Loughborough’s New 3 Speed Property Market

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“What’s happening to the Loughborough Property Market” is a question I am asked repeatedly.  Well, would it be a surprise to hear that my own research suggests that there isn’t just one big Loughborough property market – but many small micro-property markets?

According to recent data released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), I have discovered that at least three of these micro-property markets have emerged over the last 20+ years in the town.

For ease, I have named them the …

  1.     ‘lower’ Loughborough Property Market. 
  2.     ‘lower to middle’ Loughborough Property Market. 
  3.     'middle’ Loughborough Property Market.

The ‘lower’ and ‘lower to middle’ sectors of the Loughborough property market have been fuelled over the last few years by two sets of buyers. The first set, making up the clear majority of those buyers, are cash rich landlord investors who are throwing themselves into the Loughborough property market to take advantage of alluringly low prices and even lower interest rates. The other set of buyers in the ‘lower’ and ‘lower to middle’ Loughborough property market are the first-time buyers (FTB), although the FTB market is in a state of unparalleled deadlock as it’s been trampled into near-immobility and incapacity by the new 2014 stricter mortgage affordability regulations and also fewer mortgages with low deposits. 

Some of you may be interested to know how I have classified the three sectors ..

  1. ‘lower’ Loughborough housing market – the bottom 10% (in terms of value) of properties sold 
  2. ‘lower to middle’ Loughborough housing market – lower Quartile (or lowest 25% in terms of value) of properties sold 
  3. ‘middle’ Loughborough housing market - which is the median in terms of value

…. and if one looks at the figures for Charnwood Borough Council area you can see the three different sectors (lower, lower/middle and middle) have performed quite differently.

Charnwood Borough Council Property Market – Sold Prices
Price Paid in 1995
Price Paid in 2017
Percentage Uplift
1995 - 2017
Lower (Bottom 10%)
£33,000
£118,000
257.58%
Lower to Middle (Lower Quartile)
£39,500
£139,000
251.90%
Middle (The Median)
£58,900
£211,850
259.68%






You can see that it is the ‘middle’ market that has performed the best.

You might ask, what do all these different figures mean to homeowners and landlords alike?  Quite a lot – so let me explain. The worst performing sector (with the lowest Percentage uplift) was the ‘lower to middle’ housing market. Therefore, interestingly, if we applied the best percentage uplift figure (i.e. from the ‘middle’ market percentage uplift), to the ‘lower to middle’ 1995 housing market figure, the 2017 figure of £139,000, would have been £142,074 instead.

Now, I have specifically not mentioned the upper reaches of the Loughborough housing market for several reasons.  Firstly, the lower or middle market is where most of the buy to let investment landlords buy their property and where the majority of property transactions take place. Secondly, due to the unique and distinctive nature of Loughborough’s up-market property scene (because every property is different and they don’t tend to sell as often as the lower to middle market), it is much more difficult to calculate what changes have occurred to property prices in that part of the Loughborough property market - looking at the stats for the up-market Loughborough property market from Land Registry, only 24 properties in Loughborough (and a 5 mile radius around it) have sold for £1,500,000 or more since 1997.

So, what should every homeowner and buy to let landlord take from the information that there are many micro-property markets? Well, when you realise there isn’t just one Loughborough Property Market, but many Loughborough “micro-property markets”, you can spot trends and bag yourself some potential bargains. Even in this market, I have spotted a number of bargains over the last few months that I have shared in my Property Blog and to my landlord database, especially in the ‘lower’ and ‘lower/middle’ market.

I would love to know if you have spotted any micro-property markets in Loughborough.

If you would like to discuss the Loughborough property market or chat about any potential investment please feel free to call us on 01509 260777 or email me james.loughborough@belvoir.co.uk

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