St Helens Tenants Staying Longer

A few weeks ago I was asked a fascinating question by a local Councillor who, after reading the St Helens Property Blog, emailed me and asked me – “Are St Helens Landlords meeting the Challenges of tenanted families bringing up their families in St Helens?”

What an interesting question to be asked.

Irrespective of whether you are tenant or a homeowner, to bring up a family, the most important factors are security and stability in the home. A great bellwether of that security and stability in a rented property is whether tenants are constantly being evicted. Many tenancies last just six months with families at risk of being thrown out after that with just two months’ notice for no reason.

Some “left leaning Politian’s” keep saying we need to deal with the terrible insecurity of Britain’s private rental market by creating longer tenancies of 3 or 5 years instead of the current six months. However, the numbers seem to be telling a different story. The average length of residence in private rental homes has risen in the last 5 years from 3.7 years to 4 years (a growth of 8.1%), which in turn has directly affected the number of renters who have children. In fact, the proportion of private rented property that have dependent children in them, has gone from 29.1% in 2003 to 37.4% today.

Looking specifically at St Helens compared to the National figures, of the 2,607 private rental homes in St Helens, 854 of these have dependent children in them (or 32.8%), which is interestingly below the National average of already stated 37.4%.

Even more fascinating are the other tenure types in St Helens…

• 29.2% of Social (Council) Housing in St Helens have dependent children
• 43% of St Helens Owner Occupiers (with a Mortgage) have dependent children
• 7.4% of Owner Occupiers (without a Mortgage) have dependent children

Although, when we look at the length of time these other tenure types have, whilst the average length of a tenancy for the private rented sector is 4 years, it is 11.4 years in social (council) housing, 24.1 years for home owners without a mortgage and 10.4 years of homeowners with mortgages.

Anecdotally I have always known this, but this just proves landlords do not spend their time seeking opportunities to evict a tenant as the average length of tenancy has steadily increased. This noteworthy 8.1% increase in the average length of time tenants stay in a private rented property over the last 5 years, shows tenants are happy to stay longer and start families.

So, as landlords are already meeting tenants’ wants and needs when it comes to the length of tenancy, I find it strange some politicians are calling for fixed term 3 and 5 year tenancies. Such heavy handed regulation could stop landlords renting their property out in the first place, cutting off the supply of much needed rental property, meaning tenants would suffer as rents went up. Also, if such legislation was brought in, tenants would lose their ‘Get Out of Jail card’, as under current rules, they can leave at anytime with one months notice not the three or six month tenant notice suggested by some commenters.

Finally, there is an extra piece of good news for St Helens tenants. The English Housing Survey notes that those living in private rented housing for a long periods of time generally paid less rent than those who chopped and changed.

New House Building in St Helens slumps by 19.0% in the last year

Let me speak frankly, even with Brexit and the fact immigration numbers will be reducing in the coming years, there is an unending and severe shortage of new housing being built in the St Helens area (and the UK as a whole).  Even if there are short term confidence trembles fueled by newspapers hungry for bad news, the ever growing population of St Helens with its high demand for property versus curtailed supply of properties being built, this imbalance of supply/demand and the possibility of even lower interest rates will underpin the property market.

New Housing Developments in St Helens

When the Conservatives were elected in 2015, Mr Cameron vowed to build 1,000,000 new homes by 2020.  If we as a Country hit those levels of building, most academics stated that the UK Housing market would balance itself as the increased supply of property would give a chance to the younger generation to buy their own home as opposed to rent.  However, the up-to-date building figures show that in the first three months of 2016,  building starts were down.  Nationally, there were 35,530 house building starts in the first quarter, a long way off the 50,000 a quarter required to hit those ambitious targets.

Looking closer to home, over the last 12 months, new building in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens Council area has slumped.  In 2014/15, for every one thousand existing households in the area, an additional 5.87 homes were built.  For 2015/16, that figure is now only 4.75 homes built per thousand existing households.  Nationally, to meet that 1,000,000 new homes target, we need to be at 7.12 new homes per thousand.

To put those numbers into real chimney pots, over the last 12 months, in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens Council area we've seen the following new builds

• ·         300 Private Builds (e.g. New Homes Builders)
• ·         70 Housing Association
• ·         Nil Local Authority

These new house building numbers are down to the fact that not enough is being done to fix the broken St Helens housing market.  We are still only seeing 370 new homes being built per year in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens area, when we need 555 a year to even stand still!

I am of the opinion Messer’s Cameron and Osborne focused their attention too much on the demand side of the housing equation, using the Help to Buy scheme and low deposit mortgages to convert the ‘Generation Rent’ i.e. St Helens ‘20 somethings’ who are set to rent for the rest of their lives to ‘Generation Buy’.  On the other side of the coin, I would strongly recommend the new Housing Minster, Gavin Barwell, should concentrate the Government’s efforts on the supply side of the equation.  There needs to be transformations to planning laws, massive scale releases of public land and more investment, as more inventive solutions are needed.

However, ultimately, responsibility has to rest on the shoulders of Theresa May.  Whilst our new PM has many plates to spin, stalling on the housing crisis will only come at greater cost later on.  What a legacy it would be if it was Mrs. May who finally got to grips with the persistent and enduring shortage of homes to live in.  The PM has already referenced the ‘need to do far more to get more houses built’ and stop the decline of home ownership.  However, she has also ruled out any changes to the green belt policy – something I will talk about in a future up and coming article.  Hopefully these statistics will raise the alarm bells again and persuade both residents and the local Councillors in St Helens that housing needs to be higher on its agenda.

The St Helens Love Affair with its 17,400 Terraced Houses

Call me old fashioned, but I do like the terraced house.   In fact, I have done some research that I hope you will find of interest my blog reading friends!

In architecture terms, a terraced or townhouse is a style of housing in use since the late 1600’s in the UK, where a row of symmetrical / identical houses share their side walls. The first terraced houses were actually built by a French man, Monsieur Barbon around St. Paul’s Cathedral within the rebuilding process after the Great Fire of London in 1666.  Interestingly, it was the French that invented the terraced house around 1610-15 in the Le Marais district of Paris with its planned squares and properties with identical facades. However, it was the 1730’s in the UK, that the terraced/townhouse came into its own in London and of course in Bath with the impressive Royal Crescent.

One of St Helens' 17,400 terraced properties on West End Road, Haydock

However, we are in St Helens, not Bath, so the majority of our St Helens terraced houses were built in the Victorian era.  Built on the back of the Industrial Revolution, with people flooding into the towns and cities for work in Victorian times, the terraced house offered decent liveable accommodation away from the slums. An interesting fact is that the majority of Victorian St Helens terraced houses are based on standard design of a ‘posh’ front room, a back room (where the family lived day to day) and scullery off that.  Off the scullery, a door to a rear yard, whilst upstairs, three bedrooms (the third straight off the second).  Interestingly, the law was changed in 1875 with the Public Health Act and each house had to have 108ft of liveable space per main room, running water, it’s own outside toilet and rear access to allow the toilet waste to be collected (they didn’t have public sewers in those days in St Helens – well not at least where these ‘workers’ terraced houses were built).

It was the 1960’s and 70’s where inside toilets and bathrooms were installed (often in that third bedroom or an extension off the scullery) and gas central heating in the 1980’s and replacement PVCu double glazing ever since.

Looking at the make up of all the properties in St Helens, some very interesting numbers appear.  Of the 47,090 properties in St Helens …

5,080 are Detached properties (10.7%)

20,020 are Semi Detached properties (42.5%)

17,403 are Terraced / Town House properties (36.1%)

4,929 are Apartment/ Flat’s (10.4%)

And quite noteworthy, there are18 mobile homes, representing 0.04% of all property in St Helens. 

When it comes to values, the average price paid for a St Helens terraced house in 1995 was £29,530 and the latest set of figures released by the land Registry states that today that figure stands at £67,100, a rise of 127% - that’s not bad at all is it. 

But then a lot of buy to let landlords and first time buyers I speak to think the Victorian terraced house is expensive to maintain.  I recently read a report from English Heritage that stated maintaining a typical Victorian terraced house over thirty years is around sixty percent cheaper than building and maintaining a modern house- which is quite fascinating don’t you think!

Don’t dismiss the humble terraced house – especially in St Helens!