Locks Heath is already in the clutches of a population crisis that has now started to affect the quality of life of those living in Locks Heath. There are simply not enough homes in Locks Heath to house the greater number of people wanting to live in the suburb. The burden on public services is almost at breaking point with many parents unable to send their child to their first choice of primary or secondary school and the chances of getting a decent Dentist or GP Doctor Surgery next to nil.

Let’s look at real numbers with the housing issue in Locks Heath. To start with, the UK has roughly 1,065 people per square mile – the second highest in Europe. The total area of Locks Heath, Warsash and Whiteley itself is 6.578 square miles and there are 43,300 Locks Heath, Warsash and Whiteley residents, meaning…

6,500 people live in each square mile of Locks Heath, Warsash and Whiteley, it is no wonder we appear to be bursting at the seams! 

… but yet again, newspapers, politicians and property market bloggers quote big numbers to sell more newspapers, get elected or get people to read their blog (I recognise the irony!).  A square mile is enormous, so the numbers look correspondingly large (and headline grabbing). Most people reading this will know what an ‘acre’ is, but those younger readers who don’t, it is an imperial unit of measurement for land and it is approximately 63 metres square.

In Locks Heath, Warsash and Whiteley, only 9.39 people live in every acre… not as headline grabbing, but a lot closer to home and relative to everyday life, and if I am being honest, a figure that doesn’t seem that bad.

Yet, the issue at hand is, we need more homes building. In 2007, Tony Blair set a target that 240,000 homes a year needed to be built to keep up with the population growth, whilst the Tory’s new target since 2010 was a more modest 200,000 a year. However, since 2010, as a country, we have only been building between 140,000 and 150,000 houses a year. So where are we going to build these homes… because we have no space!  Or do we?

Well, let me tell you this fascinating piece of information I found out recently in an official Government report. Looking specifically at England (as it is the most densely populated country of the Union), all the 20 million English homes cover only 1.1% of its land mass. That is not a typo, only one point one per cent (1.1%) of land in England is covered by residential property. In more detail, of all the land in the Country:

• Residential Houses and Flats 1%
• Gardens 4.3%
• Shops and Offices 0.7%
• Highways (Roads and Paths) 2.3%
• Railways 0.1%
• Water(Rivers /Reservoirs) 6%
• Industry,Military and other uses 1.4%

… leaving 88.5% as Open Countryside (and if you think about it, add to that the gardens, which are green spaces, and the country is 92.8% greenspace)

As a country, we have plenty of space to build more homes for the younger generation and the five million more homes needed in the next 20 years would use only 0.25% of the country’s land.  Now I am not advocating building massive housing estates and 20 storey concrete and glass apartment blocks next to local beauty spots such as nearby Titchfield Haven National Nature Reserve or Titchfield Abbey, but with some clever planning and joined up thinking, we really do need to think outside the box when it comes to how we are going to build and house our children and our children’s children in the coming 50 years in Locks Heath. If anyone has their own ideas, I would love to hear from you.

In the meantime, if you would like to read other articles about Locks Heath Property Market, please visit the Locks Heath Property Blog www.thelocksheathpropertyblog.co.uk.

The orthodox way of classifying property in the UK is to look at the number of bedrooms rather than its size in square metres (although now we are leaving the EU – I wonder if we can go back to feet and inches?). It seems that homeowners and tenants are happy to pay for more space. It’s quite obvious, the more bedrooms a house or apartment has, the bigger it is likely to be. The reason being not only the actual additional bedroom space, but the properties with more bedrooms tend to have larger / more reception (living) rooms. However, if you think about it, this isn’t so astonishing given that properties with more bedrooms would typically accommodate more people and therefore require larger reception rooms.

In today’s Locks Heath property market, the Locks Heath homeowners and Locks Heath landlords I talk to are always asking me which attributes and features are likely to make their property comparatively more attractive and which ones may detract from the price. Over time, buyers’ and tenants’ wants and needs have changed. In Locks Heath, location is still the No. 1 factor affecting the value of property, and a property in the most sought after neighbourhoods, say Warsash, can command a higher price than a similar house in an ‘average’ area.  However, after location, the next characteristic that has a significant influence on the desirability, and thus price, of property is the number of bedrooms and the type (i.e. Detached/ Semi/Terraced/Flat).

In previous articles, I have analysed the Locks Heath housing stock into bedrooms and type of property, but never before now have I cross-referenced type against bedrooms. These figures for the Fareham Borough Council area make fascinating reading. It shows 87.8% of all properties in the area have 3 or more bedrooms

I was genuinely surprised at the low numbers of one and two bed properties, especially 2 bed semi detached houses, especially as tenants like the smaller one and two bed properties in Locks Heath. You see, it might interest the homeowners and landlords of Locks Heath, that there has been a change in the numbers of properties on the market and the split in bedrooms on the market over the last 12 months

• 12 months ago, 38 one bed properties were for sale in Locks Heath, today 21, a drop of 45%
• 12 months ago, 99 two bed properties were for sale in Locks Heath, today 90, a drop of 9%
• 12 months ago, 83 three bed properties were for sale in Locks Heath, today 81, a drop of 2%
• 12 months ago, 87 four bed properties were for sale in Locks Heath, today 101, a rise of 16%
• 12 months ago, 49 five + bed properties were for sale in Locks Heath, today 37, drop of 24%

For several years Locks Heath buy-to-let investors have been the only buyers at the lower end (starter homes) of the market, as they have been enticed by high tenant demand and attractive returns. Some Locks Heath landlords believe their window of opportunity has started to close with the new tax regime for landlords, whilst it already appears to be opening wider for first-time buyers. This is great news for first time buyers, but one final note for Locks Heath landlords – all is not lost, you can still pick up bargains, you just need to be a lot more savvy and do your homework. One source of such information with articles like this is the Locks Heath Property Blog – http://www.thelocksheathpropertyblog.co.uk.