9.6% rise in Aylesbury Property Values adds weight to the town’s Housing Crisis

Aylesbury’s continuing housing shortage is putting the town’s (and the Country’s) reputation as a nation of homeowners ‘under threat’, as the number of houses being built continues to be woefully inadequate in meeting the ever demanding needs of the growing population in the town.   In fact, I was talking to my neighbour the other day and the subject of the Aylesbury Property market came up in the conversation (as it always does) after the weather and politics. My neighbour said it used to be that if you went out to work and did the right thing, you would expect that relatively quickly over the course of your career you would be buying a house, you would go on holiday every year, and you would save for a pension. But now things seem to have changed? 

Back in the Autumn, George Osborne, used the Autumn Statement to double the housing budget to £2bn a year from April 2018 in an attempt to increase supply and deliver 100,000 new homes each year until 2020.  The Chancellor also introduced a series of initiatives to help get first time buyers on the housing ladder, including the contentious Help to Buy Scheme and extending Right to Buy from not just Council tenants, but to Housing Association tenants as well. 

Now that does all sound rather good, but the Country is only building 137,490 properties a year (split down 114,250 built by private builders, 21,560 built by Housing Associations and and a paltry 1,680 council houses).    If you look at the graph (courtesy of ONS), you will see nationally, the last time the country was building 230,000 houses a year was decades ago.



Information from Office of National Statisatics for Building Numbers and House price growth from Land Registry, number of properties marketed from THE HOME WEBSITE

 

How George is going to almost double house building overnight, I don’t know, because using the analogy of a greengrocers; if people want to buy more apples (i.e. houses) in a greengrocers’ shop, giving them more money (i.e. with the Help to Buy scheme) when there are not enough apples in the first place does not really help. 

Looking at the Aylesbury house building figures, in the local authority area as a whole, only 1,100 properties were built in the last 12 months, split down into 730 privately built properties and 370 housing association with not one council house being built.   This is simply not enough and the shortage of supply has meant Aylesbury property values have continued to rise, meaning they are 9.6% higher than 12 months ago, rising 0.7% in the last month alone.  

I was taught at school (all those years ago!), that it is all about supply and demand, this economics stuff.   The demand for Aylesbury property has been particularly strong for properties in the good areas of the town and that it is likely to continue this year, driven by growing demand among buyers. You see Aylesbury’s economy is quite varied, meaning activity is expected to remain relatively strong into the early Summer of 2016.

Supply? Well we have spoken about the lack of new building in the town holding things back, but there is another issue relating to supply…the number of properties on the market for sale.   The number of properties for sale last month in Aylesbury was 252, whilst 12 months ago, that figure was 389, whilst four years ago it stood at 847… a massive drop! 

With demand for Aylesbury property rising, minimal new homes being built and fewer properties coming onto the market, that can only mean one thing ... now is a good time to be a homeowner or landlord in Aylesbury.