“How much would it cost to buy all the properties in Newbury?”
Market Comment from Lee Fenn-Tripp, Director of Downer & Co Lettings.
This fascinating question was posed by the 14-year-old son of one of my Newbury landlords when they both popped into my offices before the Christmas break (doesn’t that seem an age away now!). I thought to myself, that over the Christmas break, I would sit down and calculate what the total value of all the properties in Newbury are worth … and just for fun, work out how much they have gone up in value since his son was born back in the autumn of 2002.
In the last 14 years, since the autumn of 2002, the total value of Newbury property has increased by 47% or £1.62 billion to a total of £5.07 billion. Interesting, when you consider the FTSE100 has risen by 68.9% and inflation (i.e. the UK Retail Price Index) rose by 38.7% during the same 14 years.
When I delved deeper into the numbers, the average price currently being paid by Newbury households stands at £285,078.… but you know me, I wasn’t going to stop there, so I split the property market down into individual property types in Newbury; the average numbers come out like this ..
Newbury Property Market
Average Value of a Detached Property £403,964
Average Value of a Semi-Detached Property £341,167
Average Value of a Terraced/Town House Property £295,042
Average Value of an Apartment £176,865
… yet it got even more fascinating when I multiplied the total number of each type of property by the average value. Even though detached houses are more expensive, when you compare them with the much cheaper semi-detached houses, you can quite clearly see detached properties are not a match in terms of total pound note value of the semi-detached houses.
Total Value of all the Newbury Detached PropertiesTotal Value of all the Newbury Semi-Detached PropertiesTotal Value of all the Newbury Terraced/Town House Properties
Total Value of all the Newbury Detached Properties £1,586,366,628
Total Value of all the Newbury Semi-Detached Properties £1,644,083,773
Total Value of all the Terraced/Town House Properties £1,117,029,012
Total Value of all the Newbury Apartments £724,262,8175
So, what does this all mean for Newbury? Well as we enter the uncharted waters of 2017 and beyond, even though property values are already declining in certain parts of the previously over-cooked Central London property market, the outlook in Newbury remains relatively good. Over the last five years, the local property market was a lot more sensible than central London’s.
Newbury house values will remain resilient for several reasons. Firstly, demand for rental property remains strong with continued immigration and population growth. Secondly, with 0.25 per cent interest rates, borrowing has never been so cheap and finally the simple lack of new house building in Newbury not keeping up with current demand, let alone eating into years and years of under-investment – means only one thing – yes it might be a bumpy ride over the next 12 to 24 months but, in the medium term, property ownership and property investment in Newbury has always, and will always, ride out the storm.
In the coming weeks, I will look in greater detail at my thoughts for the 2017 Newbury Property Market. For more thoughts and opinions on the Newbury Property Market, if you are a Newbury Homeowner or Newbury landlord, please visit www.newburypropertynews.co.uk view our pages on Facebook or pop into our office in Cheap Street in Newbury.
