The argument of migration and what it does, or doesn’t do,
for the country’s economic wellbeing is something that has been hotly contested
over the last few years. In my article today, I want to talk about what it has
done for the Stoke on Trent Property market.
Before we look at Stoke on Trent though, let us look at some
interesting figures for the country as a whole. Between 2001 and 2011, 971,144 EU
citizens came to the UK to live and of those, 171,164 of them (17.68%) have
bought their own home. It might surprise people that only 5.07% of EU migrants
managed to secure a council house. However, 676,091 (69.62%) of them went into
the private rental sector. This increase
in population from the EU has, no doubt, added great stress to the UK housing
market.
Looking at the figures, the housing market as a whole is undoubtedly
affected by migration but it has been the private rented housing sector,
especially in those areas where migrants come together, that is affected the
most. Indeed, I have seen that many EU
migrants often compete for such housing not with UK tenants but with other EU migrants.
In 2001, 3.68 million rented a property from a landlord in the UK. Ten years later in 2011, whilst EU migration
added an additional 676,091 people renting a property from a landlord, there
were actually an additional 4.14 million people who became tenants and were not
EU migrants, but predominately British!
As a landlord, it is really important to gauge the potential
demand for your rental property, especially if you are a landlord who buys
property in areas popular with the Eastern European EU migrants. To gauge the level of EU migration (and thus
demand), one of the best ways to calculate the growth of migrants is to
calculate the number of people who ask for a National Insurance number (which
EU members are able to obtain).
In Stoke on Trent, migration has risen over the last few
years. For example, in 2008 there were 1,873 migrant national Insurance cards
(NIC) issued and the year after in 2009, 1,738 NIC cards were issued. However,
in 2014, this had increased to 2,291 NIC’s. However, if the pattern of other
migrations since WW2 continues, over time there will be an increasing demand
for owner occupied property, which may affect the market in certain areas of
high migrant concentration. On the other hand, over time some households move
into the larger housing market, reducing concentrations and pressures.
In essence, migration has affected the Stoke on Trent
property market; it couldn’t fail to because of the additional 19.040 working
age migrants that have moved into the Stoke on Trent area since 2005. However, it
has not been the main influence on the market. Property values in Stoke on
Trent today are 10.9% lower than they were in 2005. According to the Office of
National Statistics, rents for tenants in the West Midlands have only grown on
average by 0.75% a year since 2005 .... I would say if it wasn’t for the
migrants, we would be in a far worse position when it came to the Stoke on
Trent property market. This was backed up by the then Home Secretary Theresa May
back in 2012 - more than a third of all new housing demand in Britain is caused
by inward migration and there is evidence that without the demand caused by
such immigration, house prices would be 10% lower over a 20 year period.
If you want to know more about the Stoke on Trent property
market, then for more articles like this, please visit the Stoke on Trent
Property Blog http://stokeontrentproperty.blogspot.co.uk/
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