An Englishman’s
Home is His Castle as Maggie Thatcher lauded - everyone should own their own
home. In 1971, around 50% of people owned their own home and, as the
baby-boomers got better jobs and pay, that proportion of homeowners rose to 69%
by 2001. Homeownership was here to stay as many baby boomers assumed it’s very
much a cultural thing here in Britain to own your own home.
But on the back of
TV programmes like Homes Under the Hammer, these same baby boomers started to
jump on the band wagon of Dartford buy to let properties as an investment. Dartford
first time buyers were in competition with Dartford landlords to buy these
smaller starter homes … pushing house prices up in the 2000’s (as mentioned in Part One) beyond the
reach of first time buyers. Alas, it is not as simple as that. Many factors
come into play, such as economics, the banks and government policy. But are Dartford
landlords fanning the flames of the Dartford housing crisis bonfire?
I believe that the
landlords of the 3,253 DA1 rental properties are not exploitive and are in
fact, making many positive contributions to Dartford and the people of Dartford.
Like I have said before, Dartford (and the rest of the UK) isn’t building
enough properties to keep up the demand; with high birth rate, job mobility,
growing population and longer life expectancy.
According to the
Barker Review, for the UK to standstill and meet current demand, the country
needs to be building 8.7 new households each and every year for every 1,000
households already built. Nationally, we are currently running at 5.07 per
thousand and in the early part of this decade were running at 4.1 to 4.3 per
thousand.
It doesn’t sound a
lot of difference, so let us look at what this means for Dartford …
For Dartford to
meet its obligation on the building of new homes, Dartford would need to build 189
households each year. Yet, we are missing that figure by around 79 households a
year.
For the Government
to buy the land and build those additional 79 households, it would need to
spend £26,733,115 a year in Dartford alone. Add up all the additional
households required over the whole of the UK and the Government would need to
spend £23.31bn each year … the Country hasn’t got that sort of money!
With these
problems, it is the property developers who are buying the old run-down houses
and office blocks which are deemed uninhabitable by the local authority, and
turning them into new attractive homes to either be rented privately to Dartford
families or Dartford people who need council housing because the local
authority hasn’t got enough properties to go around.
The bottom line is that,
as the population grows, there aren’t enough properties being built for
everyone to have a roof over their head. Rogue landlords need to be put out of
business, whilst tenants should expect a more regulated rental market, with
greater security for tenants, where they can rely on good landlords providing
them high standards from their safe and modernised home. As in Europe, where
most people rent rather than buy, it doesn’t matter who owns the house – all
people want is a clean, decent roof over their head at a reasonable rent.
