Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard Property Blog

3 years after the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations came into force I am constantly surprised at the number of properties that do not comply, risking the landlords a £5000 fine and the safety of their tenants.

Belvoir Lettings Dunstable win Gold again from AllAgents

The new mandatory licensing of HMOs has been extended so that smaller properties (i.e. any storey height) that house five or more people in two or more separate households will also require a licence.

I have taken the last few weeks to assess what is currently happening in the UK housing market and economy at the moment and have decided it is more important and relevant to give landlords advice and knowledge on their investments

Leighton Buzzard property values and transactions continue to be sluggish, and the monthly peaks and troughs of house prices and properties changing hands doesn’t mask the deficiency of suitable realistically priced property coming onto the Leighton Buzzard property market.

The country needs a diversified and fluid property market to allow the economy as whole to grow and flourish ... which in turn will be a greater influence on whether prices go up or down in the long term. I am sure every homeowner or landlord in Dunstable & Leighton Buzzard doesn’t want another housing crisis like we had in 1974, 1988 and most recently in 2008

It can be seen that in 2016, 2.38 babies had been born in Central Bedfordshire for every home that had been built in the five years to the end of 2016 (the most up to date data). Interestingly, that ratio nationally was 2.9 babies to every home built in the ‘50s and 2.4 in the ‘70s.

Assuming there is one wage earner in the house, the chances of a Dunstable & Leighton Buzzard working family being able to afford to buy their own home, when it’s over eleven times their annual salary, is very slim indeed. The existing affordability crisis of people wanting to buy their own home is the unavoidable outcome of the decade on decade failure to build enough homes to keep up with demand

With top of the range Bank and Building Society Savings Accounts only reaching 1.5% a year, the rollercoaster ride of Crypto currency and the yo-yoing of the Stock Market, the simple fact is, with rental yields in Leighton Buzzard far outstripping current savings rates