After a little hiatus I am now back on the Blog.

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, I am first and foremost a landlord myself and will always be and as a result of my own success by default, I became a letting agent. I have been a letting agent for over 11 years now and plan to remain a letting agent only.

By specialising in lettings, it enables me and my team to get the job done right. In a recent article, when we spoke about the difference between neighbouring property markets and their prices, one landlord who popped his head round our door in Orchard Road to chat about the Walsall property market got talking about how he thought there were less for sale boards in Walsall 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 (and have been saying for a few years now).

For Walsall to take its share of that would mean we would have to build 1,816 properties each year for the next ten years.. yet in the last ten years, in Walsall, we have only built on average 636 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 amount of 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 Walsall has dramatically reduced. Looking closely at the numbers, in the late 1990’s (what most say was a normal market), around 90 properties a month were selling each month in Walsall. In the first half of the 2000’s decade, when we had a rising market, around 120 properties were changing hands each month in Walsall. In 2008, the year of the property crash that dropped to 60 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 especially as more and more online estate agents are grabbing a share of the same market! So my landlord did have a valid point in that, there are less for sale boards visible in the Walsall property market as one of the main reasons is that comparatively we have less property for sale now. 

If you would like to discuss my thoughts on the rental market of Walsall, feel free to contact me or if you would like to taste my world famous masala tea why not pop through the door of our offices on Orchard Road (do please make an appointment prior) or send me an email to: info@ashmorelettings.co.uk

Phone: 01922 311016.