday which made the perfect storm for what has been the busiest property market in Huddersfield since 2001/2.

 

The average stamp duty paid by a

Huddersfield homebuyer is £1,129

 

The reason the Stamp Duty extension is important is that many estate agents and solicitors have been warning for the last couple of months that home buyers would pull out of property deals or renegotiate if they could not complete their sale in time before the Stamp Duty Holiday ended.

 

So, by phasing down the Stamp Duty Holiday, this will allow some breathing space for burdened solicitors and mortgage lenders, thus decreasing the number of buyers pulling out of their property purchase because they unexpectedly have to find up to an extra £15,000 in Stamp Duty when property sales do not complete on time.

 

There are currently 1,172 properties that are sold STC in Huddersfield alone and the vast majority of those will save money on their stamp duty because of this extension

 

So, what does the Stamp Duty extension mean for Huddersfield house prices?

 

The extension has heightened confidence in the Huddersfield property market. The Government watchdog ‘The Office for Budget Responsibility’, has predicted that house prices in 4 years’ time will be just over 13% higher, compared to their pre-Christmas predicted figure of 11% growth (over the same time frame).

 

2.     5% deposit mortgages for Huddersfield first-time buyers

 

From next month, Huddersfield first-time buyers will be able to buy Huddersfield homes worth up to £600,000 with a 5% deposit and a Government-backed mortgage with a fixed rate of up to 5 years.

 

Rishi Sunak wants to turn the millennial ‘Generation Renters’ into ‘Generation Buyers’ and believes this initiative should be able to help two million people get on the property ladder. When we look at what that would mean for Huddersfield, I estimate …

 

5,247 Huddersfield people could be helped onto the

Huddersfield property ladder with these 5% deposit mortgages

 

The Government backed scheme will be open to Huddersfield first-time buyers for 21 months (until the end of 2022) and available from lenders including NatWest, Lloyds and HSBC (plus others to be announced soon). It will be available on all Huddersfield homes new or second hand (previous schemes applied to new homes only).

 

5% deposit mortgages were all but withdrawn from the market at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020 with an almost default minimum deposit of 10% (even as high as 15% in the autumn just gone) putting homeownership out of reach for all but the wealthiest Huddersfield first time buyers.

 

I must admit I found it a scandal that homeownership among the 25 to 34 year olds plummeted from 69% in 1981 to 36% by 2014, although with certain Government incentives and low interest rates since then, that had risen to 41% by last year, but it’s not enough

 

With so many young families paying huge sums in rent, who could effortlessly afford to make mortgage repayments on the same property, they haven’t been able to save enough for a 10% initial mortgage deposit, let alone 15%.

 

Yet now with these new 5% deposit mortgages, many Huddersfield first-time buyers will be able to afford to buy their first home in Huddersfield. Banks will typically lend between four and a half and five times the gross annual income – this means with a modest 5% deposit; many Huddersfield 20 and 30 somethings will now be able to buy their first home. Just before I finish this topic, the 5% deposit mortgages will also be available to current Huddersfield homeowners who don’t have the equity built up in their existing home – thus helping second or third (or more) time Huddersfield buyers as well.

 

How do both of these changes affect Huddersfield buy-to-let landlords?

 

I know many of you Huddersfield landlords are adding to your Huddersfield rental portfolio because of the Stamp Duty Holiday and with the extension, you too will save some money from it. The issue of first-time buyer mortgages does mean the demand for private rented accommodation in Huddersfield might not be as strong in the coming decade.

 

Don’t get me wrong, tenant demand will continue to outstrip supply of Huddersfield rental properties for the foreseeable future, yet the tenant/landlord balance could alter slightly in the medium term. Huddersfield landlords need to take a long hard look at their properties and ascertain if they are fit for purpose both now and into the 2030’s. Tenants are becoming a lot more demanding of what their rental property offers. Wood chip wallpaper, avocado green bathroom suites and kitchens fitted in the 1990’s (or before) simply won’t cut the mustard in the next decade.

 

The demand from Huddersfield tenants for properties with larger gardens, or the ability to keep pets or an extra reception room/garden office to allow them to enjoy their rented home more and also being able to work from home will ensure greater demand for your rental property … and the best bit, they will pay handsomely for that in higher rent.

 

If you are a Huddersfield homeowner, buyer, tenant or landlord and you want to discuss your options on selling, buying or renting a property in Huddersfield and the surrounding area, do not hesitate to contact me personally.

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.