This isn’t a typo but of the 4037 households in Glastonbury, 1653 or 40.94% don’t just have one spare bedroom, but at least two. And it’s this topic I want to cover this week because this could be part of the cure for Glastonbury’s housing crisis.

The fundamental problem of the Glastonbury housing ‘crisis’ is the fact that the supply of homes to live in has not historically met demand, increasing property values (and in turn rents), thus ensuring home ownership becomes an unattainable ambition for the 20-something’s of Glastonbury. I have noted this trend in recent years.

It’s obvious that either demand needs to drop or supply needs to rise to stop this trend getting worse for generations to come.

The government’s plans to build 200,000 starter homes for first-time-buyers under 40 with a minimum 20% discount price are honourable. However, the building of starter homes on current building sites, where new home builders already have to build a certain number of affordable ‘starter’ homes under a different scheme, does not increase the stock of new ‘starter’ homes; It simply replaces one affordable scheme with another.

One option that could help resolve the housing crisis is if the Government looked closer to home, concentrating on matching households with the appropriately-sized home.

In Glastonbury, 1236 or 30.51% of households have one spare bedroom.

In Glastonbury St. Benedict’s ward 13.68% of households are overcrowded (i.e. there are more people than bedrooms in the property).

The 1236 households that have one spare bedroom probably do not consider this a luxury.

I’m beginning to realise there is the spare capacity in the Glastonbury housing market.

Principally, I will concentrate on the group that makes up the bulk of this category, the owner-occupiers of large properties in various BA6 postcodes in their 60’s and 70’s, where the kids flew the nest back in the 80’s and 90’s.

They call it ‘downsizing’, when you sell a big property, where the extra bedrooms are no longer required, to move into a smaller and usually less expensive property.

However, there are many reasons why these individuals do not downsize.

These people have lived in the same house for 30, 40 and even 50 years, and as one matures in life, many people do not want to depart from what they see as the family home.

Much time has been invested in making friends in the area and it’s nice to have all those rooms in case every grandchild decided to visit, at the same time, and they brought their friends. Glastonbury property prices are also buoyant, and owner-occupiers feel secure in this rising asset which many want to leave in its full potential value to their children in future.

But on a more serious note, more and more people are beginning to downsize earlier, but in my opinion as an experienced letting agent in Glastonbury, not at a fast enough rate.

As the years go by, we will have a situation where younger families will be living in smaller and smaller houses, whilst all the large houses have 70-something empty-nesters rattling around them.

I believe the Government should put more weight behind downsizing, because with the right incentives, many could be encouraged to think again and make the spare rooms available. And it would have to be incentives, as the using the stick (instead of the carrot) would be political suicide for any party, especially the Tory’s.

One option is to allow retired downsizers not to pay stamp duty on the new property, saving them thousands of pounds and another for the planners to work with builders to build not only starter homes for under 40’s, but also have housing built just for retired downsizers.

Or is this one step too far in ‘social engineering’?

The fact is that not enough properties are being built in Glastonbury, and with population rising at a faster rate, something needs to be done.

However, I believe the Glastonbury population (and in fact the whole of the UK) is slowly turning into a more European model of house ownership. in Europe, most people rent in their 20’s and 30’s, only buying in their 40’s and 50’s, when they inherit money from the sale of their late parent’s property.

That works particularly well in Germany and I can’t see why it can’t work here.

In the meantime, there is an opportunity in the coming 20 years for people to supplement their pension by buying smaller properties to rent out, as that is where the demand will be in the next few decades in Glastonbury.

About Tom Morgan

Founder of Jungle Property the multi award-winning letting agent based in Glastonbury, Somerset. I am passionate about property and Glastonbury and about providing the very best advice to anyone who wants the best return on a buy-to-let property investment. For an open and brutally honest opinion on anything in the Glastonbury property market please contact me via tom.morgan@jungleproperty.co.uk

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