Are there any poor estate agents in Derby?

My friends often call me an estate agent, but then I remind them that whilst a lot of estate agents do both property sales and lettings, we are a letting agent only and always plan to be.

By specialising in lettings, it enables me and team to get the job done right. In a recent article, when we spoke about the difference between Derby and Nottingham property markets and their prices, one landlord who popped his head round our door in St. James Street to chat about the Derby property market got talking about how he thought there were less for sale boards in Derby than there were ten, even fifteen years ago.

All the newspapers talk about is a crisis of a lack of properties. Building new property is not like the Mars bar factory that can keep the machines going an extra couple of hours to make more Mars bars. The Government says 200,000 properties need to be built each year for the next ten years. For Derby to take its share of that would mean we would have to build 1,904 properties each year for the next ten years.. yet in the last ten years, in Derby, we have only built on average 986 properties per year.
People in popular areas say they want more properties for their children and are usually in favour of more homes being built, as long as they are not in their local area!
Increasing supply of houses leads to more congestion, crowded amenities and loss of greenbelt. Then, and here is the big reason, those homeowners have a vested interest to keep the building low because an increased supply reduces the value of their existing home.

Finally, a lack of council houses since Mrs T. encouraged the sale of council housing after she was elected in 1979, the number of new social housing to replace them, has been very low.

However, getting back to the point, it’s a simple fact that since the 2007 crash, the number of properties that are selling in Derby has dramatically reduced. Look at the graph and you will see in the late 1990’s (what most say was a normal market), around 350 properties a month were selling each month in Derby. In the first half of the 2000’s decade, when we had a rising market, around 450 properties were changing hands each month in Derby. In 2008, the year of the property crash that dropped to 240 per month and hasn’t grown that much since, although we started to see a rise in 2014.

Hence those poor old estate agents aren’t selling as many properties! It must be tough for the little dears!

If you would like to discuss my thoughts on the rental market, feel free to pop through the door of our offices on St. James Street or send me an email to: simonj@professionalproperties.co.uk!

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