Dartford’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 friend Colin the other day
at a family get together; the subject of the Dartford Property market came up
in the conversation (as I am sure it does at many family parties in Dartford)
after the weather and politics. My friend Colin 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 Dartford house
building figures, in the local authority area as a whole, only 470 properties
were built in the last 12 months, split down into 440 privately built
properties and 30 housing association with not one council house being built. This is
simply not enough and the shortage of supply has meant Dartford property values
have continued to rise, meaning they are 8.7% higher than 12 months ago, rising
0.7% 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 Dartford 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 Dartford homebuyers and Dartford landlords
alike). You see Dartford’s economy is
quite varied, meaning activity is expected to remain relatively strong into the
early Summer of 2016, especially as some Dartford 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 Dartford was 162, whilst
12 months ago, that figure was 252 whilst three years ago it stood at 367… a
massive drop!
With demand for Dartford
property rising, minimal new homes being built and less properties coming onto
the market, that can only mean one thing ... now is a good time to be a
homeowner or landlord in Dartford. For more articles like this, please visit the Dartford
Property Blog http://www.dartfordproperty.blogspot.com/
