Call me a realist, but it is obvious that either demand needs to drop or
supply needs to rise to stop this trend getting worse for the generations to
come. Don’t get me wrong, I admire
Downing Street’s plans to build 200,000 starter
homes which will be offered to first time buyers under 40 with a minimum
20% discount price. However, the
building of starter homes on current building sites, where new homes builders already
have to build a certain number of affordable ‘starter’ homes at the moment
under a different scheme, does not increase the stock of new ‘starter’ homes,
it simply replaces one affordable scheme with another.
One option that could resolve the housing crisis is if the Government literally
looked closer to home, concentrating on matching households with the
appropriate sized home. In Aylesbury, 18,256 households have one spare bedroom
and of these, 8,045 have two or more spare bedrooms.
This compares to 1,770 households in Aylesbury that are overcrowded (i.e.
there are more people than bedrooms in the property).
Looking specifically at the homeowners of Aylesbury, 7,182 owner
occupied Aylesbury houses have one spare bedroom. Now having a spare bedroom is not considered
a luxury. However, in addition to those 7,182
households with one spare bedroom, there are on top, a further 7,436 owner
occupied Aylesbury households with two or more spare bedrooms.
You can begin to see there is the spare capacity in the Aylesbury
housing market. Principally, I will concentrate
on the group that makes up the bulk of this category, the owner occupiers of
large properties, in their 60’s and 70’s, where the children flew the nest back
in the 80’s and 90’s. They call it
‘downsizing’, when you sell a big property, where the extra bedrooms are no
longer required, to move into a smaller and, usually, less expensive property.
There are many explanations
why these individuals do not downsize. These people have lived in the same house for
30, 40 even 50 years, and as one matures in life, many people do not want to depart
from what they see as the family home. Much
time has been invested in making friends in the area and it’s nice to have all
those rooms in case every grandchild decided to visit, at the same time, and they
brought their friends! But on a more
serious note, more and more people are beginning to downsize earlier, but in my
opinion, not at a fast enough rate. As
the years go on, we will have a situation where younger families will be living
in smaller and smaller houses, whilst all the large houses are occupied by a
couple of 70 something empty-nesters rattling around them! I
believe the Government should put more weight behind downsizing, because with
the right incentives, many could be encouraged to think again and make the
spare rooms available.
One option is for retired
downsizers to be exempt from stamp duty on the new property, saving them
thousands of pounds and another for the planners to work with builders to build
not only starter homes for under 40’s, but also have housing built just for
retired downsizers.
The fact is not enough properties are being built in Aylesbury, and with
population rising at a faster rate, something needs to give. I believe the Aylesbury
population (and in fact the whole of the UK) is slowly turning into a more
European model of house ownership. In
Europe, most people rent in their 20’s and 30’s, only buying in their 40’s and
50’s, when they inherit money from the sale of their late parent’s property.
In the meantime, there continues to be an opportunity in the coming
years for people to supplement their pension by buying smaller properties to
rent out, as that is where the demand will continue to be for the next few
decades in Aylesbury. For even more
thoughts on the Aylesbury Property Market – visit the Aylesbury Property Blog theaylesburypropertyblog.blogspot.co.uk/
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