How far would you go to help your child get on in the world?

Many Hayes parents move area to ensure their child gets into the best primary school or fund their university costs. Many of you reading this have even helped your children with the deposit for their first home from savings.

However, I have come across many Hayes people in their 50’s and 60’s who have good jobs and incomes, yet don’t have the savings to give to their children to help them buy their first home. It doesn’t help when you consider…

the average value of a Hayes home has risen by 8.3% in the last 5 years, from £352,336 to £381,513.

I am therefore seeing increasing numbers of parents who are willing to re-mortgage their own Hayes home or start a new mortgage (when they own their Hayes home outright) — to get their children onto the Hayes property ladder.

So, whilst the Government is trying to turn Britain’s 20 and 30 somethings from ‘Generation Rent’ into ‘Generation Buy’, the Bank of Mum and Dad are mortgaging their retirement to pay for it all. Yet it need not be cost prohibitive borrowing the deposit as you still have access to interest only mortgages.

With an interest only mortgage, your monthly mortgage payment covers only the interest on your mortgage, not any of the original capital borrowed. This means your mortgage payments will be lower than on a repayment mortgage, remembering though at the end of the term you will still owe the original amount you borrowed from the mortgage provider.

1 in 14 new mortgages are interest only and 1 in 5.5 existing mortgages are interest only mortgages, they are very popular.

Anyway, many Hayes homeowners might be worried about having that level of debt in their golden years. However, many plan to pay off the mortgage when they downsize as they get into their 60’s and 70’s.

I talk to many Hayes homeowners, who are asset rich but cash poor and desire to help their children onto the Hayes property ladder. Their attitude is their children will inherit their property when they pass away, so it seems practical to give them that money to work harder for them earlier in their life when they need it to buy their first home.

Can you get a mortgage, even if you are retired?

A lot is dependent upon your age and financial position. The mortgage companies will see if you have adequate funds for your retirement and emergencies plus leaving enough equity in the property to enable you to downsize in the future. Like all things, you need to take advice from a qualified mortgage arranger.

So, that then begs the question, is there enough equity in Hayes homes to borrow against?

In the late 1980s and again in the early 2000s, many Brits saw their homes as a cash machine. Numerous homeowners re-mortgaging at the end of their mortgage’s preliminary term (usually after the initial 2, 3 or 5 years), but when doing so increased their mortgage to enable them to buy a nice car or fancy holiday. Yet, by increasing the borrowing, it created negative equity in the early 1990s and stopped many homeowners moving home between 2009 and 2013 because of their lack of equity.

Therefore, I have to ask, have we borrowed too much this time round?

Looking at Hayes and the specific postcodes UB3 combined…

In 2016, the average Hayes homeowner had a mortgage of £172,557 and today it is £192,560, a rise of £20,002.

Looking at these numbers, one might think we are again over-extending ourselves, yet as regular readers of my blog about the Hayes property market will know – I like to drill down and look at all the figures.

Initially, I was worried about these stats, until I considered the equity Hayes people have amassed over the same 5 years.

In 2016, the average equity held in a Hayes homeowner’s property (whilst still having a mortgage) was £179,779, yet today that stands at £188,953, a rise of £9,175.

Even though mortgages have increased, Hayes homeowner’s equity has risen even more, meaning as we stand today, mortgaged and owned-outright properties, there is…

£5,097,206,568 of equity held in all Hayes homes.

Whilst the total value of mortgages has increased slightly since 2016, as a percentage, this has gone down meaning Hayes homeowners and Hayes landlords have increased their equity in the last five years.

It can quite clearly be seen that the financial insecurity sparked by the Credit Crunch crisis of 2008/9 has created a generation of Hayes homeowners and landlords who are savers and improvers rather than movers and excessive borrowers, using excess cash to invest in their property and pay down debt or to excessively borrow on their equity growth.

Only 19.2% of the total value of Hayes property

is borrowed money with a mortgage.

This is great news for every Hayes homeowner and Hayes landlord because irrespective of whether the ‘Post Lockdown Bounce’ is short or long-lived, it shows the Hayes property market is in a better state to ride out any storm that it might encounter than ever before because less people will be in negative equity or have prohibitively high mortgages.

Before I finish, I fully appreciate money and inheritance is a sensitive subject for many families.

My message to all the Hayes parents is, just because your children aren’t talking about the subject, it doesn’t mean it’s not on their mind.

The lead has to come from you, as a Hayes parent to ensure the wealth held in your bricks and mortar can be used to your family’s advantage, when they need it most.

If you do, your children will thank you for it and they may even do exactly the same for their children, then, they will do the same for their children’s children … creating a legacy that will go on for generations.

With grocery, energy and other household prices/costs rising and hitting everyone’s back pocket, inflation (rising prices) may feel like an unimportant issue when it comes to the cost of keeping a roof over your head.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth for many Hayes homeowners and Hayes landlords.

Because inflation over the long term is bad for the economy, the normal weapon of choice to reduce inflation is to increase interest rates. The Bank of England (BoE) is in charge of interest rates.

Should inflation continue to rise, there will come a point later in the year when the BoE will need to raise it’s Base Rate from its 300-year record low of 0.1%, and probably continue to do so with a series of further increases in 2022.

When interest rates go up, the cost of mortgages go up. When the cost of mortgages go up, that hits the affordability of what people can borrow to buy their homes (and landlords to finance their buy-to-let properties). In essence…

could it be the end of the Hayes house price boom?

The danger of a base rate rise by the BoE on the back of a rise in inflation over the last few months has alarmed banks and building societies into increasing the mortgage rates for both home buyers and landlords.

In the last week alone, lenders have increased the rates (i.e. prices) of their mortgages, some mortgages by more than one whole percentage point. That doesn’t sound a lot, until you punch the numbers into a calculator (more of that later).

Hayes property buyers (be they landlords or homebuyers) have relished months of cut-price cheap mortgages rates.

Mortgage lenders have played the big game in the last 12/16 months to capture the mortgage business of 1 million+ Brits that have moved home since the end of Lockdown-1 plus the many millions of re-mortgages, with the cheapest mortgage rates falling below 1%.

Yet, the money markets have already priced into their calculations that the BoE will increase the base to 0.25% by December, up from the existing 0.1%. They also anticipate a further two quarter point (i.e. 0.25%) rise in the spring of 2022, meaning they believe the base rate will be 0.75% by the end of summer 2022.

So why is this an issue for the homeowners of Hayes? Looking at the combined totals of the UB3 postcode districts…

5,077 Hayes property owners have mortgages

totaling £977.6m (up from £829.1m in 2013).

Yet, 1,066 of those Hayes homeowners with mortgages are on variable rate mortgages, with their mortgage payments rising and falling based on how the BoE interest rate shifts. That will cause instant pain if mortgage providers pass on increased mortgage repayment costs. So how much will that be?

The average size of mortgage for a

Hayes homeowner is £192,559.57.

If the base rate were to rise to 0.75%, the average Hayes homeowner (with a variable rate mortgage) would be £104 per month worse off (£1,252 per year).

The mortgage price war the banks and building societies have been fighting recently has resulted in falls in the month-on-month average mortgage rates available to borrowers. The economy is awash with cash looking for a home (mainly down to the Government’s and BoE’s intervention to keep the UK economy going during lockdown). For those with large deposits this has meant mortgages have been available at less than 1%.

However, with reports of a potential BoE interest rate rise happening soon, those Hayes homeowners who are on a variable rate mortgage are probably going to be the first who would feel the influence of any base rate increase.

If the BoE Base Rate rose to 3%, the average annual mortgage payment of those Hayes homeowners on variable rate mortgages would rise by £5,777 per year.

This could mean homeowners with variable rate mortgages would be spending half their salary on their mortgage should interest rates get up to these levels.

Now the BoE won’t increase rates by that amount over night, as that would spook the market. They will probably increase every few months by a quarter of one percent each time.

Thankfully, over the last 4 or 5 years, over 90% of new mortgages have been fixed rate, yet they are only fixed for a certain length of time. If you have less than one/two years left on your mortgage, you seriously need to take advice now from a qualified mortgage broker, as any penalty to change might now be considerably smaller compared to the mortgage rates you might be paying when your deal finishes in the next 12/24 months. Again, I am not giving you advice in this article – just making a suggestion.

A further message to the 1 in 5 (ish) of Hayes homeowners on a variable rate – please take some advice from a qualified mortgage advisor as well. Mortgage rates can’t get any lower and all the signs are showing they will be going up. The mortgage market is still extremely competitive, there is opportunity for borrowers to lock in ultra-low mortgage rates before any likely Base Rate increases filter through.

Will an interest rate hike crash the Hayes

housing market like the early 1990s?

The early 1990s saw repossessions go through the roof as homeowners defaulted on their mortgage payments because of the increased mortgage rates. Also, in the run up to the Credit Crunch in 2008, Northern Rock were lending 125% of the value of the property (we all know what happened to them!). Other banks were recklessly lending 8 or 9 times a person’s income, without the person having to prove that income. Both scenarios were significant contributory factors in the housing market crash.

Thankfully in 2014, the BoE implemented the recommendations of its own Mortgage Market Review (MMR). The MMR forced banks and building societies to stress test mortgage borrowers against potential increases of the base rate of up to 3%. Thankfully, even the most hardened monetary doom-mongers aren’t contemplating base rates of those levels (although I won’t apologise for highlighting what it could cost earlier in the article).

Fundamentally, as we go into 2022, the housing market is built on decent foundations, unlike 2007 with the poor lending practices by the lenders. Yet the increase in base rates will have another influence.

The psychological factor of a perceived increase in mortgage costs, might be enough to cool the enthusiasm and excitement of many buyers to pay top dollar for their next Hayes home, and that might not be a bad thing. If I am being frank, we could do with something that takes a bit of fizz out of the Hayes housing market.

Many Hayes homeowners have been wary of placing their house on the market because they are scared they won’t be able to find another home. A slight increase in Base Rates will take the frothiness out the Hayes property market and return it to some form of normality. I would even go as far as to say house prices might ease back ever so slightly in the coming 12 to 18 months.

So don’t be alarmed if house prices in Hayes do drift slightly over the coming years like they did in the mid 1990s.

It’s just the property market settling down and coming back into some form of equilibrium, which is good for everyone.

My final thoughts…

The mortgage lenders have already priced in the potential BoE rate rises, so even if rates do rise, let’s not panic. And even if they did rise to 3%, that would still leave them at levels that look exceedingly cheap at any other time in history. Many homeowners in their 50’s and 60’s can remember mortgage rates of 15% in 1992, so take advice from your family. (Interestingly, the 50-year BoE Base Rate average is 7.2%).

Buying your Hayes home is a long-term venture. It is a huge financial decision that can give you peace of mind and a superb place to live.

But it is not an investment. I am not saying you should avoid homeownership, however, if you are considering buying because you think you are making a clever investment choice, think again.

The idea that your Hayes family home can be an investment too comes from the fact that, historically Hayes property prices have risen. We all have stories of someone in the family, somewhere in the UK, who bought a house for £500 many years ago, for it to be worth 300% / 500% / 1000% more today!

If you read some of my past articles on the Hayes property market, I have proven many times over, there are much better ways to invest your money, e.g. buying buy-to-let properties or stocks and shares.

But if you want to bring your family up in a home that is yours, the bottom line is this. Even if interest rates rise to 3% (if not a little more), you will still be able to get on the property ladder with a small deposit (using the Government’s 5% deposit mortgages) and you will still find it’s cheaper to buy than rent.

If you would like to chat to me about anything in this article, do drop me a line. In the meantime, please do give me your thoughts on the matters raised in the article – I would love to know.

Thanks in advance.

The ‘Buy-To-Let’ (BTL) mortgage is celebrating its Silver Anniversary (25 years) this autumn.

Isn’t it fascinating that a decision between a group of letting agents and bankers all that time ago to offer BTL mortgages has changed the face of the Hayes (and national) property market?

But has it been a good thing? Or has it ruined the dreams of many 20 somethings wanting to get on to the property ladder in the last couple of decades?

Let’s look deeper at the whole story, then I will let you, the reader, decide.

And as soon as the BTL mortgage was launched, it was clear there was an enthusiasm and a need for this mortgage product. So much so the size of the Hayes private rented sector has grown exponentially.

According to my analysis …

there are 3,678 private rented homes in Hayes,

worth £1,456,433,000.

So now we are in 2021, it seems farcical that banks and building societies once thought that properties rented out to private tenants would not create a steady income or increase in value, yet this thought was conventional back in the 1990’s.

It’s no wonder BTL landlords have been given a hard time, with numbers like this.

Yet before we burn every landlord at the stake,

let’s just look at the background story.

The Conservatives introduced the right of a council house tenant to buy their own council house in the early 1980s. Fantastic news for council tenants, yet when a council tenant bought their home, that meant that council housing was taken away from future generations to rent and therefore eroding the council housing stock available. Meaning from the mid 1990s/early 2000s, people who would normally be eligible to rent from the council, yet who couldn’t buy, had only one option … rent from a private landlord.

Meanwhile, in the early/mid 1990s we had 15% mortgage interest rates, unemployment rates of 9% and the 1989 housing crash fresh in people’s memories. Repossessions were rife, making home ownership not the most attractive prospect for 20 somethings.

Hayes house prices dropped by

28.5% between 1989 and 1993.

This meant as we entered the mid 1990s, the Hayes property market entered a period of stagnation. There were many Hayes homeowners that bought their home in the property boom of the late 1980s who were disinclined to sell their home for a loss. They were in negative equity (i.e. they owed more than what the house was worth) yet needed to move because of their growing families.

Renting their home out could have allowed them to buy another home for their growing family, but most banks and building societies were still mostly unreceptive to the notion of these homeowners becoming accidental landlords. Most mortgage terms and conditions usually included clauses that prohibited homeowners from renting out their homes.

So, with growing demand from potential tenants, supply reduced from the sale of Council houses and many homeowners in negative equity, all bound up by the semi-deregulation of the private rented sector with the Housing Act 1988 – you can see that the BTL mortgage came along at the right time.

Early take up of BTL mortgages was slow in the first couple of years.

By the Millennium, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, there were just over 120,000 BTL mortgages, with a total value of £9.1 billion.

Yet as we entered the 2000s, they really took off, with every man and his dog jumping onto the BTL bandwagon. So much so that today in the UK, there are …

4.4m private rented homes, 2.1m of them with BTL mortgages

 totaling £234.1bn, which is 11.9% of the UK’s GDP!

That’s more than a 1,650% increase in the number of BTL mortgages to landlords and a 2,470% increase in the value of those BTL mortgages.

Since 2001, the number of privately rented households in the UK has grown from 8.3% to 19%.

On the face of it, you could say with the growth of these BTL landlords with their cheap BTL mortgages and often unkempt properties, it has pushed potential homebuyers into squalor. Yet, let’s look a little deeper.

Most Hayes landlords are very fair with their Hayes tenants providing them with clean, well presented and affordable housing. Of course, there are the rogue landlords but with TV shows such as ‘Landlords from Hell’, the British public are given a distorted and uneven view of private landlords as a whole.

Private sector landlords have played a critical role in providing homes to millions of Brits in this country, let me expand.

The UK population has grown by 405,000 people per year (for the last 20 years), yet only 22,750 council/social houses have been built per year in the same time frame.

If it wasn’t for the private rented sector, who would’ve housed all the extra people in the country over the last 20 years? 

What about the exorbitant rents? Would it surprise you that rents have risen below inflation between 2008 and 2019?

Also there has been a drive to tax BTL landlords more comprehensively and regulate the private rented sector to develop better housing conditions for tenants.

Unlike owner-occupier homes, tenants get the benefit of new regulations from Gas Safety Checks and Electrical Safety Reports. Also, BTL landlords will need to improve their Energy Performance Certificate Rating to at least a C rating by the end of 2025 for all new tenancies, and by end of 2028 for all existing tenancies, all at no cost to the tenant and directly saving them money on their heating costs – something that is very important considering the recent rises in gas prices.

Hayes landlords have also had to pay more tax on their Hayes BTL properties, paying 3% Stamp Duty Tax supplement for the last 5 years, and higher rate tax relief on mortgage interest was taken away four years ago.

Landlords have also had to deal with the financial fallout of the pandemic. It is estimated 1 in 5 tenants in the private rental sector have some form of rent arrears.

Interestingly landlords that don’t use a letting agent to manage their property are 272.5% more likely to be 2 months or more in arrears.

Also, evictions for rent arrears were banned during the pandemic, meaning some tenants ran up arrears of 12 months or more. According to the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), this has left around 210,000 private tenants in the country facing a court order for rent arrears. That would equate to …

197 Hayes private rented households

with a court order for arrears.

The idea that Hayes landlords are middle-class establishment types who are out to take advantage of Hayes tenants who can’t afford to buy their own Hayes homes is, in my opinion, just wrong.

Of course, there are some rogue Hayes landlords, yet there are plenty of rogue tenants. Just because you are a Hayes landlord, it doesn’t mean you are quaffing Champagne and rolling in cash.

661 Hayes landlords own just one BTL property.

And just under half of those use their rental income to supplement their pensions, and according to the NRLA, a third of landlords have a gross income (excluding income from the BTL property) of less than £20k per annum.

It’s hard work being a Hayes BTL landlord and I still believe the burden of housing just under a fifth of the UK population isn’t appreciated or taken seriously by Government.

Notwithstanding the challenges, most Hayes BTL landlords are in it for the long run. BTL mortgages can be secured for less than 1% and demand is on the rise (with rents rising at the highest rate for 10+ years). Of course, Brexit caused a few issues with some Hayes landlords losing some Eastern European migrants. Yet once things settle down, we will have an influx of people coming from Hong Kong and Afghanistan, wanting to settle down, get jobs and ultimately require a home to live in, which will be a private rented house.

I know the Stamp Duty Tax holiday has cleared out the Hayes landlords who were on the fence for staying in the private rented sector or selling up, but those Hayes landlords that are left will be more professional and will run their BTL portfolio as a business, not a hobby.

My final piece of advice to anyone thinking of becoming a BTL landlord in Hayes for the first time is that you have to have a strategy and plan ahead. Those who stumbled into the BTL market in the early 2000s made a lot of money without any strategy or tactics.

Moving forward you need the guidance and support of an agent who can tell you the best places for investment, be that for better yield or better capital growth.

They will also be able to tell you what tenants demand to ensure that you attract the right sort of tenants who won’t trash the place and leave you in arrears. If you would like some advice do not hesitate to drop me a line or pick up the phone.

The stamp duty holiday is over, furlough finished at the end of September, unemployment is due to rise and inflation is rife … is this the end of the post lockdown Hayes property boom?

Surely, we are heading for house price correction?

Forecasting what will happen in the Hayes property market this autumn may not be as simple as it first appears.

It’s true the Hayes property market is starting to settle down after an all-time number of property deals were completed in June.

More Hayes people will have moved home in 2021 than in any year since 2007, with an estimated 1.5 million home buyers nationally having bought a property.

Roll the clock back to last Christmas, and the Government’s Office for Budget Responsibility, projected that national house prices would drop between 6% and 8%.

By Christmas, the price of an average home in Hayes will be about £403,900, up 3.1% on last Christmas.

Let us not forget there were so many ambiguities at the start of 2021. We were about to start a 5-month lockdown, hospitals were bursting at the seams with patients, the vaccines hadn’t started, 4 in 10 employers had furloughed their staff and we had just had Brexit … things didn’t look good.

Yet, nothing could be further from the truth 10 months later – the Hayes property market has been on fire. But after a heated summer in the Hayes property market, things certainly can’t carry on as they have been since the end of lockdown.

So, where are we with the Hayes property market as it stands? Taking reference from historical data on the website The Advisory (I would certainly recommend you check it out) …

51% of properties on the market today in Hayes are sold subject to contract (stc).

How does this compare to October 2019 and October 2017?

In October 2017, 32% of Hayes properties were sold stc,

whilst in October 2019, 36% of properties were sold stc.

Yet how does that compare to the national picture?

In 2017, 39.72% of the country’s properties for sale were sold stc whilst in 2019, that figure was 38.11%.

Now I love a good league table, so then decided to compare our locality to the rest of the country.

So, I chose to look at the UB3 postcode specifically. For information, there are 2,234 postcode districts in the country.

The 2021 sold stats put UB3 in at 2,005^th place in the country, 1,646^th in 2017 and 1,571^st in 2019.

As we enter the last 3 months of the year, there are not so many uncertainties as there were at the start of 2021. On the good news front, 49 million Brits have had at least one jab (45m two jabs) and the UK will be the world’s fastest growing advanced economy this year according to the IMF.

Conversely, the furlough scheme ended at the end of September and with energy prices going through the roof, a real shortage of homes for sale (as I have discussed a number of times in recent blogs) and rising inflation on the back of a shortage of raw materials and trained staff, forecasting this and what will happen to Hayes house prices might not be as easy as it seems.

Post stamp duty holiday, it is now recognised that the majority of the demand for people moving home is focused by a profound unhappiness and frustration with the homes we live in, revealed during the first lockdown in 2020.

Buyers (and tenants – so take note Hayes buy-to-let landlords) want space … in fact, three types of space … and they will pay handsomely for them!

• Office space (be that bedroom or study)
• Outside space (gardens or proximity to green areas)
• Broadband with ‘outa-space’ download speeds

And whilst there is a shortage of properties coming on to the market, demand and supply economics

mean …

Hayes house prices should remain relatively stable going into 2022.

The number of properties coming onto the market in Hayes is slowly improving, yet not enough to diminish house values.

Also, don’t forget Hayes first-time buyers still have stamp duty relief all to themselves again and mortgages are cheap. At the beginning of the 2020 lockdown (Spring 2020), mortgage providers removed their higher risk 5% deposit mortgages for fear of a housing market crash. Currently, the vast majority of these low 5% deposit mortgages are back, together with the Governments own 5% deposit mortgages.

Yet many Hayes homeowners are concerned about inflation and its effect on their mortgage payments.

Inflation is important because if inflation gets too high, the Bank of England will need to raise interest rates to reduce inflation. Because mortgage payments are based on the Bank of England interest rate, higher mortgage payments will affect what people can afford. Normally the higher the mortgage rate, the less likely house prices are to increase (and in fact if interest rates are too high, house prices will fall).

Whilst I can’t give you advice, with the Bank of England base rate at a 300-year historic low of 0.1%, I’m still surprised that nearly 3 in 10 Hayes homeowners with mortgages are not on a fixed rate mortgage. There has never been a better time to get a fixed rate mortgage, as there are deals out there with interest rates as low as 1%. This means even if interest rates do go up in the short term, you will be protected from higher mortgage costs. Anyway, back to inflation.

Inflation did rise quite quickly and steeply in 2008/9 but came back down within a year.

This was because of a shortage of staff and raw materials during the Credit Crunch of 2008/9, the very same issues we are experiencing at the moment in Q4 2021. The type of inflation (yes, there are types of inflation!) in 2008/9 was called ‘push inflation’. Whilst inflation is not great, ‘push inflation’ could be described the better type of inflation (as long as is it doesn’t go on for too long).

The economic crippling hyper-inflation seen in the 1970s was ‘pull inflation’. The circumstances that create ‘pull inflation’ are not being experienced at the moment buy in the UK. This is good news because ‘pull inflation’ is bad inflation, which in turn would create massive problems to the UK economy as a whole.

Therefore, whilst inflation will probably rise to 4% – 5% by Christmas, I don’t believe the Bank of England will raise interest rates substantially as the message we are hearing from them is they see this as a short-term blip.

Opportunities for Hayes buy-to-let landlords?

Ultra-low mortgage rates and a booming rental market is encouraging more Hayes buy-to-let landlords to expand their rental portfolios, yet their strategy is changing. Yields are increasing as there is a shortage of rental properties, driving up rents. Also, there are Hayes landlords looking to exit the rental market, often because they want to liquidate their portfolio for retirement. These portfolios don’t make it onto Rightmove and get sold ‘off market’.

Therefore, if you are a serious Hayes buy-to-let landlord and you’re looking to expand your own portfolio, it’s really important to put yourselves on the mailing list of estate agents and also build up great one-to-one relationships with the same agents to ensure that you’re at the front of the queue for these off market rental portfolios and not at the back.

To conclude, nobody knows the answer to what will happen to the property market in Hayes as we go into 2022. There are many factors that could affect the market in a positive and negative way, yet buying property is always a long-term investment (be it for yourself or to rent), so if you need any advice or opinion on what you should do, drop me a line or pop into the office and we can discuss the options you have over a cup of coffee.

The number of properties for sale in Hayes has fallen by 8% since this time last year (October 2020). One of the reasons is that many Hayes buyers feel overwhelmed and fearful they will be made homeless if they sell their home and can’t buy another. So, I have decided to look again at the facts and give them to you in greater detail in this article.

My research has found the number of Hayes properties for sale started to decline last autumn (2020).

Nationally, the same story is being written as the average UK estate agency office now has around 16 properties on their books to buy, compared to 43 a couple of years ago.

So why is this an issue?  Many Hayes homeowners are wanting to move home and are worried they will put their current home on the market, it sells quickly and then be unable to find another home to buy – thus they believe they will then be making themselves homeless.

The fact is that most Hayes home buyers need to sell before they can buy their next home, meaning they need to place their property on to the Hayes property market before they can buy their next home.

Yet because of the low supply of properties for sale and the current high demand, there is an imbalance in the Hayes property market. This means some Hayes house sellers are nervous to put a ‘for sale’ board outside their house.

So, let me look at the Hayes (UB3 to be precise) numbers in greater detail. According to the three main property portals (Rightmove, Zoopla and On-The-Market) …

In October 2020, there were 392 properties for sale in Hayes (UB3). Today, there are only 361 properties for sale, a reduction of 8%.

When I break it down into bedroom numbers and type it gets even more interesting (note things like building plots and part commercial/part residential etc., won’t be in these numbers so the stats below won’t precisely match up to those above).

	# Properties on the Market in Oct 2020	# Properties on the Market in Oct 2021	Percent Change
5+ Bedrooms	15	15	0%
4 Bedrooms	26	15	-42%
3 Bedrooms	86	70	-19%
2 Bedrooms	122	113	-7%
1 Bedroom	122	127	4%

… and when I looked at the type of properties … it got even more interesting…

Type of Property	# Properties on the Market in Oct 2020	# Properties on the Market in Oct 2021	Percent Change
Detached	12	7	-42%
Semi	89	67	-25%
Terraced	36	17	-53%
Flat	249	262	5%

As you can see, there have been some interesting changes in the number of properties on the market in Hayes over the last year, depending on the type and the number of bedrooms, although as you would expect the number of apartments for sale has risen.

So, if Hayes homeowners do sell, will they be made homeless if they can’t find their next ‘forever home’?

The answer is quite simply … NO!

Hayes properties are coming on to the market all the time, yet the buyers have got to be in the game, in it to win it so to speak. If you keep looking at properties, without even having your property on the market, let alone sold (subject to contract), then you will fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy of not being able to buy another home and will always be chasing your tail.

And it’s those magic words of “subject to contract” that are your get out of jail card.

The average time taken from agreeing a sale to it being legally binding (i.e. exchange of contracts) is about 19 weeks.

During those 19 weeks, you are ‘sold subject to contract’, which means you have four or five months to find your new home and the likelihood of not finding your next forever home is very small.

And even if you can’t find anywhere, you will never be homeless as the sale is not legally binding until you exchange contracts, so you can withdraw from the sale up to that point, without penalty.

One final word of advice to all Hayes home movers.

Around 6 in 7 Hayes homebuyers could have missed their ‘forever home’ in 2020/21

Let me explain, in a study of various UK estate agents, 84.8% of homebuyers were not on the estate agent’s mailing list before they contacted the agent to view the home according to Denton House Research.

Yes, 6 out of 7 buyers (84.8%) waited until the property came on to the market on one of the portals (e.g. Rightmove, Zoopla or On The Market) before asking to view it. But would it surprise you that depending on the location and type, up to one in five houses don’t actually make it on to the portals for sale.

This means if the homebuyer hadn’t registered themselves on the agents mailing list, they would’ve missed out on their ‘forever home’, because they would not have known the property was for sale until it was too late.

Quite simply, if you are serious about moving home in Hayes, get yourself on the mailing lists of all the agents in Hayes.