The energy bills of every Hayes resident will rise in April as the price cap increases to account for the global increase in the cost of gas. Those not on the gas mains will still be hit as the UK uses gas to make 45% of its electricity.

So, what can Hayes residents do to reduce their energy consumption and ultimately save money?

First, let’s look at the scale of the costs.

Considering the increase in energy prices from April, the combined energy bills for the whole of Hayes (UB3) come to…

• £25,137,398 for central heating
• £5,040,196 for hot water
• £2,739,082 for lighting

There are extra energy costs for washing, fridges, etc., yet I wanted to focus just on the home as this is a property blog.

Everyone’s bills will be around 50% more expensive in 2022 than in 2021, but it’s not too late for Hayes people to take some quick steps to cut their energy bills and, at the same time, cut our carbon footprint.

Just over a quarter of the UK’s carbon comes from heating and lighting our 27.6 million homes, and each UK home produces

4.39 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Upgrading the energy efficiency of UK homes is seen as a vital step to attempting to mitigate the issues of climate change, fuel poverty and our nation’s energy security.

So, what are some quick wins for Hayes residents to reduce the energy bills on their homes, and how will energy efficiency play a more significant part in the value of Hayes homes in the future?

1. By turning down the thermostat by 1 degree, the average annual saving would be £105.91 per home and each homes carbon dioxide would be reduced by an eighth of a tonne (it all adds up!).

• Replacing your bulbs when you can with energy-efficient bulbs will, on average, reduce your lighting costs from £172 per year to £103 per year.

• What time does your heating come on and off? Could it come on later and go off earlier?

• Smart meters (which are installed for free) are estimated to help lower UK homes electricity use by nearly 3% and gas use by 2% … again it’s all margin gains.

These are just a handful of ideas. Check out the internet for others as it’s fascinating how much energy we use for overfull kettles, chargers left on and tech on standby etc.

Yet, these things will only scratch the surface… many of us will need to go further, especially Hayes landlords, to retrofit our properties to make them more energy-efficient.

This is particularly important as in June the Government announced they would make the country carbon neutral by 2050, meaning Britain’s homes need some enormous retro-fitting to meet these ambitious climate targets.

In 2018, the Government required private landlords to improve the energy rating of their rental properties by prohibiting the rental of any property with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of F and G (the lowest ratings). Yet from 2025, that will be increased to C for all new tenancies and 2028 for all existing tenancies (more on these EPCs below).

I don’t believe there is an appetite to mandate private homeowners to do this work, though you never know in the future.

So, how do you find out about your

Hayes home’s eco-credentials?

Since 2007, every new home that has been built, rented out or put on to the market in Hayes has had to have an EPC, giving it a rating between A and G (rather like those stickers you see on fridges and washing machines).

A is the highest rating (i.e., best energy efficient and greener), and G is the worst efficiency rating.

40.1% of Hayes homes are in that eco-friendly A to C energy performance band rating, in line with the national average of 40.1%

So, what next? Well, the Government will attempt to make the green revolution as painless as possible with technology.

In the future, we might have hydrogen central heating instead of mains gas; or have solar panels for electricity, all triple glazed windows and even ground source heating – sounds fanciful? Well, who would have thought some of the most wanted cars would be electric 20 years ago?

There is no doubt that the energy efficiency of our homes will rise in the coming years as the cost of fuel increases and people’s opinion on going green changes.

You don’t need to spend thousands of pounds to find out what you can do to make your property greener and cost less. Look at your EPC and it will tell you what small changes you can make to improve your Hayes home’s energy efficiency rating and ultimately save yourself money. If you want to find the EPC rating of your Hayes home, go to epcregister.com.

If you need an EPC, drop me a line as I know some great local energy assessors that can easily do an EPC on your property at a price that won’t cost the earth!

• 12% drop in the number of properties for sale in Hayes in the last 12 months.

• 105 Hayes homes have sold (stc) in the last three months alone, taking the time from the ‘for sale board’ going up to sale agreed to a median of 66 days.

• The £400k to £500k price range in Hayes is the most active, where it takes 61 days to sale agreed, but the £100k to £200k is taking 105 days.

• Yet, what issues cause the people of Hayes to want to move home and what can Hayes people, who want to move in 2022, do to ensure they sell and find the home of their dreams?

There are 305 properties for sale today in Hayes; roll the clock back exactly a year, and the figure was 346 – there’s been a drop of 12%. This drop is being dubbed ‘for sale board crunch’.

The ‘for sale board crunch’ has left many prospective Hayes home buyers stressing to find the right Hayes property as the number of properties available to buy has dropped significantly.

I am sure you know people looking for their next Hayes home, but when they see it on the portals (Rightmove, Zoopla, Boomin, OnTheMarket etc.) the properties are gone within days.

With demand at an all-time high, many Hayes home buyers are in a state of misery as Hayes house prices have grown in the last few years, forcing many of them to review their plans.

They are victims of the ‘for sale board crunch’ in the Hayes property market, the likes of which have not been seen since 2007.

Normally when there has been excess demand in the residential sales market, that frothiness has been taken care of by people moving into rented accommodation. However, the number of Hayes properties available to rent is at a 15-year low.

So why is the Hayes property market this way?

Demand for Hayes homes has exceeded the number of properties for sale since the General Election in December 2019. After years of long drawn out Brexit negotiations, homeowners and buyers were more confident about their move. Many Hayes people who put their home move on hold in 2018/19 had more confidence to return to the market.

The first lockdown in the spring of 2020 did nothing to quell this pent-up urge, and since the late spring of 2020, the Hayes property market has been on fire! The lockdown changed what homeowners are looking for in their Hayes home. Proximity to public transport dropped down the wish list for buyers, and demand for apartments dropped. Whilst properties with larger gardens and rooms that could double up as home offices tended to be at the top of most Hayes buyers’ wish lists.

Around 36% more Hayes properties have sold in the

last 18 months than the long-term 20-year average.

Looking at the supply side of the equation, in the last five years, an average of 204,410 new homes per year have been added to the number of properties available in the UK. Also, 239,600 properties came back into the market when they became available after their owners had sadly passed away. Yet still, that isn’t enough. The country needs at least 300,000 new dwellings to keep pace with demand.

There is also another problem that has come to light with the cladding issue of apartments. Just over three-quarters of million apartments have issues with cladding. Whilst these are being sorted out (which will take many years), they are essentially unsaleable unless a fire safety expert on these buildings signs them as safe.

These cladding issues prevent these apartments from coming onto the market (thus reducing the supply of properties to buy). It also precludes their owners from moving up the property ladder from their apartment to a house. Also, many first-time buyers who can save a bigger deposit or be gifted cash from the Bank of Mum and Dad are skipping the apartment as their first home and going straight for a house, thus intensifying the lack of larger properties for sale.

So, how long does it take to sell a Hayes property now?

Hayes Apartments – 91 days

Hayes Terraced/Town House – 60 days

Hayes Semi-Detached – 39 days

Hayes Detached – 153 days

This means it is a seller’s market in Hayes, empowering them to push up their asking prices in high demand areas. However, most sellers are also buyers, which means the advantage they have on selling their property is turned on its head when they come to buy.

Many Hayes sellers prefer to find their future Hayes home before putting their current home on the market. That is making the lack of properties on the market seem even harsher than it may otherwise be.  

The ‘for sale board crunch’ would be somewhat eased if Hayes sellers put their property onto the market whilst they were hunting for their next ‘forever home’.

However, not all Hayes homeowners are doing so, partially because they (wrongly) believe they will be made homeless if they find a buyer and can’t find another property to buy (remember, you are not legally committed to moving until exchange of contracts).

A big issue will be finding a suitable Hayes home. We very much have a chicken and egg scenario. Some homeowners are waiting for the right property to come onto the market before they put their home on the market. This will probably mean that that Hayes property will sell even before the photographs have been taken of your home.  

Yet, many Hayes homeowners are worried if they put their house on the market and it sells, they won’t be able to find another suitable home and thus be homeless.

Classic chicken and egg – so what do you do first?

There is another way of doing this. It’s a technique estate agents used to use before the internet, and it’s called ‘chain building’. Many Hayes homeowners are contacting me to move home yet don’t want to be made homeless. What we do is slowly build a group of people in a chain over many months. It requires a lot of patience to build a chain downwards and upwards around you.  

There is no cost to this and no legal commitment to go through. It can take six, even twelve months to build a chain of people who are prepared to wait for the chain to form.

Yet, everyone normally gets their next ‘forever home’

by playing this long game.

Because if you don’t play the long game, build relationships with Hayes estate agents (who can build these chains) and only rely on waiting for properties to appear on Rightmove, Boomin, OnTheMarket or Zoopla, you will be sorely disappointed.  

According to national research from Denton House Research, 7 out of 8 people who viewed a house through an estate agent in 2021 were not on the mailing list of that agent before they viewed it.

That means all these Hayes properties, built on a chain builder (as above), will sell yet won’t appear on Rightmove or Zoopla, meaning you will miss out. 

You must get yourself on the mailing list of our estate agency (and other agents if they do this chain building) so you don’t miss out on your next forever home in Hayes. 

If you would like a chat about anything mentioned in this article, feel free to drop me a message or call me.

• Some Hayes landlords face bills of between £11,000 to £14,000 as Michael Gove, the Housing Minister, declared an attack on poor quality private rental homes.

• 857 Hayes (UB3) rental properties will require upgrading. The Government announced in their ‘Levelling Up’ White Paper last week, they plan to introduce a new minimum standard for private rental properties.

• Also, the White Paper wants every landlord in Hayes (3,678 of you) to go on a Landlord Register and proposes the removal of Section 21 no-fault evictions. This could make it more difficult for you to get possession of your Hayes rental property.

• Are these proposed changes another nail in the buy-to-let coffin for Hayes landlords?

On the face of it, yes, it could be seen as another attack on the humble Hayes landlord, having to spend money on their properties and get tangled up with red tape on a register and then having no-fault evictions removed.

Yet, as always, the devil is in the detail…

This ‘Levelling Up Bill’ is a White Paper. White Papers are policy documents created by the existing Government that set out their future proposals for legislation. Many White Papers don’t even make it to the House of Commons to be debated on, and even then, it needs to be voted on by both Houses of Parliament before becoming law. Any changes are at least two or three years away, and that’s assuming it gets debated and subsequently approved.

Many have said the White Paper is supposed to lay out how to resolve the problem of rebalancing the UK economy that is suffering from the highest level of regional inequality than any G8 country. This is a gargantuan challenge…

yet the Levelling Up White Paper reads very much like a shopping list of great ideas without the means to pay for it.

One of the 12 points in the White Paper was focusing on housing, with a plan to introduce a new minimum standard for rental properties, a landlord register and the removal of no-fault evictions (as an aside, there was also a mention of a possible reintroduction of Home Information Packs – remember those from 2009?).

So, what does this mean for the landlords of the 3,678 private rental properties in Hayes (UB3)?

Sub Standard Rental Properties

The proposed changes will mean rental homes in the private sector will have to meet two specific standards that the existing 3,682 social housing homes in Hayes currently need to meet.

The first being called the ‘Decent Homes Standard’ (DHS) and the second, the Housing, Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) evaluation.

Looking at data from the Government, there are 857 private rental properties in Hayes that are considered substandard under these two measures and each one would cost between £11,000 and £14,000 to bring up to the prescribed standard. That means…

the estimated total cost to improve the 857 Hayes properties, that are considered substandard, could be as high as £11,997,636.

All of that would have to come out of the pockets of Hayes landlords!

Yet both systems of standards (DHS & HHSRS) have been slated by many (even by the Government itself).

The DHS criteria for the standard are as follows:

1. It must meet the current statutory minimum standard for housing
2. It must be in a reasonable state of repair
3. It must have reasonably modern facilities and services
4. It must provide a reasonable degree of thermal comfort

Note how the word ‘reasonable’ is used in three of the four points of the DHS. Reasonable is an arbitrary and a very much subjective point of view. It screams loopholes and get out clauses to me.

Looking at the HHSRS, the Government announced just before the pandemic in June 2019 that the HHSRS would be revamped after it was found to be ‘complicated and inefficient to use’.

Putting aside how one measures the standards, it is a simple fact that there are many Hayes rental properties that are substandard. I believe it right the Government have an ambition to halve the number of sub-standard private rentals by 2030. However, would it surprise you that…

in 2006, 46.7% of private rented homes in the UK were classed as substandard and today that has reduced, without any legislation, to 23.3%. One must ask if new legislation is now required?

Also, if you recall in an article I wrote recently (drop me line if you would like me to send it to you), Hayes landlords will be faced with bringing their properties up to an energy rating (EPC) of C between 2026 and 2028 in legislation already announced.

Most of the works to meet that EPC rating requirement will be the same works to meet this new DHS and HHSRS. Also, in that article, I discussed how the Government have suggested that certain allowances will be made for landlords on rental properties that can’t be improved.

So, I think Hayes landlords should sit tight and let the Government shine more light on this in the coming months before any knee jerk reactions are made.

Landlord Register

To be honest, there are several city/borough registers around the UK for landlords. Experience has shown they seem to add an extra level of bureaucracy and red tape. The register would be for every Hayes buy-to-let landlord and rogue landlords would be struck off whilst allowing tenants new redress rights. Another reason to employ the services of a letting agent to sort!

End of No-fault Evictions

Again, I spoke about this a few weeks ago with the proposed removal of Section 21 to evict a tenant (again, if you want a copy, drop me a line). If you recall, I stated that no-fault evictions were removed in Scotland over four years ago and the apocalyptic suggestions it would kill the rental market for Scottish landlords was not forthcoming. Now of course, the Scots strengthened the other grounds to evict a tenant. If the Government strengthen the Section 8 legislation, again, I cannot see this being an issue south of the border. Again, time will tell once the Government put more meat on the bones of the White Paper.

Conclusion

Many of the announcements made in the Levelling Up White Paper are re-hashed proposed legislation that has been on the books for the last couple of years.

This White Paper is not another nail in the coffin of buy-to-let

in Hayes.

Yet, many commentators have cautioned that more landlords with substandard homes will sell up because of these proposed changes, warning the sell up would add to the private rental sector’s shortage of homes, thus pushing up rents.

If that was true, that would increase rental returns on Hayes buy-to-let and attract more Hayes landlords into the sector, wouldn’t it?

But if you don’t agree other Hayes landlords will buy these rental properties that other landlords are selling, who will buy their Hayes properties from them? It will be Hayes renters, who are now able to buy because the price has come down, meaning equilibrium should return to the market.

This is all theoretical and there are shortages/gluts in specific locations. Let us not forget it was 12/18 months ago that rents were dropped by double digit percentage points in the space of a couple of months in the big cities. Those rent drops weren’t anything to do with landlords buying up City Centre rental properties, but demand plummeted with 20 something tenants moving back in with their parents during the first lockdown and the months that followed. Yet, now rents have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels (and more) with the return of tenants to the cities.

In a nutshell, if Hayes landlords do end up selling in their droves (which they won’t), yet if they do, those Hayes properties will

still exist.

Few of them will be left empty because most of them will be bought by other Hayes landlords as they will be attracted to the sector as inflation takes hold whilst others will be bought by first-time buyers.

What goes around, comes around. So, let’s see what happens in the coming months. In the meantime, if you’re a Hayes landlord and you want to discuss anything in this article, please either drop me a line or send me an email.

• Will Hayes OAP homeowners be forced to sell their home as their gas & electric bills are set to double in 2022?
• What can the 2,980 Hayes OAP homeowners do to mitigate this?
• What are their options if they do need to sell? And what will that mean for the Hayes property market as a whole?

The wholesale gas price has tripled in 2021. Even if you aren’t on gas at home, half the UK’s electricity comes from burning gas so, this affects everyone. Even though domestic bills have been protected from the majority of this with the Government’s price cap, energy bills will rise by at least 50% in April. This means the average energy bill will rise by £60 per month in the spring, thus producing a potential cost of living crisis.

Why have gas and electric bills increased so much?

The cost of gas (and indirectly electricity) rose during 2021 due to a number of reasons, and the troubles are worldwide rather than exclusively affecting the UK.

To start with, the winter of 2020 was very cold in Central Europe, which increased demand for gas and used up many European countries’ stored gas supplies, whilst demand for gas also swelled in China and the Far East. On the supply side, many European countries rely on Russia for its gas, yet Russia’s supply of gas was lower than expected.

When will gas and electric prices rise?

The Government have an energy price which is the maximum amount your gas and electricity supplier can charge you. The energy price cap is set by Ofgem every six months, and the next review is this February. Any increases could only be introduced from the 1st of April 2022.

The existing energy price cap is £1,277 (for an average UK home), which was set in the summer of 2021 (and that was a 12% rise on the previous cap). Analysts believe without Government intervention, the February increase will be around 50% on that, meaning the cap will increase to just over £2,000 per annum.

That means there will be a lot of Hayes people that cannot afford the increase in energy prices.

Some have suggested the Government should remove VAT from gas and electricity bills for a year, yet that would only save them around £100 a year – but it’s still £100!

Hayes OAP’s will be one of the hardest hit by these gas

and electricity hikes

For those pensioners who reached state pension age after 2016, their state pension will rise in April by £5.55 per week or £288.60 a year. Considering their energy bills will rise by at least £720 a year, together with the underlying inflation for goods and services rising at 5.4% on top, this will mean many OAP homeowners will have to make a difficult choice.

So, what is the scale of the problem in Hayes?

1 in 11.26 people in Hayes is an OAP

Of the 47,800 population of Hayes, 4,246 of them are 65 years or older, and of those, 2,980 own their own home.

However, as I have discussed several times in the Hayes Property Blog, many of those older Hayes homeowners are still in their original family homes even though their children have flown the nest.

They are living in large 3- and 4-bedroom homes with lots of rooms that require heating, even though they are not being used. To give you an idea of the difference of costs:

• The average Hayes one/two-bedroom home’s energy bills will rise from £795 per year to £1,435 per year.
• The average Hayes three-bedroom home’s energy bills will rise from £1,163 per year to £2,104 per year.
• The average Hayes four-bedroom home’s energy bills will rise from £1,638 per year to £2,936 per year.

Therefore, I predict there will be an uplift in the number of mature homeowners in Hayes moving forward their downsizing plans throughout 2022/3 as they look to reduce their outgoings. The downsizing will also reduce other outgoings like their council tax and building insurance premiums.

Of course, many mature homeowners will make other choices. This could be a great time to look at other forms of heating like ground source heating and solar panels to reduce one’s dependence on energy from the National Grid.

You could ask a local Energy Assessor to perform an energy audit on your home by tasking them for an Energy Performance Certificate. If you need to know the name of a decent Hayes Energy Assessor, drop me a line or pick up the phone.

So, if downsizing is an option, what will that mean for you and the local Hayes property market?

A big issue will be finding a suitable home to move to. We very much have a chicken and egg scenario now as waiting for the right property to come on to the market, before you put your home on the market, will probably mean that your ideal property will sell even before the photographs have been taken of your home.

Yet, many Hayes homeowners are worried if they put their house on the market and it sells, they won’t be able to find another suitable home and thus be homeless? Classic chicken and egg – so what do you do first?

There is a third way of doing this … good old fashioned ‘chain building’. I have many mature Hayes homeowners that are contacting me to move home, yet don’t want to be made homeless. What we do is slowly build a group of people in a chain over many months. It requires a lot of patience to build a chain downwards and upwards around you.

There is no cost to this and no legal commitment to go through. It can take six, even twelve months to build a chain of people who are prepared to wait for the chain to form … yet by playing the long game, everyone gets their next ‘forever home’.

The long-term advantage to everyone else is that a new supply of larger homes will be put onto the market in Hayes. Yet, if you are going to rely on waiting for these properties to appear on Rightmove or Zoopla, you will be sorely disappointed.

According to national research from Denton House Research, 7 out of 8 people who viewed a house through an estate agent in 2021 were not on the mailing list of that agent before they viewed it. That means all these properties built on a chain builder (as above), will be sold and won’t appear on Rightmove or Zoopla, meaning you will miss out.

You have to get yourself on the mailing list of our estate agency (and other agents if they do this chain building) so you don’t miss out on your next forever home in Hayes.

• The average house price in Hayes has increased by 194.8% to £402,500 in the last 20 years, a profit of £265,980

• That means, when adjusted for inflation in those two decades, Hayes house prices have risen in real terms by 122.7%

• What does this mean for existing Hayes homeowners and first-time buyers trying to get on the Hayes property ladder?

Since 2001, UK average house prices have risen by an astonishing 187.2% across the UK, while in London the figure is 247.6%.  

Looking back at the people that bought in those first few years of the new Millennium, few of those buying or selling property in 2001 could have forecast the massive financial impact that their decision then would have on the rest of their lives.

In those years, there have been winners and losers, where some Hayes buyers have made hundreds of thousands of pounds and Hayes renters have paid out tens of thousands of pounds and yet been unable to buy their first home – but life is often not as simple as that, so in this article I wanted to discuss the matter further.

The average house price in Hayes has increased by 194.8% to £402,500 in the last 20 years, a profit of £268,980.

Now of course these are average prices and don’t take inflation into consideration.

Yet even when adjusted for inflation, Hayes house prices have still risen by 122.7% in the last 20 years.

Characteristically, the longer a homeowner has owned their Hayes property, the larger the gain when they sell. Yet most of these profits are never seen by Hayes homeowners. It has never been money in the bank unless you sell up and downsize or move somewhere cheaper. Instead, these gains are re-invested back into the housing market when they buy their next home.

So, whether the gains are banked or tied up in their bricks and mortar, it looks like all the Hayes homeowners are in the driving seat. 

What about all the Hayes first-time buyers, priced out of the market and unable to get on to the property ladder?

Are the young of Hayes losing out again?

Reading the newspapers you would think so, yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact…

It’s 14.8% cheaper today to buy a house

in Hayes compared to 2007

That isn’t a typo!

In 2002, 35.5% of a first-time buyer’s household income went on the mortgage payments. Today, that figure stands at 52.7%, yet in 2007, it was 61.9% … hence why it’s cheaper today!

Of course, for most young Hayes potential first-time buyers, the other largest barrier to home ownership is the matter of raising an adequate deposit.

Rising rents (and future energy prices) won’t help and will in fact make this problem worse, giving ambitious Hayes first-time buyers not much left at the end of the month to save a deposit for their first home. 

With soaring Hayes house prices, this means the amount Hayes renters need to save for their deposit is growing year on year.

For these annoyed renters, there is the unpleasant irony that if they could only get on the Hayes housing ladder, they would find themselves better off. They would spend a lower proportion of their monthly take home pay on keeping a roof over their heads. 

Some people in the press have suggested the older generation, with all the equity tied up in their homes over the last 20 years, should release some of the money and give it to their children or grandchildren to help them on the ladder maybe?

Reports in the press have also described many homeowners in their 60’s (and older) changing their plans to move home. Many were planning to downsize to release the tied-up equity in their home. That equity would either be used to invest in the bank to produce an income for them and/or to help their children (sometimes even grandchildren) on to the property ladder.

Yet with the interest paid by banks and building societies on any lump sum being very low, to many mature homeowners it hardly seems worthwhile making the move to downsize. This means many younger would-be first-time buyers are missing out on help from the Bank of Mum and Dad (or the Bank of Grandad and Grandma) with their deposit.

However, the problems caused by low interest rates could also be their saviour.

Many older homeowners have turned to Equity Release, thus allowing them to get hold of a share of the equity amassed in their property, in exchange for a tax-free lump sum of cash.

Cash that could be used to help with

deposits for their children/grandchildren?

The mature homeowner then stays in their larger family home and helps their family buy a property.

Whilst I am not a mortgage adviser (and you must take proper advice from a qualified mortgage broker), equity release mortgages don’t have end dates and the interest payments are rolled up (until you pass away). This means that there aren’t any monthly payments.

The interest rate you pay is normally fixed for the mortgage and because interest rates are so low, that means the debt shouldn’t balloon up. And should you decide to sell in a few years’ time, you just pay back the capital, redemption fee and the small amount of interest accrued.

Now of course, that does mean there will be less for

your offspring to inherit when you pass away.

Equity release mortgages though have had some bad press recently. In the past they were unregulated and pricey. Yet today, there is more protection for borrowers.

One answer to the growing interest debt is to pay part or all of the monthly mortgage interest charged, yet you must have the income for that.

You also need to take advice on how the equity release will affect your liability for nursing home fees and inheritance tax. Also, if only one person in your home is the owner of the property, if that homeowner dies, the partner who is not on the mortgage (because only owners can go on a mortgage) won’t have any rights to stay in the family home.

Finally, if you are planning to move, don’t just compare the interest rate, but the redemption charge for early repayment – some of them can be very high.

My advice – take professional advice and speak to your family and involve them. Yes, we have all built up some amazing equity in our Hayes homes, and yes, there is potential to help the younger generations with that wealth. Just go in with eyes open and know all the facts, all the pros and all the cons – then decide what is best for you with all that information to hand.

What are your thoughts, as a mature Hayes homeowner or a first-time buyer, on this? It would be good to hear from you.