Is Crawley Overcrowded......?

Crawley is already in the clutches of a population crisis that has now started to affect the quality of life of those living in Crawley. There are simply not enough homes in Crawley to house the greater number of people wanting to live in the town and public services almost at breaking point.

To start with, the UK has roughly 1,065 people per square mile – the second highest in Europe. The total area of Crawley itself is 9.410 square miles and there are 106,900 Crawley residents, meaning …

11,300 people live in each square mile of Crawley, it’s no wonder we appear to be bursting at the seams!

A square mile is enormous, so the numbers look correspondingly large (and headline grabbing). Most people reading this will know what an ‘acre’ is, but those younger readers who don’t, it is an imperial unit of measurement for land and it is approximately 63 metres square.

In Crawley, only 16.19 people live in every acre of Crawley … not as headline grabbing, but a lot closer to home and relative to everyday life, and, a figure that doesn’t seem that bad. 

Yet, the issue at hand is, we need more homes building.  In 2007, Tony Blair set a target that 240,000 homes a year needed to be built to keep up with the population growth, whilst the Tory’s new target since 2010 was a more modest 200,000 a year.  However, since 2010, as a country, we have only been building between 140,000 and 150,000 houses a year. So where are we going to build these homes .. because we have no space! Or do we?

A recent Government report, looking specifically at England (as it is the most densely populated country of the Union), reported that all the 20 million English homes cover only 1.1% of its land mass.

·         Residential Houses and Flats 1.1%

·         Gardens 4.3%

·         Shops and Offices 0.7%

·         Highways (Roads and Paths) 2.3%

·         Railways 0.1%

·         Water (Rivers /Reservoirs) 2.6%

·         Industry, Military and other uses 1.4%

.. leaving 88.5% as Open Countryside (and if you think about it, add to that the gardens, which are green spaces, and the country is 92.8% greenspace)

As a country, we have plenty of space to build more homes for the younger generation and the five million more homes needed in the next 20 years would use only 0.25% of the country’s land.  Nobody wants to see massive housing estates and 20 storey concrete and glass behemoth apartment blocks next to local beauty spots such as Tilgate Park or Buchan Country Park, but with clever planning and joined up thinking, we really do need to think outside the box when it comes to how we are going to build and house our children and our children’s children in the coming 50 years in Crawley.

In the meantime, if you have a question about rental or residential property in Crawley you can contact me in the Martin & Co office in Crawley Town Centre, the phone number is 01293 735000.

Crawley Property Investment in Bewbush Family Home

The Bewbush area of Crawley was the last big estate built in the 1970’s by Crawley Borough Council.   Complete with neighbourhood centre, shops and schools the estate offered mainly family homes of three and four bedroom houses.  Since its completion many of these houses were bought under the right to buy scheme with many now owned by landlords.  I have seen this 3 bedroom home come on the market with Mansell McTaggert that would achieve a 5.5% yield, you can view the details by clicking the link below:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-39413889.html

Bewbush has been added to and modernised over the last forty years with private builders continuing to expand the types of housing on offer.  House prices in this area have risen by 66% in the last ten years alone.  The area remains popular with families that generally will make for a very long term tenancy.  But we have seen an increasing number of sharers consider the area due to the excellent FastWay service to Gatwick that also links the town centre, stations and industrial estate. 

Salvington Road, Bewbush

The average 3 bedroom house will rent for £1150pcm in the current market which will give a yield of 5.5% on the £250,000 purchase price.  Any prospective purchaser should be aware that these homes were originally fitted with warm air central heating systems that have since gone out of fashion and can be difficult to maintain.  To replace the system with a boiler and radiators will leave you paying an invoice of around £5000 but would dramatically increase the energy performance of the property.  Landlords should also be aware that the additional stamp duty would levy an additional £7500 to the stamp duty bill when purchasing the property.

28.3% Of Crawley Homes Are One Person Households

I was having an interesting chat with a Crawley buy to let landlord the other day when the subject of size of households came up in conversation.  For those of you who read my Brexit article published on the morning after the referendum, one of the reasons on why I thought the Crawley property market would, in the medium to long term, be OK, was the fact that the size of households in the 21^st Century was getting smaller – which would create demand for Crawley Property and therefore keep property prices from dropping.

Looking at the stats going back to the early 1960’s, when the average number of people in a home was exactly 3, it has steadily over the years dropped by a fifth to today’s figure of 2.4 people per household. Doesn’t sound a lot, but if the population remained at the same level for the next 50 years and we had the same 20% drop in household size, the UK would need to build an additional 5.28 million properties ( or 105,769 per year) .. When you consider the Country is only building 139,800 properties a year ... it doesn’t leave much for people living longer and immigration. Looking closer to home...

In the Crawley Borough Council area, the average

number of occupants per household is 2.5 people

When we look at the current picture nationally and split it down into tenure types (i.e. owned, council houses and private renting, a fascinating picture appears.

The vast majority of homeowners who don’t have a mortgage are occupied by one or two people (81% in fact), although this can be explained as residents being older, with some members of the family having moved out, or a pensioner living alone.  People living on their own are more likely to live in a Council house (43%) and the largest households (those with 4 or more people living in them are homeowners with a mortgage – but again, that can be explained as homeowners with families tend to need a mortgage to buy. What surprised me was the even spread of private rented households and how that sector of population are so evenly spread across the occupant range – in fact that sector is the closest to the national average, even though they only represent a sixth of the population.

When we look at the Crawley Borough Council figures for all tenures (Owned, Council and Private Rented) a slightly different picture appears...

1 person households in Crawley	2 person households in Crawley	3 person households In Crawley	4 person households in Crawley	5+ person households in Crawley
28.39%	31.07%	17.03%	15.17%	8.35%

But it gets even more interesting when we focus on just private rental properties in Crawley, as it is the rental market in Crawley that really fascinates me. When I analysed those Crawley Borough Council private rental household composition figures, a slightly different picture appears. Of the 5,789 Private rental properties in the Crawley Borough Council area,

·         23.1% of Private Rental Properties are 1 person Households

·         30.5% of Private Rental Properties are 2 person Households

·         19.9% of Private Rental Properties are 3 person Households

·         15.5% of Private Rental Properties are 4 person Households

 10.7% of Private Rental Properties are 5+ person Households

As you can see, Crawley is not too dissimilar from the national picture but there is story to tell. If you are considering future buy to let purchases in the coming 12 to 18 months, I would seriously consider looking at 1 and 2 bed apartments and houses. Even with the numbers stated, there are simply not enough to meet the demand. They have to be in the right part of Crawley and priced realistically, but they will always let and when you need to sell, irrespective of market conditions at the time, will always be the target of buyers. To read more articles on the Crawley Property Market and where I consider best buy to let deals are in Crawley, please visit the Crawley Property Market Blog at www.mycrawleyhome.com