West Hampstead's Restless Homeowners: The 7 Year 49 Week Itch in the West Hampstead Housing Market

There are 28.4m households in Britain, of which 17,693,200 are owned, worth a total of £5,127,807,837,600 (£5.1 trillion). When you add all the private rented homes and council houses, that figure reaches just over £8.5 trillion!

Over the last six years, 76,669 UK properties have sold each month, meaning the average British homeowner moves every 16 years and 7 months.

This data disproves a standard theory that British neighbourhoods are becoming more fleeting and transitory. On the face of it, they show that once you have bought a property you can call home, there isn’t much motivation to move again.

So, are fewer people moving home?

Could it be attributed to a sense of contentment or indifference to moving home?

While we might love our home in West Hampstead, most of you (including myself) still want to 'better ourselves' with a bigger house, better area, etc, which typically requires us to climb the West Hampstead property ladder.

Yet, with West Hampstead house prices having risen by 723% since 1995, the cost of going up the next rung on the West Hampstead property ladder is prohibitive.

Everyone remembers the 1980s when we had a buoyant booming property market as a backcloth; British homeowners moved home every eight or nine years; so now, with the average at just over 16 years, this means each British homeowner moving around two or three times in their adult homeownership lifetime. Maybe we should all rename our homes ‘Dun-Roamin’! Or does it? 

We have all heard the phrase, “lies, damn lies and statistics”.

The statistics mentioned above conceal some astounding features of the British property market. When British homeowners enter their late 50s and early 60s, their inclination to move home drops tremendously. The average length of time a homeowner without a mortgage moves home is 23 years and 3 months (and around seven out of ten outright homeowners, i.e. without a mortgage, are 65 years old or older). 

Yet, British homeowners (with a mortgage) move on average every 9 years and 11 weeks.

So, whilst I cannot determine who has a mortgage and who doesn't, I can look at how quickly people move home in West Hampstead. I have looked at the last 40 property sales in West Hampstead and found some interesting findings.

The average West Hampstead homeowner moves on average every 13 years and 18 weeks.

Remember, the UK average is every 16 years and 7 months. Yet it gets fascinating when we delve deeper into that stat.

There seems to be a two-speed (even three-speed) West Hampstead property market (remember in the title I said 7 years and 49 weeks).

To start, having looked at the last 40 West Hampstead property sales I then put them in order of how long they had been in that home before they moved, with the fastest first and slowest at the end.

When we look at the 25% quickest home movers in West Hampstead (i.e. 1^st to 10^th) and then the next slice (the 11^th to 20^th quickest movers) … these West Hampstead home movers are moving home really fast, yet the gap for the successive two slices broadens remarkably, (i.e. the slowest movers). See for yourself!

• The quickest 25% of West Hampstead home movers (i.e. 1^st to 10^th) moves every 5 years & 15 weeks – that’s a quick move!
• The next fastest quartile (i.e. 11^th to 20^th) of West Hampstead home movers moves every 10 years & 31 weeks.
• The following 25% quickest quartile (i.e. 21^st to 30^th) of West Hampstead home movers moves every 19 years & 36 weeks.
• Finally, the 25% slowest quartile (i.e. 31^st to 40^th) of West Hampstead home movers only moves every 27 years & 41 weeks.

Looking at the top 50% of the quickest movers, half of West Hampstead homeowners move home again within 7 years and 49 weeks.

When looking at the properties that fall into the later bands (i.e. the ones that don’t move/sell so often), they tend to be the larger properties where the homeowners have lived for 30 years plus.

We all should learn that once people get into their 50s and 60s, their tendency to move home drops significantly. This means the properties on the lower rungs of the West Hampstead property ladder sell more often (as younger homeowners occupy them). Yet, once West Hampstead homeowners get older, their inclination to move home diminishes. This obstructs the younger West Hampstead generation wanting to buy the bigger West Hampstead homes these mature homeowners live in.

What is stopping the older generation homeowners from selling and downsizing to free up family homes for families that desperately need them? Some of it will be apathy, some will hold on to the homes they brought their families up in, or there might be another reason.

However, when you consider …

50.2% of owned homes in Britain have two or more spare bedrooms.

That’s a lot of spare bedrooms, at least 15,553,574 spare bedrooms, not being used in the UK.

As a country, we need to change how we can support older homeowners in selling their large, underutilised homes to allow them to house the younger families that badly need them. Some people suggest tax breaks, yet the Government aren’t in the mood to give massive tax breaks to people who would 'tend' to be their existing voter base. Much of it comes down to not finding the right home to move to.

As a nation, we have seen (and will continue to see) a lot of socio-economic and demographic changes together with a rising elderly population, so it’s not just about how many homes we build but whether we are building the right kind of homes the older generation want to move into.

Interesting times ahead for the West Hampstead property market!

If you are a mature West Hampstead homeowner in a large home and are afraid to move because you can't find one, please don't hesitate to contact me. I might be able to place your West Hampstead home on the market without a for sale board or internet listing and find you a buyer who is prepared to wait for you to find one. If this interests you, without obligation do not hesitate to pick up the phone.