Thursday 12 March 2020

Royal Tunbridge Wells Property Values rise by 402% since 2000

As soon as people find out I am an agent in the property game, I nearly always get asked “Tell me what is happening to the Royal Tunbridge Wells Property Market”, and the answer isn’t always the same or indeed what they want to hear.

To start with, it really does depend on whether you are a buyer or seller. The property market in Royal Tunbridge Wells (like in all parts of the UK) swings like a pendulum between being a seller’s market or a buyer’s market yet, unless you are a Royal Tunbridge Wells first time buyer, Royal Tunbridge Wells buy to let landlord or executors selling a deceased persons estate, the vast majority of the time, people are both (i.e. they are selling to buy on).

The balance of power/negotiating power ultimately depends on simple supply and demand economics. Low supply (i.e. number of properties on the market) and high demand (i.e. large number of buyers) for any product or service (including your Royal Tunbridge Wells property) means prices tend to go up and high supply and low demand would mean prices tend to go down.

Yet supply and demand isn’t the only issue. Location is as important as the type of property and where it sits on the property ladder (i.e. is it at the lower, middle or upper end of the property market when it comes to size, type, price etc.).

Interestingly, the Government have released lots of data about the Royal Tunbridge Wells property market and, after many hours of number crunching, I have found some interesting trends. Whilst most stats look at the overall average of property values/prices, The Office of National Statistics (ONS), also likes to look at the bottom 10% of the market and the bottom 25% of the market.

It’s called the property ladder for a good reason, and the health of the whole Royal Tunbridge Wells property market is very dependent on those bottom rungs of the ladder.

Therefore, three sets of data are segmented as follows, based on the statistics given by the ONS ..

1.     Lower 10th Percentile of the Royal Tunbridge Wells housing market – i.e. the bottom 10% in terms of value of properties sold – e.g. small apartments and ex-local authority properties in the less popular areas which mainly attract buy to let landlords.
2.     Lower Quartile of the Royal Tunbridge Wells housing market – i.e. lowest 25% of Royal Tunbridge Wells property in terms of value of properties sold e.g. starter homes, first time buyer homes and slightly more up market buy to let property.
3.     Overall Average of the Royal Tunbridge Wells housing market – which takes into account the whole market from the top to the bottom.

…. And if one looks at our figures for Royal Tunbridge Wells and the local authority as a whole, you can see the three different parts have performed quite differently.



The ‘Lower 10th Percentile’ and ‘Lower Quartile’ parts of the Royal Tunbridge Wells property market have been driven over the last 20 years by two sets of buyers. The first are landlord investors who fuelled the increase of private rented properties in Royal Tunbridge Wells. 

The other set of buyers in the ‘Lower 10th Percentile’ and ‘Lower Quartile’ Royal Tunbridge Wells property market are the first-time buyers (FTB), which over the last couple of years, has been in the ascendency. 

Looking at the stats themselves …


Lower 10th
Royal Tunbridge Wells percentile

(i.e. the bottom 10% of the property market)
Lower
Royal Tunbridge Wells Quartile

(i.e. the bottom 25% of the property market)
Overall Royal Tunbridge Wells Average
2000
£56,900
£74,900
£91,800
2019
£210,000
£280,000
£460,800

You might ask, what do all these different figures mean to Royal Tunbridge Wells’ homeowners and Royal Tunbridge Wells’ landlords alike? Quite a lot – so let me explain. 

If we applied the best percentage uplift figure (i.e. from the Royal Tunbridge Wells ‘Average’ market), to that Royal Tunbridge Wells ‘Lower 10th percentile’ housing market 2000 figure, the 2019 figure in the table above of £210,000, would have been £285,600 instead – quite a difference you must agree?

Every Royal Tunbridge Wells’ homeowner and Royal Tunbridge Wells’ buy to let landlord should learn from this information that there are many mini-property markets and not just look at the overall averages. When you comprehend there isn’t just one Royal Tunbridge Wells Property Market, but many Royal Tunbridge Wells “mini-property markets”, you can spot trends and bag yourself some potential bargains. 


There are so many bargains in the Royal Tunbridge Wells property market at the moment, especially for Royal Tunbridge Wells buy to let landlords looking to expand their property empire. Do feel free to give me a call or drop me a line if you would like to know where they are!