Change in attitudes towards renting
Posted on 07. Jan, 2010 by Matthew Carter in The HomeLet blog
The Halifax has released figures showing that house prices in December 2009 were 1.1% higher than house prices in December 2008. According to the Halifax figures this is the first annual rise since March 2008.
The increase in house prices has been driven by a shortage in the number of properties being put on the sales market. Many potential sellers took their properties off the market in 2009 because of the lower house prices and instead chose to rent their properties out. With prices now increasing, many of the once reluctant landlords could decide to move back to the sales market – This could cause rental stock levels to decrease and cause rents to increase.
John Boyle, HomeLet Managing Director commented ‘Uncertainty in the housing market has caused many homeowners to change their attitudes towards home ownership. Many people now believe that they would have more freedom if they rented from a landlord rather than owning a house.
‘According to research from Unbiased.co.uk, more than 1.75 million homeowners would now consider renting rather than keeping the homes they own. I believe that rents will fluctuate in 2010 but that opportunity for both landlords and letting agents will only increase in the coming years, as more people look to rented accommodation as a long term solution.’
Monty
Jan 19th, 2010
This is exactly what I predicted a while back – now I’m quids in!
Simon
Feb 19th, 2010
This is an interesting post and goes along with my current thinking on the housing and property market.
If you think about how the property market currently works for the average person, you rent your first house, save for a house to buy.
Then you pay of the mortgage for 25 years and pour capital into the building.
Late in your retirement you remortgage and realise the capital (and growth) in the property which begs the question, why own the home in the first place?
In big cities such as London, I think we are already seeing this. More and more people are renting to give themselves flexibility and it will probably end up much like New York where renting is considered the norm and owning property is an expensive past time for the elite.
I’ll be looking out for any research on this published in the next 12 months as I really believe that the UK will see a shift in home ownership attitude.