That isn’t a typo, of the 24,962 households in Royal Tunbridge Wells, 7,844
of those properties don’t only have one spare bedroom, but two spare bedrooms!
… and it is this topic I want to talk about this week, my Royal Tunbridge Wells
Property Market Blog readers – because this could be the cure for Royal
Tunbridge Wells’s housing crisis. The fundamental
problem of the Royal Tunbridge Wells housing ‘crisis’, is the fact that the
supply of homes to live in has not historically met demand, increasing property
values (and in turn rents), thus ensuring home ownership becomes an unattainable
ambition for the twenty something’s
of Royal Tunbridge Wells.
Call me a realist, but it’s 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 Royal Tunbridge Wells, 15,752 households have one
spare bedroom and of these, 7,844 have two or more spare bedrooms.
This compares to 1,079 households in Royal Tunbridge Wells that are
overcrowded (i.e. there are more people than bedrooms in the property).
Looking specifically at the homeowners of Royal Tunbridge Wells, 5,531
owner occupied Royal Tunbridge Wells houses have one spare bedroom. Now having a spare bedroom is not considered
a luxury. However, in addition to those 5,531
households with one spare bedroom, there are on top, a further 7,126 owner
occupied Royal Tunbridge Wells households with two or more spare bedrooms.
Therefore, I am beginning to see there is the spare capacity in the Royal
Tunbridge Wells 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 kids
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.
However, 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 one, we
will have a situation where younger families will be living in smaller and
smaller houses, whilst all the large houses with 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.
.. and it would have to be incentives, as the using the stick (instead
of the carrot) would be political suicide for any party, especially the Tory’s. One option is to allow retired downsizers not
to pay 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 ... or
is this one step too far in ‘social engineering’?
The fact is not enough properties are being built in Royal Tunbridge
Wells, and with population rising at a faster rate, something needs to be done. However, I believe the Royal Tunbridge Wells
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. That
works particularly well in Germany and I can’t see why it can’t work here. In the meantime, there is an opportunity in
the coming 20 years for people to supplement their pension by buying smaller
properties to rent out, as that is where the demand will be in the next few
decades in Royal Tunbridge Wells. For
even more thoughts on the Royal Tunbridge Wells Property Market – visit the Royal
Tunbridge Wells Property Blog
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