Only 1 in 36 Southampton Properties are Bungalows, Despite an Ageing Population. Why?

The bungalow is a building that has represented a more leisurely, gentler way of life since the early 1900’s. Bungalows have been sold as an aspiration for those about to retire, saving them the annoyance of having to climb stairs. With an ageing population, one would think they would be building more bungalows, yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this could be one of the main issues that is holding back many mature homeowners moving home thus creating a bottleneck in the Southampton property market for the younger families who are being held back and unable to move into the larger homes they so need to grow their families.

So, before I answer that question, let me share this fascinating fact about bungalows. The word ‘bungalow’ originated in India, not the UK. The name is derived from the Hindi word ‘baṅglā’ or the Gujarati word ‘baṅglo’, both of which seem to refer to a home occupied by a Bengali person. The colonial English started to use it for themselves in the late 1600s to describe the same sort of basic lodgings that sailors and staff of the invading East India Company used.

Anyway, back to the here and now in Southampton.

There are 2,960 bungalows in Southampton.

When you consider there are 105,350 properties in Southampton, that means only 2.81% of property in Southampton are bungalows.

To give you an idea of the age demographic of Southampton homeowners, there are 23,311 Southampton homeowners aged 65 years old (and over) and 27,027 Southampton homeowners aged between 50 and 64 years of age.

You can see demand for bungalows is only expected to grow.  Yet new homes builders are having to deal with soaring land prices, meaning to get a profit from the site they are under pressure to build more vertically than horizontally as with bungalows (as bungalows take up so much more land).

The last available data is from 2018 and only 1.6% new builds in the UK were bungalows, interesting when it was just over 7% in the middle of the 1990s. As British people are living longer, those existing Southampton bungalow homeowners will be living in them longer, thus creating even more of a bottleneck in the Southampton property market.

So, what is the answer?

Well with building land in Southampton at a shortage, maybe new homes builders should be forced under planning rules to reserve ground floor apartments to be set aside for older people to encourage them to move out of larger houses. I would challenge the long-held point of view that building more bungalows in Southampton is the pre-eminent way to urge growing numbers of mature ‘last-time buyers’ to move out of their under-occupied Southampton homes and free up their large homes (where their children have flown the nest) for younger Southampton families to grow.

With the new Planning Regulations due to be in place in a couple of years, local authorities could require builders to set aside a share of homes for mature residents, as they are already obligated to subsidise local community facilities or low-cost social housing in return for obtaining their planning permission to build in the first place.

Another option would be to convert all those empty shops in our town and city centres up and down the country into residential use. There is no need for planning permission to change offices to residential property and the Government are considering the same for shops (although I have heard of some horror stories of those office to residential developments making rabbit hutches look spacious) – so again, it comes down to the planning laws and making them fit for purpose.

There are no doubt consequences of not designing our housing stock for the 21^st Century and beyond for older people.

 

The population of Southampton is set to grow

by 46,564 to 291,636 by 2040.

As the UK population gets older in the coming decades, as life expectancy is set to grow from 81 years 2 months to 83 years 3 months by 2040, I fully appreciate the need for more Southampton homes to be built for families, yet one must ask if the planning authorities are focusing too much on new housing for the younger generation, when they in fact should be encouraging new homes builders to develop larger, ground floor two-bedroom homes and decent accessible transport links.

These are my thoughts, what are yours the good people of Southampton?

Southampton’s Love (and Hate) Affair with the Semi-Detached House

The Semi-Detached House – the icon of middle-class aspiration, the pinnacle of liberalism yet at the same time compromised individuality, the ‘semi’ as it is colloquially termed is, for many Southampton homeowners, the highpoint of modern domestic bliss.

Britain’s gift to architecture is the humble ‘Semi-Detached House’. This type of property has been exported around the world with - the ‘Doppel Haus’ in Germany, the ‘Duplex’ in the USA, Canada and Australia. 

For those young, hip and trendy people living in your converted warehouses with strobe lighting and exposed brickwork, it might surprise you the semi is the dream home of an immense number of Southampton people. In fact, it is the most common dwelling type in the British Isles, with 8,060,657 semi-detached homes occupied by Brits alone (representing 31.68% of all occupied property) compared to 23.81% detached, 25.49% terraced and 19.02% flats.

In Southampton alone, there are 27,722 semi-detached houses meaning …

27.4% of properties in Southampton are semi-detached.

 

So, when did the semi-detached house first come into play? Many people think the semi-detached boom started with mass swathes of the suburban mock Tudor bay fronted semis being built between the first and second world wars. The fact is that it was actually rich landowners in the post Great Plague (1665+) years wished to house their farm labourers as inexpensively as possible, yet making their grand estates look as imposing as possible.

 

And that’s the point of a semi-detached house. Only half the property is yours, yet you ‘feel’ like you own it all.

The next phase of the semi-detached story, and a phase that really pushed home the point, were many of the late Georgian houses built around the Kensington Gardens area in West London. Many upper-middle class Georgians were wanting something more than the classic Georgian terraced house yet couldn’t afford a large detached home. Therefore, architects took the humble semi-detached house to the next stage of its evolution by masquerading the building itself as one home by slipping its two front doors down opposite sides of the building, making it look like one home from the front, to complete the impression of total ownership.

 

By Victorian times, semi-detached houses fell out fashion as the railways were building many of them for their railway workers and they became associated with the lower working classes but speculative builders continued building semi-detached homes for the new lower middle class, that is the reason why ultimately the country is full of semi-detached homes today.

The semi-detached house was saved from the annals of history by the Bedford Park development in Ealing (London). Referred to as the world's first ‘garden suburb’ and started in the 1870’s, the architect of Bedford Park used influences of the ‘Aesthetic Movement’, the precursor to the ‘Arts and Craft Movement’ to make the buildings look more pleasing on the eye. The architect also took reference from the style of properties from British history such as Queen Ann to be seen in such features as a sweep of steps leading to a carved stone door, rows of painted sash windows in boxes set flush with the brickwork and bright coloured brickwork with limestone stone quoins emphasising the building’s corner.

As the car enabled people to commute to work from further away, people wanted to get out of the big cities, thus giving rise to the interwar semi, with its mock Tudor fronted, rosemary tiled roof, oak beamed, herringbone brickwork and the leaded and stained glass windowpanes that we all recognise. It was Bedford Park that gave the green light for architects up and down the country to use old styles of building design to make their semi-detached houses look the part.

And now, in more modern times, the semi-detached house has gone from strength to strength.

16,720 of Southampton semi-detached houses have changed hands since 1995, many upwards of 5 times (and a handful even more).

The semi continues to appeal, both to big national builders and smaller Southampton developers, and most importantly to home buyers. The advantage of semi-detached houses over town houses/terraced houses or apartments is they afford access to their (typically bigger) gardens without having to pass through the house, and they have natural sunlight on three sides of the property, are easily extendable and quite often have a driveway.

And that’s at the heart of what a semi-detached house is all about, the schism or divide of the semi reveals the tension at the heart of owning your home, which on one side of the coin is a commodity/way to make money and on the other side, a vision to have your own castle, a piece of ground to call your own. It articulates both the craving for personal freedom and the inevitability of socio-economic life. What do I mean by that?

We may dream of owning a castle in many acres, with a drawbridge and moat, yet real life means we can only afford half a building plot sliced out by a volume national builder next to the A335.

I just love a semi-detached house! Style and substance combined.

What are your thoughts? Share your stories and opinions on the humble semi-detached house.

Southampton Home Moves Hit Record High in June

as 200.1% more people sell in June compared to the Southampton area 10-year average

June 2021 was the busiest month ever for UK estate agents, home removal companies and conveyancers since monthly records began, as HMRC logged 213,120 residential transactions in June, a jump of more than 216% nationally on the same month last year (when the housing market had just reopened after the initial lockdown). 

 

The cause of this was all the homebuyers trying to complete their property purchases before the approaching Stamp Duty Holiday deadline finished at the end of June. This was important as house buyers had until 30th June to complete their sale to save up to £15,000 in Stamp Duty Tax.

 

Many property market commentators believed the property market would slump after the Stamp Duty Holiday finished. Yet, I haven’t observed many property sales falling through or renegotiations because the buyer had to pay the extra Stamp Duty, and talking to other property professionals around the UK, neither have they.

 

Let’s not forget that the Stamp Duty Holiday isn't totally over as it is a tapering off until 30^th September. This means homes and apartments sold under £250,000 will still profit from the Stamp Duty Holiday.

 

So, what sort of property transaction numbers are we talking about here in Southampton?

 

An average of 292 properties a month in the Southampton area have sold in the last 12 months, compared to the 10-year rolling average of 490 properties sold per month.

 

The best month ever before this June was March 2016, when there was a rush by Southampton buy-to-let landlords to secure a property before the introduction of a 3% Stamp Duty surcharge for second homes. In March 2016, 1,182 Southampton properties changed hands.

 

My calculations show 1,470 Southampton households sold in June 2021, 200.1% more than the long-term average.

 

So, what has driven this? The Stamp Duty changes caused some Southampton people to bring their home moves forward from 2022/3 to take advantage of the tax savings. Yet the most significant thing, talking to many Southampton homebuyers and sellers, is the pandemic has changed the way people live. Working from home and needing additional office space has meant many Southampton families (and others from out of the area) are seeking larger properties with more extensive gardens and better access to the countryside. I really can't see this social trend changing for a long time. I believe this means Southampton property prices in the medium term will not be markedly different over the next couple of years yet…

 

don't be alarmed to see volatile short-term changes in the run-up to Christmas (both up and down) with Southampton house prices.

 

I have always been a believer in the medium-term (i.e. over a couple of years) house price trends instead of the monthly trends, which can sometimes be like a yo-yo. I have always said the best bellwether to the health of the Southampton property market is the number of property transactions rather than the house prices.

 

Finally, I can only see this continuing as Banks scrabble to give money away in the form of cheap mortgages. A few weeks ago HSBC and TSB launched a 0.94% two-year fixed rate deal for those wishing to borrow 60% or less. More recently, the Nationwide Building Society launched a 0.99% five-year fixed-rate mortgage deal (again on a maximum of 60% loan to value basis).

 

If you would like a chat about the Southampton property market, your options and where you stand in the Southampton property market – please do not hesitate to give me a call.

 

In the meantime, I would love your thoughts on this. Has the pandemic made you move home earlier?

What do you think will happen in the coming years to property in Southampton? Share your views.