Bexley Borough Property News

There are 23.36 million properties in England and Wales with 64% being owner occupied and 36% being rented either from a private landlord, local authority or housing association. Over nine out of ten of those English and Welsh owner-occupied properties are a whole house or bungalow. Now, most people would assume they would be freehold - however, of those renting nearly half of rental properties, 44% to be precise, lived in other leasehold apartments and flats. It might be wise to quickly explain the difference between freehold and leasehold. When someone owns the freehold of a property they own it outright, including the land it is built on, whilst with a leasehold property the leaseholder owns the property for the length of their lease agreement. Leaseholders must pay the person who owns land (the freeholder) ground rent and other fees. When the leasehold ends, ownership returns to the freeholder although the leaseholder can extend the lease or they can buy the freeholder o...

According to the Land Registry's latest House Price Index for Bexleyheath and the surrounding locality, the value of apartments/flats are rising at a faster rate than terraced/town houses, semi-detached properties and even detached property. Values of apartments in Bexleyheath have increased by 7.26 % over the past year, which is proportionally 28% more than the Bexleyheath average rise of 5.66%. The last time flats/apartments in Bexleyheath out performed all the other types of property, by such a gulf, was back in the winter of 2004. For comparison, the other property types performed as follows:   ·          Detached homes rose by 5.32% ·          Semi-detached homes rose by 4.89% ·          Terraced/Town-Houses rose by 5.07% This moderately increasing rate of property value growth is opportune – but no one should confuse it with a strong and...

As more babies are being born to Bexley mothers, I believe this increase will continue to add pressure to the over stretched Bexley property market and materially affect the local property market in the years to come. On the back of eight years of ever incremental increasing birth rates, a significant 4.94 babies were born for every new home that was built in the Bexley council area in 2016.  I believe this has and will continue to exacerbate the Bexley housing shortage, meaning demand for housing, be it to buy or rent, has remained high.  The high birth rate has meant Bexley rents and Bexley property prices have remained resilient – even with the challenges the economy has felt over the last eight years, and they will continue to remain high in the years to come. This ratio of births to new homes has reach one of its highest levels since 1945 (back in the early 1970’s the average was only one and a half births for every household b...

This was a question posed to me a few weeks ago, after an interesting discussion with some clients about our mature members of Bexley society and the fact many retirees feel trapped in their homes. After working hard for many years and buying a home for themselves and their family, the children have subsequently flown the nest and now they are left to rattle around in a big house. Many feel trapped in their big homes (hence I have dubbed these Bexley home owning mature members of our society, ‘Generation Trapped’). So, should we force OAP Bexley homeowners to downsize? Well one view is that we, as a society, should encourage, through building, tax breaks and social acceptance that it’s a good thing to downsize. But should the Government force OAP’s? Well, one of the biggest reasons OAP’s move home is health (or lack of it). Looking at the statistics for Bexley (or DA5 to be precise), of the 4,040 homeowners who are 65 years and older, whilst 2,326 of them describ...

In Bexley, of the 114,450 households, 36,866 homes are owned without a mortgage and 45,598 homes are owned by a mortgage. Many homeowners have made contact with me asking what the General Election will do to the Bexley property market?  The best way to predict the future is to look at the past. I have looked over the last five general elections and analysed in detail what happened to the property market on the lead up to and after each general election. Some very interesting information has come to light. Of the last five general elections (1997, 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2015), the two elections that weren’t certain were the last two (2010 with the collation and 2015 with unexpected Tory majority). Therefore, I wanted to compare what happened in 1997, 2001 and 2005 when Tony Blair was guaranteed to be elected/re-elected versus the last knife edge uncertain votes of 2010 and 2015 in terms of the number of houses sold and the prices achieved. Look at the first graph...

A Bexleyheath homeowner emailed me last week, following my article posted in the Bexleyheath Property Blog about the change in attitude to renting by the youngsters of Bexleyheath and how they thought it was too expensive for first time buyers to buy in Bexley Borough.  Some may have also seen a recent Facebook comment on one of my articles left by a very pleasant, but understandably concerned, lady. There can be no doubt that buy to let landlords have played their part in driving up property values in Bexley Borough (and the UK) and from that made housing less affordable for the 20 and 30 somethings. The email suggested that the Bank of England (BoE) should be tasked to control house price inflation in the same way as the BoE controls inflation.  The BoE has a target for the annual inflation rate of the Consumer Prices Index of 2%, whilst it is also required to support the Government’s economic policy, including its objectives for growth and employment .   S...