Even though the housing market is in an upbeat state in many
parts of the UK, getting on the property ladder is still challenging for many
and regarded as unattainable by some. However,
that goal has become even worse recently in Maidenhead as the number of houses
available to buy is at an 8 year all time low.
Back in Spring 2008, there were over 1,800 properties for
sale in Maidenhead and since then this has steadily declined year on year, so
now there are only 530 for sale in the town.
This continuing diminishing supply of housing has been happening over
those years for a while and there simply aren’t enough properties in Maidenhead
to match demand.
According to a recent report by the National Association of
Estate Agents, that said, “There are now 11 house hunters fighting after every
available house which isn’t sustainable.”
What that means is Maidenhead youngsters, who are looking to buy their
first home, are finding themselves being squeezed out by the competition. However, in the meantime, nobody wants to
live with parents until they are in their 30’s, so that in turn creates demand
for more rental properties, which means landlords have a greater demand for
more rental properties so are buying more, resulting in even less smaller
properties for the youngsters to buy, it’s a vicious circle.
Talking to fellow agents, mortgage arrangers, surveyors and
solicitors in the town, all of whom have extensive dealings in the Maidenhead
property market like myself, most of us agree the movement in the Maidenhead
market is taking place in the middle to upper market, higher up the property
ladder and it’s second and third steppers pushing through the properties that
are being bought and sold.
That has meant as people tend to move less in the middle to
upper market, the number of the properties actually selling has drastically
reduced over the last couple of years.
When we look at the individual areas of the town, it paints
an interesting picture.
SL6 – Maidenhead, Taplow, Bray, Bray Wick, Cookham, Cookham
Dean, Cookham Rise, White Waltham and Cox Green, , Altwood Road area, Hurley,
Hurley Bottom, Holyport and the Northern end of Shoppenhangers Road (Larchfield Road area), Northwest of the Town
Centre, Pinkneys Green, Woodlands Park, Furze Platt, everything to the West of
Ray Mead Road, Hitcham, Littlewick Green, Burchett's Green, Paley Street, Stud
Green, Touchen End, Cookham Rise and part of Fifield, 87 properties sold in May 2015 (with an
average value of £457,643), whilst over the Summer months of 2014, the number
of properties selling in this postcode was between 149 and 163.
So what does this all mean for homeowners and landlords
alike in Maidenhead? Demand for Maidenhead
property is good, especially at the lower end of the market. However, with fewer properties coming up for
sale, it means property prices are proving reasonably stable too.
You see I believe a more stable, consistent Maidenhead
property market, with less people seeing property as an easy way to make a
quick buck (as many did in the early 2000’s when prices were rising at nearly
20% a year so people were buying and selling every other minute), but a
property market that has a steady growth of property values in Maidenhead, year
on year, without the massive peaks and troughs we saw in the late 1980’s and
mid/late 2000’s might just be the thing that the Maidenhead property market
needs in the long term.
