5,532 Spare ‘Spare’ Bedrooms in Dartford – Is this the cause of the Dartford Housing Crisis?

That isn’t a typo, of the 21,767 households in Dartford, 5,532 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 Dartford Property Market Blog readers – because this could be the cure for Dartford’s housing crisis. The fundamental problem of the Dartford 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 Dartford.
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.

In Dartford, 13,046 households have one spare bedroom and of these, 5,532 have two or more spare bedrooms.

This compares to 1,187 households in Dartford that are overcrowded (i.e. there are more people than bedrooms in the property).
Looking specifically at the homeowners of Dartford, 5,828 owner occupied Dartford houses have one spare bedroom. Now having a spare bedroom is not considered a luxury. However, in addi- tion to those 5,828 households with one spare bedroom, there are on top, a further 4,775 owner occupied Dartford households with two or more spare bedrooms.
Therefore, I am beginning to see there is the spare capacity in the Dartford housing market. Prin- cipally, 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 re- quired, to move into a smaller and, usually, less expensive property.

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 Dartford, and with population rising at a faster rate, something needs to be done. However, I believe the Dartford 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 Dartford. 

For even more thoughts on the Dartford Prop- erty Market – visit the Dartford Property Blog www.dartfordproperty.blogspot.co.uk