59 days to find a buyer for your Burgess Hill Property

I had a landlord from Worlds End email me the other day. She said she had been following my blog (the Mid Sussex Property Market Blog) for a while and wanted to pick my brain on when is the best time of the year to sell a property. Trying to calculate the best time to put your property on the market can often seem something akin to witchcraft and, whilst I would agree that there are particular times of the year that can prove more productive than others, there are plenty of factors that need to be taken into consideration.

Even if you are putting your property on the market, you don’t know how long it will take to find a buyer - no crystal ball to help with that one. At the moment, the latest set of figures for all 11 estate agents in Burgess Hill, show the average length of time it takes to find a buyer for any Burgess Hill property is as follows:

Detached                63 days

Semi                      47 days

Terraced                 32 days

Flat                        92 days

Overall average        59 days

If we roll the clock back to January 2016, the overall average time it took to find a buyer (again using data from all of the 11 Burgess Hill Estate Agents) was 72 days.

So, on the face of it, things have improved over the last six months or so. Well, when I looked at the data going back to 2009, and every Spring since then, the average length of time it takes to sell a property drops between January and the Summer months, for it to rise on the run up to Christmas. For example;

Winter 2009 - 156 days       Summer 2009 - 151 days

And in more recent times;

Winter 2013 - 101 days       Summer 2013 - 108 days

Winter 2014 – 93 days         Summer 2014 - 86 days

Winter 2015 -   69 days       Summer 2015 - 79 days

         

Coming back to the present, even if you placed your property on the market today in Burgess Hill, if it takes you on average a little over eight weeks to find a buyer, then you can expect solicitors and the chain to take an additional eight and twelve weeks after that, before you move. It comes down to personal choice as to when you place your property on the market. Children often affect the decision. On one side you might delay putting that for sale board in your front garden so you can move in the summer school holidays, but on the other side, you might want to move sooner to be in the catchment area of a preferred school, in plenty of time for the next academic year.

There are times of the year when it's better to sell, and times when waiting a little longer can pay off in the long run. In a nutshell, I would say this is the way of the seasons;

WHEN THE MARKET?

Spring: Customarily there are more house-buyers as the Daffodils show themselves

Summer: Sellers may miss out on house-buyers being on holiday

Autumn: The enthusiasm for buying homes returns

Winter: Interest diminishes as festive period looms.

What this means to buyers and landlord investors is that they often pick up a bargain in later months of the year, as there is less competition from owner occupiers. So, whilst there are better months to achieve a quicker sale, the only piece of advice I can give to every home  owner and landlord in Burgess Hill, is do the right thing for yourself, do your homework and buy (and sell) with both your head as well as your heart.

Asking prices of Burgess Hill property up 11% in the last year

I had an interesting question the other day from a homeowner in Burgess Hill who asked me the difference between asking prices and values and why it mattered. When it comes to selling property, there must be agreement between the purchaser (buyer) and seller (vendor) for a property sale to take place. The value a buyer applies to a property can massively differ from the value a seller or Mortgage Company places upon it. The seller, the buyer and the mortgage company must find an agreeable value to assign to a property so the sale can proceed. 

In many of my articles about the Burgess Hill property market, I talk about values, i.e. what property in Burgess Hill actually sells for, but I haven’t spoken about asking prices for while. Now asking prices are important as they are one of the four key matters a potential buyer will judge your property on (the others being location, bedrooms and type). Price yourself too high and you will put off buyers. So let’s take a look at the Burgess Hill numbers.

Over the last 12 months asking prices (i.e. the price advertised in the paper and on Rightmove) in Burgess Hill have increased by 11%, taking the average asking price in Burgess Hill to £441,000 (up from £396,500 twelve months ago).

Interestingly though, when we look at, say detached and terraced property, a slightly different picture appears. Twelve months ago, the average asking price for a detached house in Burgess Hill was £586,900 and today its £610,100 (a rise of 4%); whilst over the same 12-month period, the average asking price of a terraced property was £253,000 a year ago, and today its £285,800 (a rise of 13%). 

However, my research shows that the supply of property for sale in Burgess Hill is beginning to increase. In December 2015, there were 86 on the market in Burgess Hill today there are 147 properties on the market (up 71%). This will mean homeowners looking to sell will need to be conscious of how their property compares against others on the Burgess Hill property market. The Burgess Hill property market still has substantial momentum and sufficient demand remains to provoke more modest asking price rises. This noteworthy increase in supply since Christmas is currently providing more choice for buyers and is tempering asking price rises.

And here is the second point to make. Asking prices are one thing, but what a property sells for (i.e. value) is a completely different matter. These are the average prices achieved (i.e. what they sold for or the average value) for property in Burgess Hill over the last 12 months;

•        Overall Average        £309,000

•        Detached                 £433,400

•        Terraced                  £259,200

You can quite clearly see there is a difference between what people are asking for property and what it is selling for. The underlying fundamentals of low interest mortgages and tight supply remain prevalent in the Burgess Hill property market however, the number one lesson has to be this, if you want to sell, be realistic with your pricing.

59.9% of Mid Sussex Tenants are White Collar Middle Class.

With Mid Sussex youngsters not able to buy their own property, my research would suggests the progressively important role the private rented sector has been playing in housing people in need of a roof over their head, especially at a time of increasing affordability problems for first time buyers and growing difficulties faced by social housing providers (local authorities and housing associations) in their ability to secure funding from Westminster and then compete against the likes of the Croudace and Crest Nicholson’s of this world to buy highly priced building land.

Renting isn’t like it was in the 1960’s and 70’s, where tenants couldn’t wait to leave their rack-rent landlords, charging sky-high rents for properties with Second World War wood chip wallpaper, no central heating and drafty windows. Since 1997 with the introduction of buy to let mortgages and a new breed of Mid Sussex landlord, the private rented sector in Mid Sussex has offered increasingly high quality accommodation for younger Mid Sussex households. 

So whilst I knew in my own mind that the type and class of tenant has improved over the last 20 years, I had nothing to back that up; until now. According to some detailed statistics from Durham University just released, for the Mid Sussex District Council area, the current situation regarding social status of tenants shows some very interesting points. Using the well-known Demographic ABC1 grade classifications which refers to the social grade definitions (which describe, measure and classify people of different social grade and income and earnings levels, for market research, social commentary, lifestyle statistics, and statistical research and analysis) this is what I found out. 

Of the 11,201 tenants who live in a private rented property in the Mid Sussex District Council area, 24.62% (or 2,758) of those tenants are classified in the AB category (AB Category being Higher and intermediate managerial / administrative / professional occupations), compared to 34.49% owner occupiers who own their property without a mortgage or 4.49% who rent their property from the local authority. Fascinating don’t you think? 

Looking at the C1’s (C1’s being the Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial / administrative / professional occupations), of the already mentioned 11,201 tenants in the area, an impressive 3,952 of them are considered to be in the C1 category (or 35.28%). Again, when compared with the owner occupiers who own their property without a mortgage, that figure stands at 35.34% and 21.64% who rent their property from the local authority.  So, if we use the conventional measurements recorded by the white-collar “ABC1” i.e. middle class, this means 59.91% of tenants are considered middle class in Mid Sussex.

I could go through all of the social categories through to ‘E’, but I humbly don’t want to bore you with too many numbers. The fact is that private tenants are moving up the social ladder and whilst back in the 1960’s and 70’s, the private rented sector in Mid Sussex (and the rest of the UK) has customarily been viewed as a temporary tenure for 20 somethings before they bought a property, the increase in renting in Mid Sussex, which I have talked about many times in the Mid Sussex Property Market Blog may be a reflection of increasing difficulty for this group in accessing other tenures, but may also be a reflection that people nowadays choose to rent long term instead?

Mid Sussex Landlords need to be aware that tenants now demand more from their properties, the agent and their landlord and whilst affordability for first-time buyers and tighter controls on lending may mean that potential first-time buyers are in the private rented sector for longer, they will still pay ‘top dollar’ rent for a ‘top dollar’ property.

The Mid Sussex Property Market and The Euro 2016 Football Tournament.

With the Referendum on EU membership out of the way, our households can concentrate on something European that doesn’t involve party political broadcasts or politician’s treating us all like children – the Euro 2016 Football Tournament. The Mid Sussex area is home to all different backgrounds and nationalities so if you're not lucky enough to be jetting off to France for the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament, have no fear! For a bit of fun (although there is a serious side to this – you know there would be with me!) I have taken a look at which European people live in Mid Sussex so I know who to soak up the best atmosphere with!

During my research some interesting numbers appear. Going into the Euro 2016 tournament, France were 3/1 favourite’s, then Germany 7/2, third Spain 11/2, then England 9/1, Italy 16/1, Poland 50/1, Romania and Wales at 100/1, Ireland at 150/1 and Northern Ireland 500/1.

Of the 105,781 residents of the Mid Sussex Constituency for Westminster, of the Home Nations going into the competition, 91,856 of them are from England, 1,016 from Wales, 346 from Northern Ireland and 742 from Ireland, although I do feel sorry for the 1,717 Scots who didn’t get into the finals. Now interestingly, looking at the Mainland Europeans residents in the Mid Sussex Constituency, it might not surprise you that they make up 3.01% of the population as a whole in the Westminster area.

However, even more fascinating, of those 3.01% European’s residents, 1.83% are from Western Europe because EU residents from Eastern Europe - i.e. the Accession Countries to the EU between 2003 to 2007 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania) - only make up 1.18% of the population of the Mid Sussex Constituency.

Broken down into the relevant football teams, there are in the Mid Sussex Constituency;  

308 French people

574 Germans

255 Italians

189 Spanish

460 Poles

127 Romanians.

But what does this have to do with the Mid Sussex property market? Quite a lot in fact. Many of these European people were economic migrants, especially those from Eastern Europe. A lot of people’s concerns over migration are exaggerated as this EU migration has acted to fill gaps in skills and labour supply during growth periods of the mid 2000’s and subsequently over the last five years in Mid Sussex, EU migrants have done little to displace native workers but do the jobs us Brits don’t often want to do. There is no preferential treatment for council housing in Mid Sussex, so EU migrants have in fact increased demand for privately rented accommodation in Mid Sussex. 

This has meant, as demand for housing in Mid Sussex has remained strong, landlords have continued to buy properties to rent out to keep up with this demand. Therefore, the value of every homeowner’s property in Mid Sussex has been kept high because of the demand from these buying starter homes to rent out, releasing existing homeowners to go up the property ladder – benefiting everyone in the chain

However, rents have remained relatively subdued; in Burgess Hill rents are only 20.1% higher than they were in 2005, not bad when you consider we have had 38.52% inflation in the UK economy as a whole over the same 11 years.

EU migration has meant existing homeowners, landlords and the economy as a whole in Mid Sussex (and the UK) have benefitted from better economic conditions, property prices not slumping whilst rents have been kept in check by wage inflation. Fingers crossed for the 1,016 Mid Sussex Welsh residents who will be cheering on Wales tomorrow night!