What will the 0.25% Interest Rate do to the Canterbury Property Market?

I had an interesting chat last week with a Fordwich landlord who owns a few properties in the city. He popped his head in to my office as his wife was shopping in the area (and let’s be honest talking about the Canterbury Property Market is a lot more interesting than clothes shopping!). We had never spoken before (because he uses another agent in the city to manage his Canterbury properties) yet after reading my blog on the Canterbury Property Market for a while, the landlord wanted to know my thoughts on how the recent interest rate cut would affect the Canterbury property market and I would also like to share these thoughts with you……

 

Well it’s been a few weeks now since interest rates were cut to 0.25% by the Bank of England as the Bank believed Brexit could lead to a materially lower path of growth for the UK, especially for the manufacturing and construction industries. You see for the country as a whole, the manufacturing and construction industries are still performing well below the pre credit crunch levels of 2008/09, so the British economy remains highly susceptible to an economic shock. This is especially important in Canterbury, because even though we have had a number of local success stories in manufacturing and construction, a number of people are employed in these sectors. In Canterbury, of the 22,210 people who have a job, 712 are in the manufacturing industry and 1,064 in Construction meaning

 

3.2% of Canterbury workers are employed in the Manufacturing

sector and 4.8% of Canterbury workers are in Construction

 

The other sector of the economy the Bank is worried about, and an equally important one to the Canterbury economy, is the Financial Services industry. Financial Services in Canterbury employ 391 people, making up 1.8% of the Canterbury working population.

 

Together with a cut in interest rates, the Bank also announced an increase in the quantity of money via a new programme of Quantitative Easing to buy £70bn of Government and Private bonds. Now that won’t do much to the Canterbury property market directly, but another measure also included in the recent announcement was £100bn of new funding to banks. This extra £100bn will help the High St banks pass on the base rate cut to people and businesses, meaning the banks will have lots of cheap money to lend for mortgages .. which will have a huge effect on the Canterbury property market (as that £100bn would be enough to buy half a million homes in the UK).

 

It will take until early in the New Year to find out the real direction of the Canterbury property market and the effects of Brexit on the economy as a whole, the subsequent recent interest rate cuts and the availability of cheap mortgages. However, something bigger than Brexit and interest rates is the inherent undersupply of housing (something I have spoken about many times in my blog and the specific effect on Canterbury). The severe undersupply means that Canterbury property prices are likely to increase further in the medium to long term, even if there is a dip in the short term. This only confirms what every homeowner and landlord has known for decades .. investing in property is a long term project and as an investment vehicle, it will continue to outstrip other forms of investment due to the high demand for a roof over people’s heads and the low supply of new properties being built.

For more thoughts on the Canterbury Property Market, please visit the Canterbury Property Market – www.canterburypropertyblog.com

Only 16.3% of Canterbury Rented Property have Children living in them.

A few weeks ago I was asked a fascinating question by a local Councillor who, after reading the Canterbury Property Blog, emailed me and asked me – “Are Canterbury Landlords meeting the challenges of tenanted families bringing up their families in Canterbury?”

 

What an interesting question to be asked.

 

Irrespective of whether you are tenant or a homeowner, to bring up a family, the most important factors are security and stability in the home. A great bellwether of that security and stability in a rented property is whether tenants are constantly being evicted. Many tenancies last just six months with families at risk of being thrown out after that with just two months’ notice for no reason.

 

Some “left leaning Politian’s” keep saying we need to deal with the terrible insecurity of Britain’s private rental market by creating longer tenancies of 3 or 5 years instead of the current six months. However, the numbers seem to be telling a different story. The average length of residence in private rental homes has risen in the last 5 years from 3.7 years to 4 years (a growth of 8.1%), which in turn has directly affected the number of renters who have children. In fact, the proportion of private rented property that have dependent children in them, has gone from 29.1% in 2003 to 37.4% today.

 

Looking specifically at Canterbury compared to the National figures, of the 6,320 private rental homes in Canterbury, 1,032 of these have dependent children in them (or 16.3%), which is interestingly (although expected) below the National average of already stated 37.4%.

 

Even more fascinating are the other tenure types in Canterbury…

 

• 36.3% of Social (Council) Housing in Canterbury have dependent childre
• 38.6% of Canterbury Owner Occupiers (with a Mortgage) have dependent children
• 7.3% of Owner Occupiers (without a Mortgage) have dependent children

 

Although, when we look at the length of time these other tenure types have, whilst the average length of a tenancy for the private rented sector is 4 years, it is 11.4 years in social (council) housing, 24.1 years for home owners without a mortgage and 10.4 years of homeowners with mortgages.

 

Anecdotally I have always known this, but this just proves landlords do not spend their time seeking opportunities to evict a tenant as the average length of tenancy has steadily increased. This noteworthy 8.1% increase in the average length of time tenants stay in a private rented property over the last 5 years, shows tenants are happy to stay longer and start families.

 

So, as landlords are already meeting tenants’ wants and needs when it comes to the length of tenancy, I find it strange some politicians are calling for fixed term 3 and 5 year tenancies. Such heavy handed regulation could stop landlords renting their property out in the first place, cutting off the supply of much needed rental property, meaning tenants would suffer as rents went up. Also, if such legislation was brought in, tenants would lose their ‘Get Out of Jail card’, as under current rules, they can leave at any time with one months’ notice (with a ‘periodic tenancy’) not the three or six-month tenant notice suggested by some commenters.  

 

Finally, there is an extra piece of good news for Canterbury tenants. The English Housing Survey notes that those living in private rented housing for a long periods of time generally paid less rent than those who chopped and changed.

11,000 People Live In Every Square Mile Of Canterbury – Is Canterbury Over Crowded?

Canterbury is already in the clutches of a population crisis that has now started to affect the quality of life of those living in Canterbury. There are simply not enough homes in Canterbury to house the greater number of people wanting to live in the city. The burden on public services is almost at breaking point with many parents unable to send their child to their first choice of primary or secondary school and the chances of getting a decent Dentist or GP Doctor Surgery next to nil.

 

Well that’s what the papers would say.. but let’s look at real numbers, and in particular my specialist subject of Canterbury Property, with the housing issue in Canterbury. To start with, the UK has roughly 1,065 people per square mile – the second highest in Europe. The total area of Canterbury itself is 4.950 square miles and there are 54,800 Canterbury residents, meaning …

 

11,000 people live in each square mile of Canterbury, it’s no wonder we appear to be bursting at the seams!

 

… but yet again, newspapers, politicians and property market bloggers quote big numbers to sell more newspapers, get elected or get people to read their blog (I recognise the irony!). A square mile is enormous, so the numbers look correspondingly large (and headline grabbing). Most people reading this will know what an ‘acre’ is, but those younger readers who don’t, it is an imperial unit of measurement for land and it is approximately 63 metres square.

 

In Canterbury, only 15.79 people live in every acre of Canterbury … not as headline grabbing, but a lot closer to home and relative to everyday life, and if I am being honest, a figure that doesn’t seem that bad.

 

Yet, the issue at hand is, we need more homes building. In 2007, Tony Blair set a target that 240,000 homes a year needed to be built to keep up with the population growth, whilst the Tory’s new target since 2010 was a more modest 200,000 a year. However, since 2010, as a country, we have only been building between 140,000 and 150,000 houses a year. So where are we going to build these homes .. because we have no space! Or do we?

 

Well, let me tell you this fascinating piece of information I found out recently in an official Government report. Looking specifically at England (as it is the most densely populated country of the Union), all the 20 million English homes cover only 1.1% of its land mass. That is not a typo, only one point one per cent (1.1%) of land in England is covered by residential property. In more detail, of all the land in the Country -

 

• Residential Houses and Flats 1.1%
• Gardens 4.3%
• Shops and Offices 0.7%
• Highways (Roads and Paths) 2.3%
• Railways 0.1%
• Water (Rivers /Reservoirs) 2.6%
• Industry, Military and other uses 1.4%

.. leaving 88.5% as Open Countryside (and if you think about it, add to that the gardens, which are green spaces, and the country is 92.8% greenspace)

 

As a country, we have plenty of space to build more homes for the younger generation and the five million more homes needed in the next 20 years would use only 0.25% of the country’s land. Now I am not advocating building massive housing estates and 20 storey concrete and glass behemoth apartment blocks next to local beauty spots such as Westgate Gardens or the Dane John Gardens, but with some clever planning and joined up thinking, we really do need to think outside the box when it comes to how we are going to build and house our children and our children’s children in the coming 50 years in Canterbury. If anyone has their own ideas, I would love to hear from you.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to read other articles about Canterbury Property Market, please visit the Canterbury Property Market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com

 

New House Building in Canterbury slumps by 35.2% in the last year

Let me speak frankly, even with Brexit and the fact immigration numbers will now be reduced in the coming years, there is an unending and severe shortage of new housing being built in the Canterbury area (and the UK as a whole).  Even if there are short term confidence trembles fueled by newspapers hungry for bad news, the ever growing population of Canterbury with its high demand for property versus curtailed supply of properties being built, this imbalance of supply/demand and the possibility of even lower interest rates will underpin the property market.

 

When the Tories were elected in 2015, Mr. Cameron vowed to build 1,000,000 new homes by 2020.  If we as a Country hit those levels of building, most academics stated the UK Housing market would balance itself as the increased supply of property would give a chance for the younger generation to buy their own home as opposed to rent.  However, the up-to-date building figures show that in the first three months of 2016 building starts were down.  Nationally, there were 35,530 house building starts in the first quarter, a long way off the 50,000 a quarter required to hit those ambitious targets.

 

Looking closer to home, over the last 12 months, new building in the Canterbury City Council area has slumped.  In 2014/15, for every one thousand existing households in the area, an additional 3.69 homes were built.  For 2015/16, that figure is now only 2.39 homes built per thousand existing households.  Nationally, to meet that 1,000,000 new homes target, we need to be at 7.12 new homes per thousand.

 

To put those numbers into real chimney pots, over the last 12 months, in the Canterbury City Council area,

 

• 150 Private Builders (e.g. New Homes Builders)
• Nil   Housing Association
• Nil   Local Authority

 

These new house building numbers are down to the fact that not enough is being done to fix the broken Canterbury housing market.  We are still only seeing 150 new homes being built per year in the Canterbury City Council area, when we need 447 a year to even stand still!

I am of the opinion Messer’s Cameron and Osborne focused their attention too much on the demand side of the housing equation, using the Help to Buy scheme and low deposit mortgages to convert the ‘Generation Rent’ i.e. Canterbury ‘20 somethings’ who are set to rent for the rest of their lives to ‘Generation Buy’.  On the other side of the coin, I would strongly recommend the new Housing Minster, Gavin Barwell, should concentrate the Government’s efforts on the supply side of the equation.  There needs to be transformations to planning laws, massive scale releases of public land and more investment, as more inventive solutions are needed.

However, ultimately, responsibility has to rest on the shoulders of Theresa May.  Whilst our new PM has many plates to spin, evading on the housing crisis will only come at greater cost later on.  What a legacy it would be if it was Mrs. May who finally got to grips with the persistent and enduring shortage of homes to live in.  The PM has already referenced the ‘need to do far more to get more houses built’ and stop the decline of home ownership.  However, she has also ruled out any changes to the green belt policy – something I will talk about in a future up and coming article.  Hopefully these statistics will raise the alarm bells again and persuade both residents and Councilor’s in the Canterbury City Council area that housing needs to be higher on its agenda.

In the meantime, for more thoughts and opinion on the Canterbury Property Market, please visit the Canterbury Property Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com

80.7% of Canterbury Properties have 3 or more bedrooms - Problem or Opportunity?

The orthodox way of classifying property in the UK is to look at the number of bedrooms rather than its size in square metres (although now we are leaving the EU – I wonder if we can go back to feet and inches?). It seems that homeowners and tenants are happy to pay for more space. It’s quite obvious, the more bedrooms a house or apartment has, the bigger it is likely to be. The reason being not only the actual additional bedroom space, but the properties with more bedrooms tend to have larger / more reception (living) rooms. However, if you think about it, this isn’t so astonishing given that properties with more bedrooms would typically accommodate more people and therefore require larger reception rooms.

In today’s Canterbury property market, the Canterbury homeowners and Canterbury landlords I talk to are always asking me which attributes and features are likely to make their property comparatively more attractive and which ones may detract from the price. Over time, buyers’ and tenants’ wants and needs have changed. In Canterbury, location is still the No. 1 factor affecting the value of property, and a property in the best neighbourhoods, say St Stephens or Dane John Gardens can command a price nearly 50% higher than a similar house in an ‘average’ area. However, after location, the next characteristic that has a significant influence on the desirability, and thus price, of property is the number of bedrooms and the type (i.e. Detached / Semi /Terraced/ Flat).

In previous articles, I have analysed the Canterbury housing stock into bedrooms and type of property, but never before now have I cross-referenced type against bedrooms. These figures for the Canterbury City Council area make fascinating reading. It shows 80.7% of all properties in the area have 3 or more bedrooms.

I was genuinely surprised at the low numbers of one and two bed properties, especially 2 bed semis detached houses, especially as tenants like the smaller one and two bed properties in Canterbury. You see, it might interest the homeowners and landlords of Canterbury, that there has been a change in the numbers of properties on the market and the split in bedrooms on the market over the last 12 months

 

• 12 months ago, 44 one bed properties were for sale in Canterbury, today 35, a drop of 20%

• 12 months ago, 99 two bed properties were for sale in Canterbury, today 133, a rise of 34%

• 12 months ago, 56 three bed properties were for sale in Canterbury, today 71, a rise of 27%

• 12 months ago, 36 four bed properties were for sale in Canterbury, today 48, a rise of 33%

• 12 months ago, 28 five + bed properties were for sale in Canterbury, today 28, no change

It can quite clearly be seen more Canterbury properties have become available, which can only be good news for Canterbury first time buyers and Canterbury buy to let landlords looking for a bargain (especially post Brexit) as property prices have stopped rising at the silly rates they were 12/18 months ago.

For several years Canterbury buy-to-let investors have been the only buyers at the lower end (starter homes) of the market, as they have been enticed by high tenant demand and attractive returns. Some Canterbury landlords believe their window of opportunity has started to close with the new tax regime for landlords, whilst it already appears to be opening wider for first-time buyers. This is great news for first time buyers ... but one final note for Canterbury landlords ... all is not lost ... you can still pick up bargains, you just need to be a lot savvier and do your homework ... one source of such information with articles like this is the Canterbury property market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com

Post Brexit - Canterbury Property Prices set to drop £26,700 in the next 12 months?

Even the sanest person in Britain has to admit the Brexit vote will, in one shape or another, affect the UK Property market. Excluding central London which is another world, most commentators are saying prices will be affected by around 10%. So looking at the commentators’ thoughts in more detail, property values in Canterbury will be 10% lower than they would have been if we hadn’t voted to leave the EU.

As the average value of a property in the Canterbury City Council area is £266,800, this means property values are set to drop for the average Canterbury property by £26,680 … batten down the hatches .. soup kitchens and mega recession here we come ..it’s going to get rough.

.. but before we all go into panic mode in Canterbury .. the devil is always in the detail

Look at the phrase again, and I have highlighted the relevant part “Property values in Canterbury will be 10% lower than they would have been if we hadn’t voted to leave the EU”

Property values today, according to the Land Registry are 8.91% higher than a year ago in the Canterbury City Council area. The 12 months before that they rose by 9.68% and the 12 months before that, they rose by 8.9%. If we hadn’t voted to leave, I believe on these figures, we could have safely assumed Canterbury House prices would have been 9% higher by the Summer of 2017.

… and that’s the point, we won’t see a house price crash in Canterbury, it’s just that house prices in a years time will be 1% lower than they are now (i.e. 9% less the 10% lower figure because of Brexit). Let’s look at the historic figures and how that compares to today’s figures for the Canterbury City Council area and Canterbury as a whole.

Average Value of a property 20 years ago                 £  55,300

Average Value of a property 10 years ago                 £182,400

Average Value of a property 2 years ago                   £223,400

Average Value of a property 1 year ago                    £245,000

Average Value of a property today                            £266,800

Projected Value of a property in 12 months’ time     £264,100

Therefore, I believe the average value of a Canterbury property will be £2,700 lower in 12 months’ time than today.

That’s not to say Canterbury property prices might not dip slightly in the run up to Christmas (in fact they always have done just about every year since the year 2000 and most of those were boom years) .. but in 12 months time this is my considered opinion of where Canterbury property values will be.. and looking at the historic prices, even if I (and many other property market commentators) are wrong and they drop 10% from TODAY’S figure .. in the whole scheme of things, we have been through a Credit Crunch, Black Monday and 15% interest rates over the last 20 to 30 years .. and still Canterbury house prices have always bounced back.

Whilst the UK's vote for Brexit has created an uncertainty in the Canterbury housing market, there is no need to panic and prospective buyers should merely use common sense about their purchases. I always say to people to be prudent and if you are taking out a mortgage, at some stage during the life of that mortgage, circumstances will be difficult. We won’t have a 2008 Credit crunch fire sale of properties because after the Mortgage Market Review which took place in the Spring of 2013, mortgage borrowers are not as highly leveraged this time around.  As a result of this, with any luck there will not be too many distressed sales, which cause widespread price reductions.

.. and Canterbury landlords? They have recently been thrashed by Osborne’s tax changes, but yields could rise if Canterbury house prices fall/stablise and rents grow, and this might also make it easier to obtain mortgages, as the income would cover more of the interest cost. If prices were to level or come down that could help Canterbury landlords add to their portfolio, as rental demand for Canterbury property is expected to stay strong as more people find it more and more difficult to obtain mortgages.

For more thoughts on the Canterbury Property market visit the Canterbury Property Blog at www.canterburypropertyblog.com

 

 

29.7% of Canterbury Homes Are One Person Households

I was having an interesting chat with a Canterbury Buy to Let landlord the other day when the subject of size of households came up in conversation.  For those of you who read my Brexit article published on the morning after the referendum, one of the reasons on why I thought the Canterbury property market would, in the medium to long term, be OK, was the fact that the size of households in the 21st Century was getting smaller – which would create demand for Canterbury Property and therefore keep property prices from dropping.

Looking at the stats going back to the early 1960’s, when the average number of people in a home was exactly 3, it has steadily over the years dropped by a fifth to today’s figure of 2.4 people per household. Doesn’t sound a lot, but if the population remained at the same level for the next 50 years and then we had the same 20% drop in household size, the UK would need to build an additional 5.28 million properties (or 105,769 per year) .. When you consider the Country is only building 139,800 properties a year ... it doesn’t leave much for people living longer and immigration. Looking closer to home...

In the Canterbury City Council area, the average

number of occupants per household is 2.3 people

When we look at the current picture nationally and split it down into tenure types (i.e. owned, council houses and private renting, a fascinating picture appears.

The vast majority of homeowners who don’t have a mortgage are occupied by one or two people (81% in fact), although this can be explained as residents being older, with some members of the family having moved out, or a pensioner living alone.  People living on their own are more likely to live in a Council house (43%) and the largest households (those with 4 or more people living in them are homeowners with a mortgage – but again, that can be explained as homeowners with families tend to need a mortgage to buy. What surprised me was the even spread of private rented households and how that sector of population is so evenly spread across the occupant range – in fact that sector is the closest to the national average, even though they only represent a sixth of the population.

When we look at the Canterbury City Council figures for all tenures (Owned, Council and Private Rented) a slightly different picture appears...

But it gets even more interesting when we focus on just private rental properties in Canterbury, as it is the rental market in Canterbury that really fascinates me. When I analysed those Canterbury City Council private rental household composition figures, a slightly different picture appears. Of the 10,665 Private rental properties in the Canterbury City Council area,

 

27.6% of Private Rental Properties are 1 person Households

28.8% of Private Rental Properties are 2 person Households

17.5% of Private Rental Properties are 3 person Households

15.9% of Private Rental Properties are 4 person Households

10% of Private Rental Properties are 5+ person Households

As you can see, Canterbury is not too dissimilar from the national picture but there is story to tell. If you are considering future buy to let purchases in the coming 12 to 18 months, I would seriously consider looking at 1 and 2 bed apartments. Even with the numbers stated, there are simply not enough 1 and 2 bed apartments to meet the demand. They have to be in the right part of Canterbury and priced realistically, but they will always let and when you need to sell, irrespective of market conditions at the time, will always be the target of buyers. To read more articles on the Canterbury Property Market and where I consider best buy to let deals are in Canterbury, please visit the Canterbury Property Market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com

The Canterbury Love Affair with its 5,500 Terraced Houses

Call me old fashioned, but I do like the terraced house.   In fact, I have done some research that I hope you will find of interest my Canterbury property market blog reading friends!

In architecture terms, a terraced or townhouse is a style of housing in use since the late 1600’s in the UK, where a row of symmetrical / identical houses share their side walls. The first terraced houses were actually built by a French man, Monsieur Barbon around St. Paul’s Cathedral within the rebuilding process after the Great Fire of London in 1666.  Interestingly, it was the French that invented the terraced house around 1610-15 in the Le Marais district of Paris with its planned squares and properties with identical facades. However, it was the 1730’s in the UK, that the terraced/townhouse came into its own in London and of course in Bath with the impressive Royal Crescent.

However, we are in Canterbury, not Bath, so the majority of our Canterbury terraced houses were built in the Victorian era.  Built on the back of the Industrial Revolution, with people flooding into the towns and cities for work in Victorian times, the terraced house offered decent livable accommodation away from the slums. An interesting fact is that the majority of Victorian Canterbury terraced houses are based on standard design of a ‘posh’ front room, a back room (where the family lived day to day) and scullery off that.  Off the scullery, a door to a rear yard, whilst upstairs, three bedrooms (the third straight off the second).  Interestingly, the law was changed in 1875 with the Public Health Act and each house had to have 108ft of livable space per main room, running water, its own outside toilet and rear access to allow the toilet waste to be collected (they didn’t have public sewers in those days in Canterbury – well not at least where these ‘workers’ terraced houses were built).

It was the 1960’s and 70’s where inside toilets and bathrooms were installed (often in that third bedroom or an extension off the scullery) and gas central heating in the 1980’s and replacement Upvc double glazing ever since.

Looking at the breakdown of all the properties in Canterbury, some very interesting numbers appear.  Of the 20,748 properties in Canterbury …

3,283 are Detached properties (15.8%)

6,042 are Semi Detached properties (29.1%)

5,550 are Terraced / Town House properties (26.7%)

5,770 are Apartment/ Flat’s (27.8%)

And quite noteworthy, there are 103 mobile homes, representing 0.5% of all property in Canterbury. 

When it comes to values, the average price paid for a Canterbury terraced house in 1995 was £53,940 and the latest set of figures released by the land Registry states that today that figure stands at £283,940, a rise of 426% - not bad when you consider apartments in Canterbury in the same time frame have only risen by 265%.

But then a lot of buy to let landlords and first time buyers I speak to think the Victorian terraced house is expensive to maintain.  I recently read a report from English Heritage that stated maintaining a typical Victorian terraced house over thirty years is around sixty percent cheaper than building and maintaining a modern house- which is quite fascinating don’t you think!

Don’t dismiss the humble terraced house – especially in Canterbury!  For more thoughts on the Canterbury Property Market – visit the Canterbury Property Market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com

93% of Canterbury Homeowners are over 35 - The affect of their Brexit vote on the Canterbury Property Market

Well it’s been nearly 5 weeks since the Referendum vote and we have had a chance to reflect on the momentous decision that the British public took.

 

In case you weren’t aware, the residents of the Canterbury City Council area went with the National mood and voted as follows ….

 

Canterbury City Council   Remain Votes    40,169  (49% of the vote)

Canterbury City Council   Leave Votes       41,879  (51% of the vote)

               Canterbury City Council Turnout       75%

 

I have been reading there is some evidence to indicate younger voters were vastly more likely to vote Remain than their parents and grandparents and, whilst the polling industry's techniques may have been widely criticised, following them getting both the 2010 General Election and the recent Brexit vote wrong, anecdotally, many surveys seem to suggest there was a relationship between age and likelihood to support leaving the EU.

Interestingly, the average age of a Canterbury resident is 40 years old, which is above the national average of 39.3, which might go someway to back up the way Canterbury voted? What I do know is that putting aside whether you were a remain or leave voter, the vote to leave has, and will, create uncertainty and the last thing the British property market needs is uncertainty (because as with previous episodes of uncertainty in the UK economy – UK house prices have tended to go down).

 

Interestingly, when we look at the Homeownership rates in the Canterbury City Council area, of the 40,605 properties that are owned in the Canterbury City Council area (Owned being owned outright, owned with a mortgage or shared ownership), the age range paints a noteworthy picture.

 

Age 16 to 34 homeowners  2,825    or        6.9%  (Nationally 9.6%)

Age 35 to 49 homeowners 10,079    or      24.8%  (Nationally 29.2%)

Age 50 to 64 homeowners 12,734    or      31.4%  (Nationally 30.7%)

Aged 65+ homeowners      14,967    or      36.8%  (Nationally 30.5%)

 

So, looking at these figures, and the high proportion of older homeowners, you might think all the Canterbury City Council area homeowners would vote Remain to keep house prices stable and younger people would vote out so house prices come down- so they could afford to buy?

 

But there's a risk in oversimplifying this. The sample of the polling firms are in the thousands whilst the country voted in its millions. Other demographic influences have been at play in the way people voted, as early evidence is starting to suggest that class, level of education, the levels of immigration and ethnic diversity had an influence on the way the various parts of the UK voted.

So what I suggest is this – Don’t assume everyone over the age of 50 voted ‘Leave’ and don’t assume most 20 somethings backed ‘Remain’; because many didn't!

Population in the Canterbury City Council area set to rise to 185,800 by 2036

Canterbury faces a predicament. The population is growing and the provision of new housing isn’t keeping up. With the average age of a Canterbury person being 40.0 years (the South East average is also 40.0 years old compared to the national average of 39.4 years of age), the population of Canterbury is growing at an alarming rate. This is due to an amalgamation of longer life expectancy, a fairly high birth rate (compared to previous decades) and high net immigration, all of which contribute to housing shortages and burgeoning house prices.

My colleagues and myself work closely with Durham University and they have kindly produced some statistics specifically for the Canterbury City Council area. Known as the UK’s leading authority for such statistics, their population projections make some startling reading…

For the Canterbury City Council area ... these are the statistics and future forecasts

 

                                            2016 population         160,477

                                            2021 population         165,977

                                            2026 population         172,863

                                            2031 population         180,324

                                            2036 population         185,833

The normal ratio of people to property is 2 to 1 in the UK, which therefore means...

 

We need just over 12,600 additional new properties to be built

in the Canterbury City Council area over the next 20 years.

Whilst focusing on population growth does not tackle the housing crisis in the short term in Canterbury, it has a fundamental role to play in long-term housing development and strategy in the City. The rise of Canterbury property values over the last six years since the credit crunch are primarily a result of a lack of properties coming onto the market, a lack of new properties being built in the City and rising demand (especially from landlords looking to buy property to rent them out to the growing number of people wanting to live in Canterbury but can’t buy or rent from the Council).

Although many are talking about the need to improve supply (i.e. the building of new properties), the issue of accumulative demand from population growth is often overlooked. Nationally, the proportion of 25-34 year olds who own their own home has dropped dramatically from 66.7% in 1987 to 43.8% in 2014, whilst 78.2% of over 65s own their own home. Longer life expectancies mean houses remain in the same hands for longer.

The swift population growth over the last thirty years provides more competition for the young than for the mature population.  It might surprise some people that 98% of all the land in the UK is either industrial, commercial or agricultural, with only 2% being used for housing, which means one could propose expanding supply to meet an expanding population by building on green belt – that most politicians haven’t got the stomach to tackle, especially in the Tory’ strongholds of the South of England, where the demand is the greatest. People mention ‘brown field’ sites, but recent research suggests there aren’t as many sites to build on, especially in Canterbury that could accommodate 12,600 properties in the next 20 years.

In the short to medium term, demand for a roof over of one’s head will continue to grow in Canterbury (and the country as a whole). In the short term, that demand can only be met from the private rental sector (which is good news for homeowners and landlords alike as that keeps house prices higher).

In the long term though, local and national Government and the UK population as a whole, need to realise these additional millions of people over the next 20 years need to live somewhere. Only once this issue starts to get addressed, in terms of extra properties being built in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way, can we all help create a socially ecological prosperous future for everyone. For more thoughts on the Canterbury Property market, please visit the Canterbury Property Market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com.