In Burton, building properties is not like making Mars bars!

My friends often call me an estate agent, but then I remind them that whilst a lot of estate agents do both sales of property and letting of property, we are a letting agent only and  always plan to be!

By specialising in lettings, it enables me and the team to get the job done right. In a recent article, when we spoke about the difference between Burton and Nottingham property markets and their prices, one landlord who popped his head round our door on the High Street to chat about the Burton property market got talking about how he thought there were less for sale boards in Burton than there were ten, even fifteen years ago.

All the newspapers talk about is a crisis of a lack of properties. Building new property is not like the Mars bar factory that can keep the machines going an extra couple of hours to make more Mars bars. The Government says 200,000 properties need to be built each year for the next ten years. For Burton to take its share of that would mean we would have to build 610 properties each year for the next ten years.. yet in the last ten years, in Burton, we have only built on average 315 properties per year.

People in popular areas say they want more properties for their children and are usually in favour of more homes being built, as long as they are not in their local area. Increasing  supply of houses leads to more congestion, crowded amenities and loss of greenbelt. Then, and here is the big reason, those homeowners have a vested interest to keep the building low because an increased supply  reduces the value of their existing home. Therefore, existing homeowners have a vested interest in keeping the supply as low as possible in their area.

Finally, a lack of council houses since Mrs T. encouraged the sale of council housing after she was elected in 1979, the number of new social housing to replace them, has been very low.

However, getting back to the point, it’s a simple fact that since the 2007 crash, the number of properties that are selling in Burton has dramatically reduced. Look at the graph and you will see in the late 1990’s (what most say was a normal market), around 100 properties a month were selling each month in Burton. In the first half of the 2000’s decade, when we had a rising market, around 120 properties were changing hands each month in Burton. In 2008, the year of the property crash that dropped to 60 per month and hasn’t grown that much since, although we started to see a rise in 2014. Hence those poor old estate agents aren’t selling as many properties.. it must be tough for the little dears!

If you would like to discuss my thoughts on the rental market, feel free to pop through the door of our offices on the High Street, call me on 07973 666229 or send me an email to: davidm@professionalproperties.co.uk

      

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