Only 16% of Maidenhead Properties have less than 3 bedrooms - Problem or Opportunity?

The orthodox way of classifying property in the UK is to look at the number of bedrooms rather than its size in square metres.

In previous articles, I have analysed the Maidenhead housing stock into bedrooms and type of property, but now have I cross-referenced type against bedrooms. These figures for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead area make fascinating reading. It shows that only 16% of all properties in the area have less than 3 bedrooms. I was genuinely surprised at the low numbers of one and two bed properties, particularly 2 bed semis detached houses, especially as tenants like the smaller one and two bed properties in Maidenhead.

	Detached	Semi-detached	Terraced (including end-terrace)	Flat
1 bedroom	42	58	45	493
2 bedrooms	228	740	1,168	2,312
3 bedrooms	1,945	6,087	3,875	501
4 bedrooms	5,646	2,613	1,028	63
5 or more bedrooms	4,018	704	171	46

On top of this, there has been an increase in the numbers of properties on the market over the last 12 months, and in particular an increase in the proportion of 1 & 2 bedroom properties available now compared to last year. There is now almost double the amount of 1 & 2 bed properties on the market than at this time last year. Typically we see somewhere between 0.5 % - 2.5 % of housing stock on the market. In the Maidenhead market at the moment we have 6.6% of 1-bedroom stock and 4.6% of 2-bedroom stock on the market.

It can quite clearly be seen from the graph above that more Maidenhead properties have become available, which can only be good news for Maidenhead first time buyers and Maidenhead buy to let landlords looking for a bargain (especially post Brexit) as property prices have stopped rising at the silly rates they were 12/18 months ago.

The reasons behind this change are quite clear. For several years Maidenhead buy-to-let investors have been the only buyers at the lower end (starter homes) of the market, as they have been enticed by high tenant demand and attractive returns. Some Maidenhead landlords believe their window of opportunity has started to close with the new tax regime for landlords, whilst it already appears to be opening wider for first-time buyers. This is great news for first time buyers ... but one final note for Maidenhead landlords ... all is not lost ... you can still pick up bargains, you just need to be a lot more savvy and do your homework ... one source of such information with articles like this is the Maidenhead property market Blog.