Crawley Semi Detached House Prices rise by 376% in 20 years

The semi-detached house with its bay windows and net curtains has long been ridiculed as an emblem of safe, lacklustre and desperately uncool suburban life; the homes of the likes of Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping up Appearances and more latterly Alan Partridge – but they could have the last laugh - having enjoyed one of the highest price growths of any property type in Crawley, up by an average 376% increase in the last twenty years.

The semi can now laugh in the face of its posher detached counterpart, which saw a rise of only 315% in the same 20-year period. Looking at smaller properties, flats/apartments rose 430%, whilst terraced houses did better at 388% (although they were starting from a lower base and demand from buy to let landlords has had a big part in driving the values on that type of house (i.e. the price a buy to let landlord is prepared to pay is driven by the rent the landlord can achieve).

In 1996 the average value of a Crawley semi stood at £66,600,

today it stands at £317,000

Such is the attractiveness of semis, which are cheaper than detached houses but have most of the same benefits for families. Semi-detached houses were built in their hundreds of thousands by the Victorians and Edwardians between the wars and through to the present day. Interestingly in the late 19^th Century and early 20^th century – they often weren’t referred to as semi-detached – but as villas!

So whilst Europeans live on top of each other in apartments us British chose, in the late Victorian and early Edwardian times, suburban comfort, being near … but not too near, the neighbours! I once heard someone say the semi-detached house was a peculiar crossbreed that doesn’t stand on its own — it is inseparable from its neighbour — yet somehow still embodies a dream of suburban independence.

Nearly one in four houses in Crawley is a semi-detached house

There are 8,951 semi-detached properties in Crawley and they represent 20.87% of all the households in Crawley. Crawley has such a mix of semi-detached properties with many built by the new town commission in the 1950's and 1960's.  Especially with the older ones, the semi offered a hall to provided separation between the reception rooms and privacy for their occupants. Also the downstairs offered larger rooms to accommodate dining tables, whilst upstairs, bedrooms were smaller, yet cosy.

However, probably the most overlooked aspect of popularity for semis is the garden. The front garden, designed to separate the house from the world, and the back garden designed for private relaxation. The semi in the suburbs was relaxing, well presented, plumbed and enhanced by a garden so that when a window was opened the air had a chance of being genuinely fresh… and it’s for all those reasons why 214 semi-detached houses have been sold in Crawley in the last 12 months alone.  Still as popular today as they were with the Victorians all those years ago – some things just stand the test of time!

Crawley Landlords - have you seen this one bedroom maisonette in Maidenbower..?

Spotted – One bedroom maisonette in Maidenbower with 5% yield.  Always popular with tenants - I have rented many of these little properties in my time.  This one is being sold by local agent Astons, you can view the details by clicking the link to their listing below. 

 

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57110851.html

The property is a perfect first rental for singles or couples alike.  Located in the northern part of Maidenbower the property is ideal for anyone commuting from Three Bridges Station or requiring the No.100 bus to Gatwick Airport.  Car drivers are also catered for with an allocated parking space and Maidenbower benefits from its own junction onto the Northbound M23.  At the current asking price it is possible to achieve a 5% yield – these properties are currently renting in the £825 to £850 price range.  For advice on rental properties throughout the Crawley area you are welcome to contact me or any of my colleagues in our Crawley Office on Orchard Street.   

Maidenbower Maisonette For Sale

£9million paid by Crawley Residents in Stamp Duty last year

Apart from some minor exemptions, Stamp Duty is paid by anyone buying a property over £125,000 in the UK. It presently raises £10.68bn a year for the HM Treasury (interesting when compared with £27.6bn in fuel duty, £10.69bn in alcohol duty and £9.48bn in tobacco duty).

In the latest set of data from HMRC, in the MP constituency that covers Crawley, property buyers paid £9m stamp duty in one year alone – a lot of money in anyone’s eyes (although not as much as the £228m in income tax that all of us in the same area paid last year).

However, as you may know, George Osborne introduced an additional tax for landlords and from 1^st April 2016 they had to pay an additional 3% stamp duty surcharge on top of the normal stamp duty rate when purchasing a buy to let property. There were tales of woe and Armageddon with a report by Deutsche Bank suggesting that the new surcharge could see house prices fall by as much as 20%.

HMRC data released in the Summer for Quarter 2 (Q2) of 2016 did seem to back up those fears as they published some worrying figures; only one in seven properties purchased was a second home or buy-to-let (in real numbers, only 30,300 of the 207,900 properties in Q2 were bought by landlords).

In previous articles, I spoke about the slump of property transactions after the 1^st of April (as landlords rushed through their property purchases in March to beat the April deadline). In Q2 of 2016, £1.976bn was raised in Stamp Duty from Residential Property. Of that £1.976bn, £652m was paid by buy to let landlords (£424m in normal stamp duty and £228m in the additional 3% surcharge).

 

New apartments at West Green Place, Crawley

However, looking at Q3 of 2016, the numbers have improved significantly. Of the 235,000 property sales, nearly one in four of them (56,100 to be precise) were bought by buy to let landlords and of the £2.208bn in stamp duty, £864m was paid in ‘normal’ stamp duty by BTL landlords and an impressive £442m paid by those same landlords in the additional stamp duty surcharge.

The statistics suggest buy to let investors have thankfully not been deterred by the stamp duty surcharge introduced in April this year. The figures also show that 65.4% of "buy to let" purchases cost less than £250,000, 23.7% of properties were in the £250k to £500k range and 10.9% (or 6,100 additional properties) of buy to let properties bought cost over £500k – interestingly nearly one in four (22.2%) of £500k properties purchased in Q3 were buy to let properties.

It just goes to back up what I stated a few weeks ago when I suggested that many investors had rushed to make purchases before 31^st March, making figures in the following months (Q2) artificially low when the 3% supplement was introduced, but in Q3 the number of buy to let properties purchased increased by 85%.

For more thoughts on the Crawley Property Market like this .. visit the Crawley Property Market Blog at www.mycrawleyhome.com