2,596 M9 homes bought by private landlords in the last 5 years

What does this mean for existing homeowners in Harpurhey & Blackley and first time buyers?

People are always going to need a roof over their heads and somewhere to live – it’s a necessity for every single person. The 22 to 30 year olds of the area have a choice to what type of roof they have: they can rent from a Housing Association, they can rent from a private landlord or finally they can get a mortgage and buy one.
In the 1970’s/80’s and 90’s, the expected thing was to save like mad for two years for a deposit (going without luxuries) whilst living at home or renting a cheap two up two down, then buy your first house.

However, more recently fewer M9 youngsters have been buying, choosing to rent instead – mainly from private landlords. The numbers are truly staggering and I want to share them with you. Roll the clock back 5 years and M9 was a different place. There were 39,270 households in the area and 17,371 of those were owner occupied (16,568 with a mortgage). Move to the present, and the total number of households has increased slightly by 1% to 39,553 and quite surprisingly (to me at least), the number of owner occupiers has substantially decreased to 12,504 and now represents 31.63% compared with 44.2% five years ago.

However, it’s rented sector that is truly fascinating. Five years ago, only 7,655 properties were privately rented in Wimbledon and now its 10,224, a rise of 2,596. Demand for decent rented property remains high, as the Government’s much publicised house building programme is years away and has decades of under investment to catch up on before it starts to affect demand. The chances of these youngsters buying a property in with an M9 postcode is diminishing with every year that passes, so private landlords in Harpurhey & Blackley still have an important role to play in housing the people of the area.

Even the buy-to-let tax rule changes over the coming few years (which will see the maximum tax relief available to landlords drop from 45% to 20%), those landlords who educate themselves and treat it as a business will survive and prosper. The best method Harpurhey & Blackley landlords can employ to maintain their income from property (and mitigate the effects of the tax rises) is to keep the homes they let out in grade-A condition. I have found especially over the last three of four years, M9 tenants have ever growing demands from their rental property, but many are prepared to pay high rent for houses and apartments that meet their exacting expectations.

You must not forget, letting property in Blackley & Harpurhey (in fact anywhere) is a business, so all private landlords should also seek the advice, opinion and commentary of property professionals.

For homeowners, property values over the last 12 months alone in M9 have risen by an impressive 5%, so even with the new Stamp Duty changes for Landlords, my thoughts are with such low supply, and high demand, it’s hard to imagine much impact on M9 values. It might interest you to note that over the last twelve months, only 346 properties have sold in the M9 area, compared with 1,275 in 2007. I predict that the proportion of owner occupiers should increase slightly compared with buy-to-let landlords in the coming decade as the housing market should return to some balance.