59% Drop in Properties For Sale Today in Southampton Compared to 10 Years Ago

There is good news for Southampton buy to let landlords as ‘top of the range’ well-presented properties are getting really decent rents compared to a year ago however, this rise in rents is thwarting many potential first time buyers from saving for both a deposit and money for a rainy day. On top of this, there is also a shortage of Southampton homes coming on the market thus adding fuel to the slowdown and affecting not just Southampton first time buyers but also those going up the housing ladder.

Whilst it is true that the Government’s initiatives, targeted at improving the supply of homes built and helping first time buyers obtaining necessary funding, are starting to work (albeit slowly), I also believe that to boost more existing home-owners and their properties onto the market, we as a Country, need to see a better focus placed on those looking to downsize (i.e. the mature generation).

If we took away some hurdles to home owners downsizing, such as removing stamp duty for those downsizers (as was done for first time buyers last year), together with encouraging even more first-time buyers with 100% mortgages to buy the smaller properties, this would in turn release more mid-range properties onto the market, which subsequently would encourage more mature homeowners to downsize from their bigger properties to buy those mid-range properties - thus completing the circle.

Looking at the most recent set of data from the Land Registry for Southampton (the SO15 postcode in particular), the figures show the indifferent nature of the current Southampton property market.

Only 371 Southampton (SO15) Homes changed hands in the last 6 months

Southampton property values and transactions continue to be sluggish, and the monthly peaks and troughs of house prices and properties changing hands doesn’t mask the deficiency of suitable realistically priced property coming onto the Southampton property market, meaning the housing market is slowly becoming inaccessible to some would-be home owners.

Looking at what each property type is selling for in SO15 (note the data from the Land Registry is always 4/5 months behind) makes interesting reading ….

One must remember these are the average prices paid, so it only takes a run of a few expensive or cheaper property types (as can be seen with the variance in the Detached and Terraced in the table) to affect the figures..

Looking at the numbers of properties for sale … I looked at my research for early Summer 2008, and at that time, 4,057 properties were on the market for sale in Southampton.. and when I did my research on this article today, just 1,644 properties for sale.. a drop of 59%.


The Government needs to seriously consider the supply and demand of the UK property market as a whole to ensure it doesn’t seize up. It needs to do that with bold and forward-thinking plans but, in the meantime, people still need a roof over their head, so as local authorities don’t have the cash to build new houses anymore, it’s the job of Southampton landlords to take up the slack. I must stress though, I have noticed a distinct ‘flight to quality’ by Southampton tenants, who are prepared to pay top dollar for an exceptional home to rent. If you want to know what tenants are looking for and what type of things you as a Southampton landlord need to do to maximise your rental returns – drop me a line.

If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.

Email me on brian.linehan@belvoirlettings.com or call on 023 8001 8222.

Don't forget to visit the links below to view back dated deals and Southampton Property News.

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Southampton Property Values 4.4% lower than year ago – What’s the PLAN to fix the Southampton Property Market?

It’s been nearly 18 months since Sajid Javid, the Tory Government’s Housing Minister published the White Paper “Fixing the Broken UK Housing Market”, meanwhile Southampton property values continue to drop at 4.4% (year on year for the council area) and the number of new homes being constructed locally bumps along at a snail’s pace, creating a potential perfect storm for those looking to buy and sell.

The White Paper is important for the UK and Southampton people, as it will ensure we have long-term stability and longevity in property market as whole. Southampton home-owners and Southampton landlords need to be aware of these issues in the report to ensure they don’t lose out and ensure the local housing market is fit for purpose. The White Paper wanted more homes to be built in the next couple of decades, so it might seem counter-intuitive for existing home-owners and landlords to encourage more homes to be built and a change in the direction of housing provision – as this would appear to have a negative effect on their own property.

Yet the country needs a diversified and fluid property market to allow the economy as a whole to grow and flourish ... which in turn will be a greater influence on whether prices go up or down in the long term. I am sure every homeowner or landlord in Southampton doesn’t want another housing crisis like we had in 1974, 1988 and most recently in 2008.

Now, as Sajid Javid has moved on to the Home Secretary role, the 17th Housing Minister in 20 years (poisoned chalice or journeyman’s cabinet post) James Brokenshire has been given the task of making this White Paper come alive. The White Paper had a well-defined notion of what the issues were.

The first of the four points brought up was to give local authorities powers to speed up house building and ensure developers complete new homes on time. Secondly, statutory methods demanding local authorities and builders build at higher densities (i.e. more houses per hectare) where appropriate. The other two points were incentives for smaller builders to take a larger share of the new homes market and help for people renting.

However, lets go back to the two initial points of planning and density.

(1) Planning

For planning to work, we need a robust Planning Dept. Looking at data from the Local Government’s Association, in Southampton, the council is below the regional average, only spending £28.55 per person for the Planning Authority, compared the regional average of £38.14 per head – which will mean the planning department will be hard pressed to meet those targets.

Also, 39% of planning applications are decided within the statutory 8-week initial period, below the regional average of 81% (see the graph below).  I am slightly disappointed with the numbers for our local authority when it comes to the planning and the budget allowed by our Politicians to this vital service.

(2) Density of Population

47.5 people live in every hectare (or 2.471 acres) in Southampton

It won’t surprise you that 236,882 Southampton residents are living in the urban conurbations of the authority, giving a density of 47.5 people per hectare (much lower than I initially thought).

I would agree with the Governments’ ambition to make more efficient use of land and avoid building homes at low densities where there is a shortage of land for meeting identified housing needs, ensuring that the density and form of development reflect the character, accessibility and infrastructure.

It’s all very good building lots of houses – but we need the infrastructure to go with it.

Talking to a lot of Southampton people, their biggest fear of all this building is a lack of infrastructure for those extra houses (the extra roads, doctors surgeries, schools etc.). I know most Southampton homeowners and landlords want more houses to be built to house their family and friends ... but irrespective of the density ... it’s the infrastructure that goes with the housing that is just as important ... and this is where I think the White Paper failed to go as far as I feel it should have done.

Interesting times ahead I believe!

If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.

Email me on brian.linehan@belvoirlettings.com or call on 023 8001 8222.

Don't forget to visit the links below to view back dated deals and Southampton Property News.

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Nearly Ten Babies Born for Every New Home Built in the Past Five Years in Southampton

Nearly 10 babies have been born for every new home that has been built in Southampton since 2012, deepening the Southampton housing shortage.

This discovery is an important foundation for my concerns about the future of the Southampton property market - when you consider the battle that todays twenty and thirty somethings face in order to buy their first home and get on the Southampton property ladder. This is particularly ironic as these Southampton youngsters’ are being born in an age when the number of new babies born to new homes was far lower.

This will mean the babies being born now, who will become the next generation’s first-time buyers will come up against even bigger competition from a greater number of their peers unless we move to long term fixes to the housing market, instead of the short term fixes that successive Governments have done since the 1980’s.

Looking at the most up to date data for the area covered by Southampton Council, the numbers of properties-built versus the number of babies born together with the corresponding ratio of the two metrics …

It can be seen that in 2016, 13.31 babies had been born in Southampton for every home that had been built in the five years to the end of 2016 (the most up to date data). Interestingly, that ratio nationally was 2.9 babies to every home built in the ‘50s and 2.4 in the ‘70s. I have seen the unaudited 2017 statistics and the picture isn’t any better! (I will share those when they are released later in the year).

Our children, and their children, will be placed in an unprecedented and unbelievably difficult position when wanting to buy their first home unless decisive action is taken. You see it doesn’t help that with life expectancy growing year on year, this too is also placing excessive pressure on homes to live in availability, with normal population growth nationally (the number of babies born less the number of people passing away) accumulative by two people for every one home that was built since the start of this decade.

Owning one’s home is a measure many Brits do aspire too. The only long-term measure that will help is the building of more new homes on a scale not seen since the 50’s and 60’s, which means we would need to aim to at least double the number of homes we build annually.

In the meantime, what does this mean for Southampton landlords and homeowners? Well the demand for rental properties in Southampton in the short term will remain high and until the rate of building grows substantially, this means rents will remain strong and correspondingly, property values will remain robust.

If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.

Email me on brian.linehan@belvoirlettings.com or call on 023 8001 8222.

Don't forget to visit the links below to view back dated deals and Southampton Property News.

Blog, http://southamptonproperty.blogspot.co.uk/

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How Affordable is Property for Southampton’s Average Working Families?

The simple fact is we are not building enough properties. If the supply of new properties is limited and demand continues to soar with heightened divorce rates, i.e. one household becoming two, people living longer and continued immigration, this means the values of those existing properties continues to remain high and out of reach for a lot of people, especially the blue collar working families of Southampton.

Looking at some recent statistics released by the Government, the ratio of the lower quartile house prices to lower quartile gross annual salaries in Southampton City Council has hit 7.33 to 1.

What does that mean exactly and why does it matter to Southampton landlords and homeowners?

If we ordered every property in the Southampton City Council area by the value of those properties, the average value of the lower quartile properties (i.e. lowest 25%) would be £164,250. If we then did the same, and ordered everyone’s salary in the same council area, the average of the lowest quartile (lowest 25%), the average salary of the lowest 25% is £22,401 pa, thus dividing one with the other, we get the ratio of 7.33 to 1.

Assuming there is one wage earner in the house, the chances of a Southampton working family being able to afford to buy their own home, when it’s over seven times their annual salary, is very slim indeed. The existing affordability crisis of people wanting to buy their own home is the unavoidable outcome of the decade on decade failure to build enough homes to keep up with demand. Nevertheless, improving affordability is not a case of just constructing more homes. Southampton City Council needs to ensure more properties are not only built, but built in the right locations and of the right type and at the right price to ensure the needs of these lower income working families are met, because at the moment, they presently have few options apart from the private rental sector.

Looking at the historic nature of the ratio, it can clearly be seen in the graph below that this has been an issue since the early to mid 2000’s.

However, if one looks at the historic data, those on the bottom rung of the ladder (those in the lower quartile of wage earners) used to be housed by the local authority instead of buying. However, the vast majority of council houses were sold off in the 1980’s, meaning there are much fewer council houses today to house this generation.

Many of the lower quartile working class families were given a lifeline to buy their own homes in middle 2000’s, with 100% mortgages, but the with the credit crunch in 2009, that rug (of 100% mortgages) was rudely pulled from under their feet. You see it is cheaper to buy than rent ... it’s the finding of the 5% deposit that is the challenging issue for these Southampton working class families. So unless the Government allow 100% mortgages back, the fact is, demand for rental properties will outstrip supply.

In the long term, to alleviate that, I would suggest the Southampton community hold their local politicians at Southampton City Council to account for the actions they could take to ensure the affordability of housing and the extent to which they work with private developers and housing associations and aggressively use the planning tools at their disposal to safeguard the local community getting the new households we need. Southampton City Council could make certain parcels of residential building land for private rented development only, eliminating the opportunity of the land being bought to develop large executive homes, which do not solve the current problem.

Yet in the short term, all this means is demand for rental properties will continue to grow, keeping Southampton house prices high and Southampton rents high.

If you want to buy right and assess your own portfolio on the yield/capital growth seesaw ... drop me a note. I don’t bite and the opinion I give, whether you are landlord of mine or not as the case may be, is given freely, without obligation or cost. The choice is yours. Thank you for reading this article. To read others, please visit my Southampton Property Blog.

If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.

Email me on brian.linehan@belvoirlettings.com or call on 023 8001 8222.

Don't forget to visit the links below to view back dated deals and Southampton Property News.

Blog, http://southamptonproperty.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/belvoirsouthampton/

Twitter, https://twitter.com/sotonbelvoir
LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlinehan

Website, https://www.belvoir.co.uk/letting-agents-southampton  

4,047 Southampton Landlords Plan to Expand Their Buy To Let Portfolios

A noteworthy number of buy to let landlords in Britain plan to buy more properties over the next year notwithstanding the frustrations, challenges and seismic changes in the private rented sector. According to Aldermore, the specialist Buy To Let lender, their research shows around 41% of portfolio buy to let landlord’s objective is to grow their buy to let portfolio (Portfolio landlords are landlords that own more than one property).

So, I thought, “Are Southampton landlords feeling the same?” If so, if these numbers were applied to the Southampton private rental market, what sort effect would it have on the Southampton property market as whole?

Talking to the landlords I deal with, most are feeling quite optimistic about the future of the Southampton rental market and the prospect it presents notwithstanding the doom and gloom prophecies that the property market will shrink. Many of those landlords who are looking to enlarge their portfolio are doing so because they still see the Southampton rental market as a decent investment opportunity.

With top of the range Bank and Building Society Savings Accounts only reaching 1.5% a year, the rollercoaster ride of Crypto currency and the yo-yoing of the Stock Market, the simple fact is, with rental yields in Southampton far outstripping current savings rates, the short term prospect of a minor drop in property prices isn’t putting off Southampton landlords.

The art to buying a Southampton buy to let investment is to buy the profit on the purchase price, not the anticipation of the future sale price.

No matter what the historical economy has thrown at us, with the global meltdown in 2008/9, dotcom crash of 2000, ERM in 1992, the three day week, oil crisis and hyperinflation in the 1970’s (the list goes on) ... the housing market has always bounced back stronger in the long term. That’s the point ... long term. Investing in buy to let is a long-term strategy. The simple fact is, over the long term with the increasing demand for rental properties, predominantly among Millennials as many cannot afford to get on the property ladder, and with councils not building enough properties of any kind, many youngsters are having to resort to the private rental market for their accommodation needs.

So, what of the numbers involved in Southampton?

There are 4,534 landlords that own just one buy to let (BTL) property in Southampton and 9,872 Southampton landlords, who are portfolio landlords. Between those 9,872 Southampton portfolio BTL landlords, they own a total of 20,718 Southampton BTL properties and they can be split down into the size of landlord portfolio in the graph below….

If I apply the Aldermore figures that means 4,047 Southampton landlords have plans to expand their BTL portfolio in the coming year or so.

However, the Aldermore Research also showed that 8% of private landlords intended to reduce the number of properties they own. They put this down to continuing Government intervention in the housing market (as many landlords mentioned too many limitations and higher taxation) while some believed that tenants are excessively protected to the disadvantage of the landlord.

I would say there is no repudiating that the buy to let market has taken a bit of a beating, thanks to a plethora of Government regulation, new mortgage underwriting rules in 2014 and George Osborne’s tax changes. Yet there still remains an overall consciousness of optimism among the vast majority of Southampton buy to let landlords. Despite these latest changes, many landlords still view buy to let as a good investment, as long as you buy right and expand your portfolio taking into account the second rule of buy to let … assess your position on the ‘buy to let seesaw’ of capital growth and yield.


If you want to buy right and assess your own portfolio on the yield/capital growth seesaw ... drop me a note. I don’t bite and the opinion I give, whether you are landlord of mine or not as the case may be, is given freely, without obligation or cost. The choice is yours. Thank you for reading this article. To read others, please visit my Southampton Property Blog.

If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.

Email me on brian.linehan@belvoirlettings.com or call on 023 8001 8222.

Don't forget to visit the links below to view back dated deals and Southampton Property News.

Blog, http://southamptonproperty.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/belvoirsouthampton/

Twitter, https://twitter.com/sotonbelvoir
LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlinehan

Website, https://www.belvoir.co.uk/letting-agents-southampton  

Our Southampton Buy 2 Let deal of the week

This stunning 2 bed flat has just come on the market at £155,000. It is literally a stones throw from Southampton General Hospital and is presented in fantastic condition. Annual service charge and ground rent are very reasonable at less then £900 p.a. and given that the unit will let for £750 a month gross yield is good at 5.8%. We have just listed this unit and we expect a lot of interest given its value and location, click on the link below for full details.

https://www.belvoir.co.uk/properties/11532156/sales/sycamore-court-11-jessamine-road-southampton/BV0813002_135478

Extra Funding Is Required for Affordable Homes in Southampton

In my blog about the Southampton Property Market I mostly only talk about two of the three main sectors of the local property market, the ‘private rented sector’ and the ‘owner occupier sector’. However, as I often stress when talking to my clients, one cannot forget the third sector, that being the ‘social housing sector’ (or council housing as some people call it).
In previous articles, I have spoken at length about the crisis in the supply of property in Southampton (i.e. not enough property is being built), but in this article I want to talk about the other crisis – that of affordability. It is not just about the pure number of houses being built but also the equilibrium of tenure (ownership vs rented) and therein, the affordability of housing, which needs to be considered carefully for an efficient and effective housing market.

An efficient and effectual housing market is in everyone’s interests, including Southampton homeowners and Southampton landlords, so let me explain ..

An average of only 307 Affordable Homes per year have been built by Southampton City Council in the last 9 years

The requirement for the provision of subsidised housing has been recognised since Victorian times. Even though private rents have not kept up with inflation since 2005 (meaning tenants are better off) it’s still a fact there are substantial numbers of low-income households in Southampton devoid of the money to allow them a decent standard of housing.

Usually, property in the social housing sector has had rents set at around half the going market rate and affordable shared home ownership has been the main source of new affordable housing yet, irrespective of the tenure, the local authority is simply not coming up with the numbers required. If the local authority isn’t building or finding these affordable homes, these Southampton tenants still need housing, and some tenants at the lower end of the market are falling foul of rogue landlords. Not good news for tenants and the vast majority of law abiding and decent Southampton landlords who are tarnished by the actions of those few rogue landlords, especially as I believe everyone has the right to a safe and decent home.

Be it Tory’s, Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, Greens etc, everyone needs to put party politics aside and start building enough homes and ensure that housing is affordable. Even though 2017 was one of the best years for new home building in the last decade (217,000 home built in 2017) overall new home building has been in decline for many years from the heady days of the early 1970s, when an average of 350,000 new homes were being built a year. As you can see from the graph, we simply aren’t building enough ‘affordable’ homes in the area.

The blame cannot all be placed at the feet of the local authority as Council budgets nationally, according to Full-Fact, are 26% lower than they have been since 2010.

So, what does this mean for Southampton homeowners? Well, an undersupply of affordable homes will artificially keep rents and property prices high. That might sound good in the short term, but a large proportion of my Southampton landlords find their children are also priced out of the housing market. Also, whilst your Southampton home might be slightly higher in value, due to this lack of supply of homes at the bottom end of the market, as most people move up the market when they do move, the one you want to buy will be priced even higher.

Problems at the lower end of the property market will affect the middle and upper parts. There is no getting away from the fact that the Southampton housing market is all interlinked .. it’s not called the Property ‘Ladder’ for nothing!

If you are looking for an agent that is well established, professional andcommunicative, then contact us to find out how we can get the best out of your investment property.

Email me on brian.linehan@belvoirlettings.com or call on 023 8001 8222.

Don't forget to visit the links below to view back dated deals and Southampton Property News.

Blog, http://southamptonproperty.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/belvoirsouthampton/

Twitter, https://twitter.com/sotonbelvoir
LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianlinehan

Website, https://www.belvoir.co.uk/letting-agents-southampton