What Sold the Most in Crawley - Flats or Houses?

Crawley & its outlying areas attract all sorts of property hunters seeking a home with our great location of being halfway between London and Brighton.  Fortunately, just about every accommodation preference can be catered for, from highly desirable detached houses to the spacious new town commission planned neighbourhoods to modern developments of apartments dotted throughout the area.

There seems to be a constant commentary from newspapers and media about what is happening to the property market so let us use the land registry statistics to see exactly what has happened over the last 12 months, in particular, what type of property is actually selling.

Terraced Houses in Crawley

Between November 2013 and November 2014, 1456 of the 50318 properties in Crawley actually sold.  The best performing type of property was, the terraced house. Not surprising considering the new town roots of Crawley but the most popular type was the terraced house with 569 sold in the last year, with an average sale price of £230,008.  This  represents 39% of the property sold in the area (which when you consider 42% of local property is terraced houses, this means they have changed hands less than some other types of property).

In second place are the flats and apartments. They represented 23% of the sales, but then flats and apartments make up 20% of the property in Crawley, good news for all flat owners as the activity is greater than the market share of their property.

Of the 10,661 semi-detached houses in Crawley, 278 changed hands in the last year, showing that whilst 21% of properties in Crawley are semi-detached houses, they very respectably, represented 19% of the sales.

On a par with the semi’s – the detached houses also represented 19% of the sales.  However the 8802 detached houses throughout our area represented 17% of the housing stock.  The 271 that changed hands over the past year means there was ore activity in this market than that of the semi-detached houses.

What does this mean for the property owners of Crawley? It means that there is a fairly even property market in Crawley. Most homeowners start with a terraced, aspire to move to semi detached houses, then as finances allow, they move to a detached property. The majority of apartments, especially in the city centre, may have been purchased by landlords to rent out to tenants.  The Gatwick effect means that the buy-to-let market is buoyant with many landlords investing in the area meaning the activity in the apartments sector is strong. 

However, in general, the Crawley property market is in full swing and ‘negative equity’ is becoming a distant memory. We are seeing some good sales and if you look hard enough, you may chance upon a "hidden property gem" in the most unlikely of places.

If you would like to discuss anything further then please pop in and see me in our office on Orchard Street.