Harlow’s continuing housing shortage is
putting the town’s (and the Country’s) repute as a nation of homeowners ‘under
threat’, as the number of houses being built continues to be woefully
inadequate in meeting the ever demanding needs of the growing population in the
town. In fact, I was talking to my parents the other
day at a family get together; the subject of the Harlow Property market came up
in the conversation (as I am sure it does at many family parties in Harlow)
after the weather and politics. My parents said It used to be that if you went
out to work and did the right thing, you would expect that relatively quickly
over the course of your career you would be buying a house, you would go on
holiday every year, you would save for a pension. But
now things seem to have changed?
Back in the Autumn, George Osborne, used
the Autumn Statement to double the housing budget to £2bn a year from April
2018 in an attempt to increase supply and deliver 100,000 new homes each year
until 2020. The Chancellor also
introduced a series of initiatives to help get first time buyers on the housing
ladder, including the contentious Help to Buy Scheme and extending Right to Buy
from not just Council tenants, but to Housing Association tenants as well.
Now that does all sound rather good, but
the Country is only building 137,490 properties a year (split down 114,250
built by private builders, 21,560 built by Housing Associations and and a
paltry 1,680 council houses). If you
look at the graph (courtesy of ONS), you will see nationally, the last time the
country was building 230,000 houses a year was in the 1960’s.
How George is going to almost double house
building overnight, I don’t know, because using the analogy of a greengrocers;
if people want to buy more apples (i.e. houses) in a greengrocers’ shop, giving
them more money (i.e. with the Help to Buy scheme) when there's not enough apples
in the first place doesn't really help.
Looking at the Harlow house building
figures, in the local authority area as a whole, only 200 properties were built
in the last 12 months, split down into 140 privately built properties and 160
housing association with not one council house being built. This is
simply not enough and the shortage of supply has meant Harlow property values
have continued to rise, meaning they are 9.5% higher than 12 months ago, rising
1.1% in the last month alone.
I was taught at school (all those years
ago!), that’s it’s all about supply and demand, this economics game. The demand
for Harlow property has been particularly strong for properties in the good
areas of the town and it is my considered opinion that it is likely to continue
this year, driven by growing demand among buyers (both Harlow homebuyers and Harlow
landlords alike). You see Harlow’s economy is quite varied, meaning activity is
expected to remain relatively strong into the early Summer of 2016, especially
as some Harlow buy to let landlords try to complete purchases ahead of the
introduction of new stamp duty rules in April.
.. and of supply, well we have spoken about
the lack of new building in the town holding things back, but there is another
issue relating to supply. Of the existing properties already built, the
concern is the number of properties on the market and for sale. The
number of properties for sale last month in Harlow was 234, whilst 12 months
ago, that figure was 364 whilst three years ago it stood at 615… a massive drop!