In Britain, there are 27,071,500 households, of which 17,044,450 are owned, which are worth a total of £3,925,865,212,950 (£3.92 trillion). Over the last 5 years, an average of 86,096 properties sell each month, meaning just over a million UK households move home per year. Therefore, the average British homeowner moves every 16 years 5 months.
These statistics refute a common hypothesis that British
neighbourhoods are becoming more fleeting and transitory. On the face of it,
they appear to show that, once you have succeeded to buy a property you can
call home, there isn’t much motivation to move again.
So, aren’t people moving home so much?
Could it be put down to a certain sense of complacency or
apathy to moving home? Whereas we might love our home in Neath, most of you
(including myself) still want to ‘better our lives’ with a bigger house, better
area etc, which typically requires us to climb up the Neath property ladder.
Yet with Neath
house prices having risen by 181.6% in the last 20 years, the cost of going up
the next rung on the Neath property ladder is prohibitive.
Everyone harks back to the 1980’s, when we had an upbeat
booming property market as a backcloth, Brits moved home every eight years; so now
with the average at just over 16 years this equates to each British homeowner
moving around three to four times in their adult lifetime. Maybe we should all
call our homes ‘Dunroamin’ and be done with it!
Or does it?
We have all heard the phrase ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’
… well the stats mentioned above hide some amazing features of the British
property market. When homeowners get into their 50’s and 60’s, their tendency
to move home drops like a stone. The average length of time a homeowner without
a mortgage moves home is 24 years and 7 months (and just under 7 out of
ten outright homeowners i.e. without a mortgage are 65 years old or older).
Yet, homeowners with a mortgage move on average every
10 years and 11 weeks.
So, whilst I cannot determine who has a mortgage and who
doesn’t, I can look at how quickly people move home in Neath. I have looked at the last 50 property sales
in Neath, and I have found some interesting findings.
On average Neath homeowner only move every 13 years and 43 weeks.
Nothing interesting about that you might say, when compared
to the national average … yet the devil is in the detail.
There appears to be a two-speed Neath property market … look
at the top 25% of Neath home movers, and then the next slice … these Neath
people are moving home really quickly, yet the gap for the next two slices
widens tremendously.
- Top 25% quickest Neath home movers move
every 2 years & 26 weeks - The next 25% quickest Neath home movers
move every 8 years & 48 weeks - The next 25% quickest Neath home movers
move every 18 years & 21 weeks - Whilst top
25% slowest Neath home movers only move every 26 years & 3 weeks
When looking at the properties that fall into the later
bands (i.e. the ones that don’t move/sell so often), they tend to be the larger
properties where the homeowners have lived for 25/30 years plus.
The lesson we all should learn is that once people get into
their 50’s and 60’s, their propensity to move home drops considerably. This
means the properties on the lower rungs of the Neath property ladder do appear
to sell quickly (as they are occupied by younger homeowners) yet once Neath
people get older, their tendency to move diminishes. This puts a roadblock on
the younger generation wanting to buy the larger Neath properties these mature
homeowners live in.
What is holding the older generation back from selling and downsizing
to free up homes for families that desperately need them? Some of it will be
apathy, some of it will be holding on to the home that they brought their family
up in, yet the bottom line is…
46.5% of the homes owned in Britain have two or more spare bedrooms.
As a nation, we need to rethink how we can encourage older homeowners
to sell their large homes to release them to the younger families that
desperately need them. Some suggest tax breaks, yet the Government won’t be in
the mood to give huge tax breaks as the measures to protect the economy over
the last 12 months will ultimately need to be paid back.
One thing I do know, we as a Country have seen (and will
continue to see) a lot of demographic change together with an increasing
elderly population, so it’s not just about how many homes we build, but whether
we are building the right kind of homes the older generation will want to move
into.
Interesting times ahead for the Neath property market!
If you have a Neath property to sell or let in the coming weeks, months or years and would like to know how this and other factors will affect you and your property … without obligation, don’t hesitate to give me a call or drop me line.
