Business Breakfast: House prices stabilise, data suggest

The Stray Ferret Business Club’s next meeting is a breakfast event on Thursday, October 26 at Banyan in Harrogate from 8am to 10am. 

The Business Club provides monthly opportunities to network, make new connections and hear local success stories. Get your tickets by clicking or tapping here.

After a period of deflation, the housing market showed modest signs of stabilisation this month, the latest data from Rightmove suggest.

Property asking prices edged upwards by an average of £1,950 or 0.5% this month, but Yorkshire and the Humber saw a slightly a bigger increase of 0.6%.

This means the average asking price in Yorkshire and the Humber now stands at £248,000, which is a 1.8% increase on this time last year.

However, the national monthly increase of 0.5% is the smallest average asking price increase at this time of year since 2008, and well below the historic norm in October of 1.4%. The number of sales agreed is also 17% below this time last year, as those sellers who are struggling to adjust their price expectations to match current activity levels are finding their homes left on the shelf.

Rightmove said the number of buyers enquiring for each available home for sale is 8% higher than in the more normal, and pre-Covid, 2019 market. It also revealed that a property that receives its first buyer enquiry on the first day of marketing, rather than after two weeks, is 60% more likely to find a buyer.

Patrick McCutcheon, head of residential at Dacre, Son & Hartley, which has 20 offices across Yorkshire, including branches in Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge, said:

“Accurate pricing is vitally important in the current market to generate immediate momentum when launching a property to market. There are buyers waiting for the right homes to come onto the market, but most will steer clear of anything overpriced.

“Although it can be tempting for sellers to price high initially on the off chance there’s a buyer waiting in the wings, and then reduce the price later when it doesn’t sell, this can be a risky strategy in the current market.”

Independent school in charity tie-up

Families living in poverty across Yorkshire will benefit from a new charity link-up after pupils at Ashville Prep School in Harrogate chose Zarach as their charity for the year.

Zarach delivers beds and basic provisions to children living in poverty and was set up by Leeds primary school teacher Bex Wilson after she found that some of the children she taught didn’t have a bed to sleep in.

Photo of pupils at Ashville Prep School, who have chosen to raise money for charity Zarach over the coming year.

Pupils at Ashville Prep School donated food at their harvest festival service.

Phil Soutar, Head of Ashville Prep School, said:

“The new link-up reflects Ashville’s values of openness, respect for others and a sense of social responsibility. It is not just about raising money or gifting goods for this great charity, it’s also about raising awareness about the daily hardship faced by people in our community.

“We’re immensely proud of the thoughtfulness and empathy shown by our pupils, as we explore more ways in which we can help others and give back to our community.”

The partnership got off to a successful start at the prep school’s harvest festival service, and the Prep School Charity Club will continue to raise money for Zarach for the remainder of the academic year, helping to pay for “bed bundles” which include a mattress, pillow, duvet, pyjamas, sheets, toothpaste and other sanitary and bathroom products.

Last year, the Prep School Charity Club raised more than £2,500 for Guide Dogs.

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Harrogate house prices buoyant, says property expert Kempston Parkes

This story is sponsored by Kempston Parkes.

House prices may plummet elsewhere, but in Harrogate they’ll remain buoyant, the town’s foremost chartered surveyor has said. 

Andrew Kempston-Parkes was speaking as one of the biggest national lenders, Nationwide, revealed that UK house prices fell for the fifth consecutive month in January. He said: 

“I’ve seen four booms and crashes in my career, and what I know about Harrogate is that when that happens, we’re affected the least.

“Harrogate gets back to its highest values quicker than anywhere outside London. We’re very resilient. 

“There might be a contraction across England and Wales over the next 12 months, but it will be relatively shallow, at just 2 to 3%, and here there’ll be no contraction at all.” 

Nationwide also warned that “strong economic headwinds” made it unlikely that sales figures would improve soon, meaning it would be “hard for the market to regain much momentum in the near term”. 

Mr Kempston-Parkes, who has more than 25 years’ experience in the property industry, said other market indicators told a different story:

“If they were concerned, they wouldn’t be offering 95% loan-to-value mortgages.” 

January’s Rightmove data, for example, showed a slight increase in house prices nationally, and lending institutions have done little to tighten availability of loans. 

Several factors weigh in Harrogate’s favour according to Mr Kempston-Parkes, including its proximity to Leeds and York, its high levels of employment, the clean environment, good schools, and even custom from the American base at Menwith Hill. He said:  

“Harrogate and its environs are still a destination place – people come to live in a spa town in a rural area. Communications are excellent – there are six trains a day to King’s Cross. 

“I had a client just yesterday from London who is moving up here to work from home three times a week and stay a couple of nights in London. There are still a lot of people wanting to live here. Half our clients are from outside the town. 

“My experience tells me that if there’s any correction here it’ll be mild and we’ll recover more quickly and better than anywhere else. The property market will remain strong.” 

Mr Kempston-Parkes earned his professional qualifications form the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in 1997, and founded Kempston-Parkes Chartered Surveyors in 2011. It now employs 14 people from its offices in central Harrogate. 

Find out more:

Kempston-Parkes Chartered Surveyors provide surveys and valuations for all purposes, including purchase, inheritance tax, capital gains tax, matrimonial assessments, boundary disputes and Land Registry plans. 


For more information, go to www.kempston-parkes.co.uk, or for a confidential conversation about your requirements, call 01423 789111.

 

Harrogate district house prices fall £6,000 on last month

Average house prices in the Harrogate district fell by £6,000 in a month, according to latest government figures.

Data released by the Land Registry shows that from April to May the average price of a property dropped from £332,641 to £326,123.

However, the figures also reveal that prices have increased year on year.

Since May 2021, the average cost of a property has increased by 7.4%. Buyers could purchase a house for £303,528 last year.

By comparison, a property in Leeds could be bought for £229,139 in May this year.

The number is also a drop on last month by £604.

Average house price increased by 13%

The average cost of a home in the Harrogate district is slightly above that for the country.

Across England, latest figures show that the average price is £303,278.

This is up 13.1% on May last year.

In a statement, the Land Registry said:

“England house prices grew by 13.1% in the year to May 2022, up from 11.6% in April 2022. England house prices were growing faster than the UK annual rate of 12.8% in the year to May 2022.

“The South West was the fastest growing region with annual growth of 16.9% in the year to May 2022. The lowest annual growth was in London, where prices increased by 8.2% over the year to May 2022.”

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Harrogate returns to list of UK’s best places to live

The Sunday Times has identified Harrogate as one of the best places to live in the UK.

The newspaper’s annual Best Places to Live list, published today, names the town as one of nine places in the north and north-east of England, and 70 nationally, which are among the most desirable.

Judges cited the town’s schools, parks, shops, cafes and restaurants as among its attractions, describing it as “all the fun and fresh air of Yorkshire without any of the gritty bits”.

They listed an average house price of £390,000, which they said had risen by 20% in the last two years.

The Times and Sunday Times property editor Helen Davies, one of the list’s judges, said:

“The Sunday Times Best Places to Live list is necessarily subjective. Leave it just to statistics and you will never capture the spirit of a place.

“For that, you need to visit to take into account that ‘you have to be here’ feeling. Is the pub dog-friendly, for example? Can you live car-free? What are the schools and houses like? Is it multicultural and multigenerational, and can it offer a good way of life to lots of different sorts of people? 

“Ten years ago, when we launched the inaugural list, London’s gravitational pull was strong, the WFH [working-from-home] revolution had not yet reached our doorstep and high streets were stacked with chains. How times have changed — and how welcome that change is.”

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Ilkley has topped the Sunday Times Best Places to Live list for 2022, though Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire was named as the best place to live in the north and north-east of England.

Also on the list for the region were Leeds City Centre, Cawthorne in South Yorkshire, Hovingham and Great Ayton in North Yorkshire, Tynemouth in Tyne and Wear, and Morpeth in Northumberland.

Harrogate last appeared on the list in 2016. In 2020, Ripon was featured, while last year Masham was singled out as one of the top places to live.

Property website Rightmove has frequently listed Harrogate as one of the happiest places to live in the UK.

More dubiously, a BBC Two programme named it as the country’s “porn capital” in 2010, with more people browsing for explicit content than anywhere else. Three years earlier, it was identified as the second-worst place for problematic drinking in a study conducted by the North West Health Observatory at the Centre for Public Health.

Harrogate ranked most expensive place in Yorkshire for first-time buyers

Harrogate has been ranked as the most expensive place for first time buyers in Yorkshire in a survey published today.

The survey shows homes in Harrogate typically cost £401,747 compared to the national average of £287,830.

With residents typically earning £34,634 a year, a couple who’d saved a 15 per cent deposit would need to borrow 4.93 times their salary for a mid-market home.

This ranks Harrogate as the 21st least affordable place in the UK in a list of 100 locations analysed by online mortgage broker Mojo Mortgages.

The top 20 most expensive towns and cities are all in or around the south of England, apart from Stratford-upon-Avon in 18th. Bath is the most expensive place, followed by Oxford and London.

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The survey ranks York (4.7), Wakefield (3.81) and Leeds (3.56) as the next least affordable locations in Yorkshire after Harrogate.

Hull is the UK’s most affordable location, with 2.03 of a couple’s average income multiple required, followed by Bradford (2.35) and Barnsley (2.59).

The full research is available here.

 

Harrogate house prices soar in just one year

The average price of a house in the Borough of Harrogate has increased by more than £28,000 in the course of the past year, according to the Land Registry.

This is a 5% rise, which is lower than the national average. The Office of National Statistics reported that house prices in the UK had risen by an average of 10.2% over the year to March 2021.

Demand has also shifted more towards spacious properties, with estate agents reporting an unprecedented shortage of detached family homes.

The trend can be attributed towards housebuyers’ changing priorities over lockdown and more people starting families.

However, certain factors affect the statistics and mean that they may not paint an accurate picture of the whole year.

The stamp duty land tax holiday on properties worth up to £500,000 is set to end on June 30, which will most likely reduce housing demand in later in the year.

Estate agents said that, anecdotally, there has been a post-vaccination rush for some people who now feel more comfortable attending house viewings and going through the moving process.

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Charles Myring of Myrings Estate Agents summed up how the pandemic has changed the housing market in the borough:

“Stock levels in Harrogate were so depressed during the lockdowns, especially on certain properties (bigger family houses with good outdoor space/south-facing gardens/garages etc), which meant there wasn’t always enough quality stock available to buy and to encourage more people into the market.

“As a consequence prices started to edge up every month.”

The Harrogate borough encompasses the city of Ripon and a number of small towns including Boroughbridge and Knaresborough.

David Waddington of Linley and Simpson projected the average price rise to be even higher, at somewhere between 1% and 2% each month.

He agreed that the rise in demand for housing in the borough was also mostly related to covid:

“Harrogate became particularly desirable over lockdown as people realised they no longer had to go into the office and live in suburban areas.

“More people are looking to live in semi-rural areas, because of a subliminal need for space as a result of isolation.”

However he urged first-time buyers and those with mortgages not to give up hope, as the latest iteration of the Help to Buy scheme is still helping people with smaller deposits to take the first step on to the housing ladder.

 

 

House prices in North Yorkshire increase by 22.8% in a decade

House prices in North Yorkshire have increased by 22.8% over the last 10 years, according to new research.

A study by The Search Partnership, which tracks property prices in six areas in the county, found that the trend was consistent with areas such as London and the Home Counties.

The research analyses the average price paid per square foot, as recorded by the Land Registry, in Boroughbridge, Harrogate, Thirsk, Wetherby, Ripon and Bedale.

Toby Milbank, director at The Search Partnership, said the increase was on average about 2.28% per year.  Mr Milbank said the company expected to see high market activity as the lockdown eases. He said:

“At the end of the last lockdown, we saw frenetic activity in the housing and land markets.

“With the roadmap to the end of the current lockdown coinciding with the Spring and Summer market, we are expecting a similar period of high activity. Buyers currently have very low levels of stock to choose from and are cash rich, with little else to spend their savings on.

“Banks are offering 90% and even 95% mortgages, which will fuel the lower end of the market in particular. As a result of these factors, we are predicting higher rates of price growth than in previous years and an increase in average house prices of 3% to 4% in 2021 seems likely.”

Research by The Search Partnership includes properties in Harrogate, Ripon and Boroughbridge.

Research by The Search Partnership includes properties in Harrogate, Ripon and Boroughbridge.

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David Waddington, director of land and new homes at Linley and Simpson, said quality of life and rural areas was among the key factors for people buying property in the county.

He said:

“North Yorkshire has retained an affluence that is more indicative to the south than the north.

“Harrogate itself has retained a strong appeal for those wanting everything on their doorstep.”

Mr Waddington said the HG3 postcode in Harrogate was a popular location. He added that a lot of buyers moving to Yorkshire were from the south of England.