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SE house price to rise to over £322K by 2011
The average house price in the South East of England will be over £322,000 in five years’ time, according to a new report published by the National Housing Federation South East and the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Entitled The South East’s Housing Timebomb: Affordability and Supply 2006-2011, the report contains new projections by Oxford Economic Forecasting which show that house prices will continue to spiral upwards across the region, fuelled by a severe lack of housing supply and a growing population.
Despite the higher than average earnings in the South East, householders already face house prices that are almost nine times average incomes. In ten local authority areas, house prices are over 10 times local incomes. In Windsor and Maidenhead and across Surrey, the price of an average home currently exceeds £300,000, making it increasingly difficult for first time buyers, keyworkers and families on housing waiting lists to afford a place of their own.
An explosion of affordable housing need has occurred throughout the region, with over 180,000 families currently on housing waiting lists in the region - a rise of more than 50% in the last 5 years.
In addition to this, the South East is producing only three quarters of the new affordable homes it needs each year. Lettings of affordable rented homes have dropped nearly 30% since 2000, mainly due to the lack of new supply and residents exercising their ‘Right to Buy’.
The population of the South East is expected to grow by over 900,000 people in the next 20 years, giving rise to around 37,000 new households every year - well above the number of new homes planned for the region.
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