Asking Prices of Crawley Property up 7% since December

Just before the referendum I sat down and looked at the difference between asking prices and values of Crawley property.  When it comes to selling property, there must be agreement between the purchaser (buyer) and seller (vendor) for a property sale to take place. The value a buyer applies to a property can massively differ from the value a seller or mortgage company places upon it. The seller, the buyer and the mortgage company must find an agreeable value to assign to a property so the sale can proceed.

In many of my articles about the Crawley property market, I talk about values, i.e. what property in Crawley actually sells for, but I haven’t spoken about asking prices for while. Now asking prices are important as they are one of the four key matters a potential buyer will judge your property on (the others being location, bedrooms and type). Price yourself too high and you will put off buyers. So let’s take a look at the Crawley numbers.

Over the last 12 months asking prices (i.e. the price advertised in the paper and on Rightmove) in Crawley have increased by 13%, taking the average asking price in Crawley to £376,200 (up from £333,600 twelve months ago).

Interestingly though, when we look at, say terraced properties and flats/apartments, a slightly different picture appears. Twelve months ago, the average asking price for a terrace house in Crawley was £260,400 and today its £281,000 (a rise of 8%); whilst over the same 12-month period, the average asking price of a flat/apartment was £191,800 a year ago, and today its £199,900 (a rise of 4%).

However, my research shows that the supply of property for sale in Crawley is beginning to increase. In December 2015, there were 253 on the market in Crawley today there are 352 properties on the market (up 39%). This will mean homeowners looking to sell will need to be conscious of how their property compares against others on the Crawley property market. The Crawley property market still has substantial momentum and sufficient demand remains to provoke more modest asking price rises. This noteworthy increase in supply since Christmas is currently providing more choice for buyers and is tempering asking price rises - and here is the devil in the detail - only 7% of the overall 13% annual figure (mentioned in para 3) has appeared since December.

… And here is the second point to make. Asking prices are one thing, but what a property sells for (i.e. value) is a completely different matter. These are the average prices achieved (i.e. what they sold for or the average value) for property in Crawley over the last 12 months...

·         Overall Average          £285,800

·         Terraced                     £256,300

·         Flats/Apartments        £186,200

You can quite clearly see, there is a difference between what people are asking for property and what it is selling for. The underlying fundamentals of low interest mortgages and tight supply remain prevalent in the Crawley property market however, the number one lesson has to be this ... if you want to sell, be realistic with your pricing.

6% Yield Studio Apartment

In yesterdays blog story at mycrawleyhome.com I wrote about landlords traditionally buying at the bottom of the market, today I have seen this studio apartment in Ifield come to market with local agent King & Chasemore.  You can view the details by clicking the following link.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-42778515.html

Studio apartments are the first rung on the ladder for single occupants and quite often rented as a temporary home by workers moving into the area who are not familiar with the town.   With the price tag at £125,000 and an expected rent of £650 we would achieve a yield in excess of 6%.  Landlords should bear in mind that studios will rent quicker as a furnished let, the tenants would be very unlikely to come with their own furniture.  In many cases we would also expect to provide the basic crockery and cookware in the kitchen.  Camelot Court has ample parking for those with a car and is within striking distance of Ifield Station for connections to Horsham, Crawley, Gatwick and beyond.  The studio room is spacious and bright with a double aspect and has a good range of storage cupboards.  Investors should bear in mind that they’ll be paying £3750 in stamp duty whilst a purchaser buying it as their only home will be paying nothing in stamp duty.  

Camelot Court - Ifield

524 Crawley Properties lie empty– An injustice for the 1,454 people on the Crawley Council House Waiting List?

Easy problems should have easy solutions  - shouldn’t they?

Problems like Crawley’s housing crisis, where we have a rudimentary numerical problem of too few homes for too many people ... the answer is clearly to build more property in Crawley - but that, unfortunately for those desperately seeking to purchase or let a property, takes a lot of time and huge amounts of money. So what of other solutions?

The most recent set of figures from 2015 state there are 524 empty homes in the Crawley Borough Council area. So it begs the question ... why not put them back onto the system and help ease the Crawley housing crisis? Whilst they stand empty, 1,454 Crawley households (not people – households) are on the Council House Waiting List for council houses. Surely, we can undoubtedly all agree that property left empty for years and years isn’t morally right with the burgeoning Council House Waiting List, not to also mention the issue of homelessness.

But a different story emerges when you look deeper into the numbers. Of those 524 homes lying empty, only 32 properties were empty for more than six months. The local authority has to report a property being empty, even if its for a week. So many of the Crawley properties are either awaiting new homeowners or, in the case of rental properties, new tenants. Also most certainly, some properties are being refurbished and renovated, while others properties have homeowners who are anxious to sell but cannot find a buyer.

And this is where its gets even more interesting. Of the long-term vacant properties (those empty more than six months), all belong to the council. However, before we all go Council-bashing, anecdotal evidence suggests these empty council houses are habitually in need of so much restoration that it’s not worth the Council’s while to do and are in the roughest parts of the council estates, they are properties that even the Council find difficult to fill.

The fact is that the number of genuinely long term empty properties is only a tiny drop in the ocean of the 42,727 properties in the area covered by Crawley Borough Council and, even if every one of those empty homes were filled with happy cheerful tenants tomorrow, it would only meet a small fraction of Crawley housing needs.

So what does this mean for all the homeowners and landlords of Crawley? Well it means with demand being so high, especially for rental properties, the certainty of the rental market growing is an inevitability because young people cannot buy and councils don’t have the money to build new council houses. This in turn bolsters property prices as landlords continue to buy at the lower end of the market (starter homes, etc), which in turn sustains the rest of the market as those sellers move up the property ladder, releasing others in turn to buy on again. 

But the increase in the landlord tax burden and the uncertainty caused by Brexit means that the coming months and years will be interesting times in the Crawley property market!

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