942% - Rise in Basingstoke Property Prices since 1981

942% - Rise in Basingstoke Property Prices since 1981

 

Roll back 35 years to 1981, Margaret Thatcher was in power, there was a Royal Wedding, Britain won the Ashes and Bucks Fizz won Eurovision with ‘Making your Mind up’. How things have changed.  The number of homeowners and property investors who said they wish they had that hindsight and bought up every house in Basingstoke all those years ago, especially when you consider what has happened to Basingstoke property values in that time. 

Basingstoke Property Values since 1981 have risen by 942%.

 

Not a bad return when you consider inflation over the same time period has been 271.9%, meaning in real terms (i.e. after inflation), property values in Basingstoke are 670.1% higher.   It’s no wonder people can’t afford to buy property anymore and landlords are attracted by bricks and mortar. Yet the changes to the Basingstoke Property market run much deeper than property value changes, as no one could have predicted how the property market has changed in Basingstoke over the last 30 years.

 

Looking at the Local Authority data for Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council in 1981, 34.4% of Basingstoke people lived in a Council House, whilst today its 17.8%, a massive drop which can mostly be attributed to Margaret Thatcher allowing Council tenants the right to buy their Council House.  The private rental sector since 1981 has, as one would have expected, also changed.   

Nationally they’ve almost doubled, however, the proportion of properties privately rented in the Basingstoke area (i.e. through a private landlord or a letting agency) has seen only a slight increase, rising from 10.2% to 11.8% of property.

So let us consider those people who own their own home. Surely that has had a massive drop?  In 1981, the proportion of people who lived in the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council area who owned their own home was 55.3% … and today its … 67.7%. Not the seismic change that we might have expected.

Homeownership in the 1980’s and 1990’s in Basingstoke did in fact rise, but as I have discussed in previous articles in the ‘Basingstoke Property Market Blog’, that was because nearly every Council tenant was buying their council house. Now there are hardly any Council houses for the younger generation to move into (because of the right to buy scheme) so they have no choice but to privately rent.

This is why the buy to let market in Basingstoke is an investment sector that will continue to grow as councils aren’t building council houses in their thousands each year (like they were in the 1950’s/60’s and 70’s).  The Basingstoke property market is constantly changing and buy to let for too long has been heavily dependent on house price growth, where yield has been almost forgotten.  I see the changes in tax and landlord and tenant law in a different perspective to the sooth-sayers and see it as bringing many opportunities where yield will become more important. 

If you want to learn more about the Basingstoke Property Market, feel free to pop in for a coffee at our office for a chat with me, or failing that, visit the Basingstoke Property Blog, where you will find many more articles like this solely on the one topic of the Property Market in Basingstoke.