That isn’t a typo, of the 17,944 households in Grantham, 6,980 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 Grantham Property Market Blog
readers – because this could be the cure for Grantham’s housing crisis. The fundamental problem of the Grantham 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 Grantham.
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 Grantham, 13,791 households have one spare bedroom
and of these, 6,980 have two or more spare bedrooms.
This compares to 383 households in Grantham that are overcrowded (i.e.
there are more people than bedrooms in the property).
Looking specifically at the homeowners of Grantham, 4,058 owner occupied
Grantham houses have one spare bedroom. Now
having a spare bedroom is not considered a luxury. However, in addition to those 4,058
households with one spare bedroom, there are on top, a further 5,870 owner
occupied Grantham households with two or more spare bedrooms.
Therefore, I am beginning to see there is the spare capacity in the Grantham
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 Grantham, and with
population rising at a faster rate, something needs to be done. However, I believe the Grantham 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 Grantham. For even more
thoughts on the Grantham Property Market – visit the Grantham Property Blog
