Are more people renting than buying since 2001?

An Englishman’s home is his castle; but when it comes to the UK, the ‘Brit’s are still a nation of homeowners. Although, I recently discovered that up until the mid to late 1960’s, more people rented their home (albeit mostly from the local council) than owned their own. In fact, I was surprised to read that in 1921, over 75% of homes in England and Wales were privately rented with the remaining 25% being owner occupied. 

It was only after the Second World War, when the Beatles were rocking, that people started to buy instead of rent .. but instead of owning our property outright, we borrowed money from banks and building society’s to buy them and the roots of the growth of the private rental sector can be drawn back to the late 1970’s early 1980’s, when the council houses began to be sold off under the right to buy scheme.

Even though 63,200 households in Solihull were owner occupied in 2001 and that number had increased to 63,559 households by 2011, the percentage of homeowner properties in Solihull dropped drastically from 78% to 73.8% Why, because whilst an additional 5,126 properties were built in Solihull between 2001 and 2011, a lot of them were bought as buy to let investments, thus more than doubling the number of private rental properties in Solihull. In fact, the number of properties in Solihull, that were privately rented jumped from 2,951 in 2001 to 7,795 in 2011!

With stagnation in the number of people who own their home in Solihull and no more council houses being built, this is increasing the number of people looking to renting, as everyone needs a roof over their head. With the Solihull Council housing waiting lists being in the 5 to 10 year range for a decent property in a decent location, it shouldn’t be forgotten that it is Solihull landlords who house tenants waiting for a council house.

Therefore, with every report stating the rental market will continue to grow throughout the rest of this decade, with high demand and limited supply in the Solihull, if you are considering buying a property for investment in the near future in Solihull, I am always happy to give you my considered opinion on which property to buy (or not as the case may be) to give you what you want from your investment. If you are a landlord, new or old, I am certainly more than happy for you to pick up the phone to me on 0121 705 3242 (Option 1) or email me at jane.morcom@centrickproperty.co.uk .