Canterbury Unemployment Drops to 5.7% and its effect on the Canterbury Property Market

It was late May 2016, The Right Hon. Member for Tatton, Mr George Osborne, published an official HM Treasury analysis stating UK house prices would be lower by at least 10% (and up to 18%) by the middle of 2018 compared with what is expected if the UK remained in the European Union. So, eight months on from the Referendum, are we beginning to show signs of that prophecy? The simple answer is yes and no.

 

Good barometers of the housing market are the share prices of the big UK builders. Much was made of Barratt’s share price dropping by 42.5% in the two weeks after Brexit, along with Taylor Wimpey’s equally eye watering drop in the same two weeks by 37.9%. Looking at the most recent set of data from the Land Registry, property values in Canterbury are 0.89% up month on month (but a few months previous saw values drop to as low as 0.59%) – so is this the time to panic and run for the hills?

 

Doom and Gloom then? Well, let me consider the other side of the coin.

 

Well, as I have spoken about many times in my blog, it is dangerous to look at short term. I have mentioned in several recent articles, the heady days of the Canterbury property prices rising quicker than a thermometer in the desert sun between the years 2011 and late 2016 are long gone – and good riddance. Yet it might surprise you during those impressive years of house price growth, the growth wasn’t smooth and all upward. Canterbury property values dropped by an eye watering 1.78% in February 2012 and 1.09% in November 2013 – and no one batted an eyelid then.

 

You see, property values in Canterbury are still 11.35% higher than a year ago, meaning the average value of a Canterbury property today is £340,900. Even the shares of those new home builders Barratt have increased by 43.3% since early July and Taylor Wimpey’s have increased by 37.3%. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Government Spending Watchdog, recently revised down its forecast for house-price growth in the coming years - but only slightly.

 

The Canterbury housing market has been steadfast partly because, so far at least, the wider economy has performed better than expected since Brexit. There is a robust link between the unemployment rate and property prices, and a flimsier one with wage growth. Unemployment in the Canterbury City Council area stands at 4,000 people (5.7%), which is considerably better than a few years ago in 2013 when there were 6,400 people unemployed (9.6%) in the same council area.

 

However, inflation is the only thing that does worry me. Looking at all the pundits, it will get to at least 3% (if not more) in the latter part of 2017 as the drop in Sterling in late 2016 renders our imports with higher prices. If that transpires then the Bank of England, whose target for inflation is 2%, may raise interest rates from 0.25% to 2%+. However, that won’t be so much of an issue as 81.6% of new mortgages in the UK in the last two years have been fixed-rate and who amongst us can remember 1992 with Interest rates of 15%!

 

Forget Brexit and yes inflation will be a thorn in the side – but the greatest risk to the Canterbury (and British) property market is that there are simply not enough properties being built thus keeping house prices artificially high. Good news for those on the property ladder, but not for those first-time buyers that aren’t! In the coming weeks in my articles on the Canterbury Property Market, I will discuss this matter further!

£5.93bn – The total value of all Canterbury Property Market

“How much would it cost to buy all the properties in Canterbury?”

 

This fascinating question was posed by the 11-year-old son of one of my Canterbury landlords when they both popped into my offices before the Christmas break (doesn’t that seem an age away now!). I thought to myself, that over the Christmas break, I would sit down and calculate what the total value of all the properties in Canterbury are worth … and just for fun, work out how much they have gone up in value since his son was born back in the autumn of 2005.

 

In the last 11 years, since the autumn of 2005, the total value of Canterbury property has increased by 56% or £2.13 billion to a total of £5.93 billion. Interesting, when you consider the FTSE100 has only risen by 30.78% and inflation (i.e. the UK Retail Price Index) rose by 37% during the same 11 years.

 

When I delved deeper into the numbers, the average price currently being paid by Canterbury households stands at £312,103.… but you know me, I wasn’t going to stop there, so I split the property market down into individual property types in Canterbury; the average numbers come out like this ..

 

Canterbury Property Market
Average Value of a Detached Property	Average Value of a Semi-Detached Property	Average Value of a Terraced/Town House Property	Average Value of an Apartment
£470,727	£319,962	£291,891	£186,456

 

... yet it got even more fascinating when I multiplied the total number of each type of property by the average value. Even though detached houses are so expensive, when you compare them with the much cheaper semi-detached houses, you can quite clearly see detached properties are no match in terms to total pound note value of the semi-detached houses.

 

Total Value of all the Canterbury Detached Properties	Total Value of all the Canterbury Semi-Detached Properties	Total Value of all the Canterbury Terraced/Town House Properties	Total Value of all the Canterbury Apartments
£1,505,855,673	£1,895,454,888	£1,558,989,831	£971,803,460

 

So, what does this all mean for Canterbury?  Well as we enter the unchartered waters of 2017 and beyond, even though property values are already declining in certain parts of the previously over cooked Central London property market, the outlook in Canterbury remains relatively good as over the last five years, the local property market was a lot more sensible than central London’s.

 

 

Canterbury house values will remain resilient for several reasons. Firstly, demand for rental property remains strong with continued immigration and population growth.  Secondly, with 0.25 per cent interest rates, borrowing has never been so cheap and finally the simple lack of new house building in Canterbury not keeping up with current demand, let alone eating into years and years of under investment – means only one thing – yes it might be a bumpy ride over the next 12 to 24 months but, in the medium term, property ownership and property investment in Canterbury has always, and will always, ride out the storm.

 

In the coming weeks, I will look in greater detail at my thoughts for the 2017 Canterbury Property Market. As always, all my articles can be found at the Canterbury Property Market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com .

£25m a year black hole in the Canterbury Property Market - Is Buy to Let Immoral? (Part 2)

An Englishman’s Home is His Castle as Maggie Thatcher lauded - everyone should own their own home. In 1971, around 50% of people owned their own home and, as the baby-boomers got better jobs and pay, that proportion of homeowners rose to 69% by 2001. Homeownership was here to stay as many baby boomers assumed it’s very much a cultural thing here in Britain to own your own home.

 

But on the back of TV programmes like Homes Under the Hammer, these same baby boomers started to jump on the band wagon of Canterbury buy to let properties as an investment. Canterbury first time buyers were in competition with Canterbury landlords to buy these smaller starter homes … pushing house prices up in the 2000’s (as mentioned in Part One) beyond the reach of first time buyers. Alas, it is not as simple as that. Many factors come into play, such as economics, the banks and government policy. But are Canterbury landlords fanning the flames of the Canterbury housing crisis bonfire?

 

I believe that the landlords of the 5,955 Canterbury rental properties are not exploitive and are in fact, making many positive contributions to Canterbury and the people of Canterbury. Like I have said before, Canterbury (and the rest of the UK) isn’t building enough properties to keep up the demand; with high birth rate, job mobility, growing population and longer life expectancy.

 

According to the Barker Review, for the UK to standstill and meet current demand, the country needs to be building 8.7 new households each and every year for every 1,000 households already built. Nationally, we are currently running at 5.07 per thousand and in the early part of this decade were running at 4.1 to 4.3 per thousand.

 

It doesn’t sound a lot of difference, so let us look at what this means for Canterbury …

 

For Canterbury to meet its obligation on the building of new homes, Canterbury would need to build 173 households each year. Yet, we are missing that figure by around 72 households a year.

 

For the Government to buy the land and build those additional 72 households, it would need to spend £25,422,838 a year in Canterbury alone. Add up all the additional households required over the whole of the UK and the Government would need to spend £23.31bn each year … the Country hasn’t got that sort of money!

With these problems, it is the property developers who are buying the old run-down houses and office blocks which are deemed uninhabitable by the local authority, and turning them into new attractive homes to either be rented privately to Canterbury families or Canterbury people who need council housing because the local authority hasn’t got enough properties to go around.

The bottom line is that, as the population grows, there aren’t enough properties being built for everyone to have a roof over their head. Rogue landlords need to be put out of business, whilst tenants should expect a more regulated rental market, with greater security for tenants, where they can rely on good landlords providing them high standards from their safe and modernised home. As in Europe, where most people rent rather than buy, it doesn’t matter who owns the house – all people want is a clean, decent roof over their head at a reasonable rent.

 

So only you, the reader, can decide if buy to let is immoral, but first let me ask this question - if the private buy to let landlords had not taken up the slack and provided a roof over these people’s heads over the last decade .. where would these tenants be living now? ….. because the alternative doesn’t even bear thinking about!

 

Canterbury’s private renting set to hit 8,397 households by 2021 - Is Buy to Let immoral? (Part 1)

Can we blame the 55 to 70-year-old Canterbury citizens for the current housing crisis in the city?

 

Also known as the ‘Baby Boomer Generation’, these Canterbury people were born after the end of the Second World War as the country saw a massive rise in births as they slowly recovered from the economic hardships experienced during wartime.

 

Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, they experienced (whilst in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s) an unparalleled level of economic growth and prosperity throughout their working lifetime on the back of improved education, government subsidies, escalating property prices and technological developments, they have emerged as a successful and prosperous generation.

 

...Yet some have suggested these Canterbury baby boomers have (and are) making too much money to the detriment of their children, creating a ‘generational economic imbalance’, where mature people benefit from house-price growth while their children are forced either to pay massive rents or pay large mortgages.

 

Between 2001 and today, average earnings rose by 65%,

but average Canterbury house prices rose by 154.3%

 

The issue of housing is particularly acute with the generation called the Millennials, who are young people born between the mid 1980’s and the late 1990’s. These 18 to 30 years, moulded by the computer and internet revolution, are finding as they enter early adult life, very hard to buy a property, as these ‘greedy’ landlords are buying up all the property to rent out back to them at exorbitant rents ... it’s no wonder these Millennials are lashing out at buy to let landlords, as they are seen as the greedy, immoral, wicked people who are cashing in on a social despair.

 

Like all things in life, we must look to the past, to appreciate where we are now.

 

The three biggest influencing factors on the Canterbury (and UK) property market in the later half of the 20th Century were, firstly, the mass building of Council Housing in the 1950’s and 60’s. Secondly, for the Tory party to sell most of those Council Houses off in the 1980’s and finally 15% interest rates in the early 1990’s which resulted in many houses being repossessed. It was these major factors that underpinned the housing crisis we have today in Canterbury.

 

To start with, in 1995 the USA relaxed its lending rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act. This Act saw a relaxation on the Bank’s lending criteria’s as there was pressure on these banks to lend on mortgages in low wage neighbourhoods, as the viewpoint in the USA was that anyone (even someone on the minimum wage) any working class person should be able to buy a home.  Unsurprisingly, the UK followed suit in the early 2000’s, as Banks and Building Society’s relaxed their lending criteria and brought to the market 100% mortgages, even Northern Rock started lending every man and his dog 125% mortgages.

 

So when we roll the clock forward to today, and we can observe those very same footloose banks from the early/mid 2000’s (that lent 125% with a just note from your Mum and a couple of breakfast cereal tokens), ironically reciting the Bank of England backed hymn-sheet of responsible-lending. On every first time buyer mortgage application, they are now looking at every line on the 20-something’s banks statements, asking if they are spending too much on socialising and holidays ... no wonder these Millennials are afraid to ask for a mortgage (as more often than not after all that – the answer is negative).

 

Conversely, you have unregulated Buy To Let mortgages. As long as you have a 25% deposit, have a pulse, pass a few very basic yardsticks and have a reasonable job, the banks will literally throw money at you ... I mean Virgin Money are offering 2.99% fixed for 3 years – so cheap!

 

So, in Part Two next week, I will continue this emotive article and show you some very interesting findings on why young people aren’t buying property anymore (and it’s not what you think!).

 

Canterbury property price rises set to be more restrained in 2017 due to Brexit

While Brexit has not yet had a sizeable impact on the Canterbury housing market, my analysis is pointing to the fact that the economic viewpoint still remains uncertain and Canterbury property price growth is likely to be more subdued during 2017 - although that isn’t a bad thing so let me explain.

 

Since the summer, apart from a little wobble of uncertainty a few weeks after the Referendum vote, property values (and the economy), on the whole has outperformed what most people were anticipating. In fact, when I looked at the property prices for our Canterbury City Council area, these were the results...

 

November 2016          - rise of 0.89%

October 2016              - rise of 1.09%

September 2016         - rise of 1.32%

August 2016                - rise of 1.89%

July 2016                     - rise of 1.78%

June 2016                    - drop of 0.59%

 

The UK property market continues to perform robustly (because we can’t just look at Canterbury as if in its own little bubble) with annual price growth set ended last year at 11.35% and most South East region property market at 9.1%.

 

Talking to fellow agents in London, the significant tidal wave of growth seen from 2013 through to 2015 in the capital has subdued over the last six months. However, as that central London house price wave has started to ripple out, agents are starting to see stronger property growth values in East Anglia and the South East regions outside of London, than what is being seen within the M25. So, fellow Canterbury landlords and homeowners, is this the time to get your surfboards ready for the London wave?

 

Well, we in Canterbury haven’t really been affected by what is happening in the central London property mega bubble (i.e. Kensington, Chelsea, Marylebone, Mayfair etc.). The property market locally is more driven by sentiment, especially the ‘C’ word ... confidence. The main forces for a weaker Canterbury Property market relate to economic uncertainty surrounding the Brexit process, which I believe will impact unhelpfully on consumer confidence in the run up to and just after the serving of the Section 50 Notice by the end of Q1 2017.

 

In addition, the influence of reforms to the taxation of landlords is expected to result in a reduced demand from buy to let landlords, which will limit upward pressure on property values. However, on the other side of the coin, demand from tenants has been strong, but this has been counterbalanced by a strong supply of rental properties. In my opinion, there is a slight risk of rents not growing as much in 2017 as they have in 2016, but by 2018 they will rise again to counteract Philip Hammond’s changes to tenant fees.

 

 

The broader Canterbury rental market looks relatively positive with modest rental growth expected and rents might rise further if landlords begin to sell properties in an effort to offset to the impact of tax rises.

 

So what do I predict will happen to the Canterbury housing market during 2017?  In Canterbury, I believe price values are expected to fall by 2.3% in 2017 compared to a rise of 11.35% this year, then pick up to growth of 1.9% in 2018, 3.1% in 2019, then 4.2% in 2020 and 6.5% in 2021.

 

But these predictions do not take into account any effect of a possible snap General Election or further referendum on ratifying any Brexit deal (if that comes to pass in the future).

 

Canterbury OAP’s sitting on £1.51 bn of Property

Canterbury people aged over 65 currently hold more housing wealth in their homes than the annual GDP of the whole of the Isle of Anglesey … and this is a problem for everyone in Canterbury!

 

Many retiree’s want to move but cannot, as there is a shortage of such homes for mature people to downsize into.  Due to the shortage, bungalows command a 10% to 20% premium per square foot over houses of the same size with stairs. To add to the woes, in 2014, just 1% of new builds in the UK were bungalows, according to the National House Building Council - down from 7% in 1996.

 

My research has found that there are 4,369 households in Canterbury owned outright (i.e. no mortgage) by over 65 year olds.  Taking into account the average value of a property in Canterbury, this means £1.51 billion of equity is locked up in these Canterbury homes, compared to the GDP of the whole of the Isle of Anglesey being £797 million of GDP.

 

A recent survey by YouGov, found that 36% of people aged over 65 in the UK are looking to downsize into a smaller home.  However, the Government seems to focus all its attention on first-time buyers with strategies such as Starter Homes to ensure the youngsters of the UK don’t become permanent members of ‘Generation Rent’.  Conversely, this overlooks the chronic under-supply of appropriate retirement housing essential to the needs of the Canterbury’s rapidly ageing population. Regrettably, the Canterbury’s housing stock is woefully unprepared for this demographic shift to the 'stretched middle age’, and this has created a new 'Generation Trapped’ dilemma where older people cannot move.

 

Some OAP’s who are finding it difficult to live on their own, are unable to leave their bungalow because of a lack of sheltered housing and ‘affordable’ care home places.  So, older retirees can't leave bungalows, younger retirees can't buy bungalows and younger people can't buy family houses.

 

Interestingly, adding insult to injury, the problem will only get worse, as in the 50 year old to 64 year old homeownership age range there are an additional 2,617 Canterbury households that are mortgage free and a further 2,189 Canterbury households who will be completing their mortgage responsibility.  With Government projections showing the proportion of over 65’s will rise by over a third from the current 17.7% to 24.3% of the population in the next 20 years ... this can only add greater pressure to the Canterbury Property market.

 

House prices have rocketed over the last 40 years because the supply of property has not kept up with demand. With migration, people living longer and high divorce rates (meaning one family becomes two) we need, as a Country, 240,000 properties to be built a year to just stand still.  In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the Country was building on average 180,000 to 190,000 households a year, but since the Credit Crunch (2009), that has only been between 130,000 and 145,000 households a year.

 

The solution …. release more land for starter homes, bungalows and sheltered accommodation because land prices are killing the housing market as the large firms dominating the construction industry are more likely to focus on traditional houses and apartments.  My opinion – until the Government change the planning rules and allow more land to be built on – Bungalows could be a decent bet for future investment as they continue to attract ever growing premiums?

Canterbury Property Market – Update 2017

Well, wasn’t 2016 eventful. The ups and downs of Brexit, the Queen’s 90th, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, Trump, Bake Off to Channel 4 and something close to the hearts of every buy to let landlord and homeowner in Canterbury ... the Canterbury property market.

 

So, let’s look at the headlines for the Canterbury property market...

 

In the last month, Canterbury property values rose by 0.81%, leaving them, year on year 9.9% higher, whilst interestingly, Canterbury asking prices are down 2.0% month on month. All three statistics go to show the Canterbury property market has recovered well after the summer lull, which was worsened by the uncertainty surrounding the EU vote back in June. Irrespective of all the issues, the average value of a Canterbury home now stands at £346,400.

 

Generally, Canterbury asking prices continue to hold up well, as asking prices are 4.7% higher year on year. Asking prices tend to drop on the run up to Christmas and locally, they dropped by 2.0% last month (December 2016), although this still compares well with last year’s drop in Canterbury asking prices, as we saw asking prices drop by 1.1% in December 2015.

 

Now it’s true to say, after chatting with fellow property professionals in Canterbury, all of us have seen the number of property sales fall slightly, suggesting a slowing market, but it is very early days and it could be the time of year. Also, the numbers are limited, so it’s interesting to take note from a recent survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, stating new buyer enquiries and new instructions are falling at the same rate, suggesting that there will not be a downward pressure on property values.

 

Looking at the figures for the UK (as we can’t just look at Canterbury in isolation), property values are generally rising slower than a few years ago, but on a positive note, there's still growth across the UK. You see, slowing property value growth isn't solely Brexit related, but after a number years of double digit rises in property values, affordability has weakened and cooling price growth is widely seen to be a natural correction of the market.

 

On the other hand, interest rates being at a record low of 0.25% are helping the property market. The cut in interest rates in the late summer was the medicine for the post-Brexit worry and will, as a consequence, ensure that the UK economy continues to be underpinned by buoyant property prices.

 

 So, what will happen in 2017 in the Canterbury property market?

 

Some say until we know what type of exit the UK will make from the EU it is hard to evaluate the outcome. Although, I believe, the whole Brexit issue is a sideshow to the main issue in the UK (and Canterbury) housing market as a whole. As I have mentioned time and time again over the last few months, the biggest issue is demand outstripping supply when it comes to the number of households required to house us all. Canterbury has an ever-growing population: with immigration (we still have at least two years of free movement from EU members into the UK), people living longer and the fact we need thousands of additional households as the country has nearly 115,000 divorces a year (where one household becomes two households).  These are interesting times ahead! 

 

£15m paid in Stamp Duty by Canterbury Residents

“A pound saved is worth two pounds earned . . . after taxes” is what my Grandfather used to say. He loved his irony, yet was always a wise man, and it is tax I want to talk about today, in particular, property taxation .. Stamp Duty in fact.

 

Apart from some minor exemptions, Stamp Duty is paid by anyone buying a property over £125,000 in the UK. It presently raises £10.68bn a year for the HM Treasury (interesting when compared with £27.6bn in fuel duty, £10.69bn in alcohol duty and £9.48bn in tobacco duty).

 

In the latest set of data from HMRC, in the MP constituency that covers Canterbury, property buyers paid £15m stamp duty in one year alone – a lot of money in anyone’s eyes (although not as much as the £232m in income tax that all of us in the same area paid last year).

 

However, as you may know, George Osborne introduced an additional tax for landlords and from 1st April 2016 they had to pay an additional 3% stamp duty surcharge on top of the normal stamp duty rate when purchasing a buy to let property. There were tales of woe and Armageddon with a report by Deutsche Bank suggesting that the new surcharge could see house prices fall by as much as 20%.

 

HMRC data released in the Summer for Quarter 2 (Q2) of 2016 did seem to back up those fears as they published some worrying figures; only one in seven properties purchased was a second home or buy-to-let (in real numbers, only 30,300 of the 207,900 properties in Q2 were bought by landlords).

 

In previous articles, I spoke about the slump of property transactions after the 1st of April (as landlords rushed through their property purchases in March to beat the April deadline). In Q2 of 2016, £1.976bn was raised in Stamp Duty from Residential Property. Of that £1.976bn, £652m was paid by buy to let landlords (£424m in normal stamp duty and £228m in the additional 3% surcharge).

 

However, looking at Q3, the numbers have improved significantly. Of the 235,000 property sales, nearly one in four of them (56,100 to be precise) were bought by buy to let landlords and of the £2.208bn in stamp duty, £864m was paid in ‘normal’ stamp duty by BTL landlords and an impressive £442m paid by those same landlords in the additional stamp duty surcharge.

 

The statistics suggest buy to let investors have thankfully not been deterred by the stamp duty surcharge introduced in April this year. The figures also show that 65.4% of "buy to let" purchases cost less than £250,000, 23.7% of properties were in the £250k to £500k range and 10.9% (or 6,100 additional properties) of buy to let properties bought cost over £500k – interestingly nearly one in four (22.2%) of £500k properties purchased in Q3 were buy to let properties.

 

 

It just goes to back up what I stated a few weeks ago when I suggested that many investors had rushed to make purchases before 31st March, making figures in the following months (Q2) artificially low when the 3% supplement was introduced, but in Q3 the number of buy to let properties purchased increased by 85%.

 

It just goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers! I can assure you the Canterbury property market is doing just fine. For more thoughts on the Canterbury Property Market like this .. visit the Canterbury Property Market Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com.

Average Rent Paid by Tenants in Canterbury rise to £1,246 per month

Back in the Spring, there was a surge in Canterbury landlords buying Buy-to-Let property in Canterbury as they tried to beat George Osborne’s new stamp duty changes which kicked in on the 1st April 2016. To give you an idea of the sort of numbers we are talking about, below are the property statistics for sales either side of the deadline in CT1.

Jan 2016 – 47 properties sold

Feb 2016 – 56 properties sold

March 2016 – 84 properties sold

April 2016 – 24 properties sold

May 2016 – 23 properties sold

Normally, the number of sales in the Spring months is very similar, irrespective of the month. However, as one can see, this year was a completely different picture as landlords moved their purchases forward to beat the stamp duty increase. You would think that even with a basic knowledge of supply and demand economics, rents would be affected in a downwards direction?

However, there appears to be no apparent effect on the levels of rent being asked in Canterbury - and more importantly achieved - and this direction of rents is not likely to inverse any time soon, particularly as legislation planned for 2017 might reduce rental stock and push property values ever upward. The decline of Buy-to-Let mortgage interest tax relief will make some properties lossmaking, forcing landlords to pass on costs to tenants in the form of higher rents just to stay afloat. Even those who can still operate may be deterred from making further investments, reducing rental stock at a time of severe property shortage.

.. but it’s not all bad news for tenants. Whilst average rents in Canterbury since 2005 have increased by 22.6%, inflation has been 38.5% over the same time frame, meaning Canterbury tenants are 15.9% better off in real terms when it comes to their rent (which is a sizeable chunk of most people’s monthly household budgets)

 

Year	Average Rent in Canterbury per month
2005	1016
2006	1039
2007	1062
2008	1098
2009	1114
2010	1099
2011	1126
2012	1151
2013	1168
2014	1185
2015	1212
2016	1246

 

 

I found it particularly interesting looking at the rent rises over the last five years in Canterbury, as it was five years ago we started to see the very early green shoots of growth of the Canterbury economy.  As a whole, following the Credit crunch (2011), rents in Canterbury have risen by an average of 2.4% a year – fascinating don’t you think?

The view I am trying to portray is that while renting is often portrayed as the unfavorable alternative to home ownership, many young Canterbury professionals like renting as it gives them adaptability with their life. Rents will continue to rise which is good news for landlords as buy to let is an investment but, as can be seen from the statistics, tenants have also had a good deal with below inflation increases in rents in the past. It’s a win-win situation for everyone although on a very personal note, it’s imperative in the future that tenants are not thwarted from saving for a deposit by excessive rental hikes – there has to be a balance.

For more thoughts and opinions on the Canterbury Property Market, if you are a Canterbury Homeowner or Canterbury landlord, please visit the Canterbury Property Blog www.canterburypropertyblog.com .