Berkhamsted’s Restless Homeowners:

The 7 Year 45 Week Itch in the Berkhamsted Housing Market

There are 28.4m households in Britain, of which 17,693,200 are owned, worth a total of £5,127,807,837,600 (£5.1 trillion). When you add all the private rented homes and council houses, that figure reaches just over £8.5 trillion!

Over the last six years, 76,669 UK properties have sold each month, meaning the average British homeowner moves every 16 years and 7 months.

This data disproves a standard theory that British neighbourhoods are becoming more fleeting and transitory. On the face of it, they show that once you have bought a property you can call home, there isn’t much motivation to move again.

So, are fewer people moving home?

Could it be attributed to a sense of contentment or indifference to moving home?

While we might love our home in Berkhamsted, most of you (including myself) still want to ‘better ourselves’ with a bigger house, better area, etc, which typically requires us to climb the Berkhamsted property ladder.

Yet, with Berkhamsted house prices having risen by 472% since 1995, the cost of going up the next rung on the Berkhamsted property ladder is prohibitive.

Everyone remembers the 1980s when we had a buoyant booming property market as a backcloth; British homeowners moved home every eight or nine years; so now, with the average at just over 16 years, this means each British homeowner moving around two or three times in their adult homeownership lifetime. Maybe we should all rename our homes ‘Dun-Roamin’! Or does it?

We have all heard the phrase, “lies, damn lies and statistics”.

The statistics mentioned above conceal some astounding features of the British property market. When British homeowners enter their late 50s and early 60s, their inclination to move home drops tremendously. The average length of time a homeowner without a mortgage moves home is 23 years and 3 months (and around seven out of ten outright homeowners, i.e. without a mortgage, are 65 years old or older).

Yet, British homeowners (with a mortgage) move on average every 9 years and 11 weeks. 

So, whilst I cannot determine who has a mortgage and who doesn’t, I can look at how quickly people move home in Berkhamsted. I have looked at the last 40 property sales in Berkhamsted and found some interesting findings.

The average Berkhamsted homeowner moves on average every 14 years and 35 weeks. 

Remember, the UK average is every 16 years and 7 months. Yet it gets fascinating when we delve deeper into that stat.

There seems to be a two-speed (even three-speed) Berkhamsted property market (remember in the title I said 7 years and 45 weeks).

Having looked at the last 40 Berkhamsted property sales, I then put them in order of how long they had been in that home before they moved, with the fastest first and slowest at the end.

When we look at the 25% quickest home movers in Berkhamsted (i.e. 1^st to 10^th) and then the next slice (the 11^th to 20th quickest movers) … these Berkhamsted home movers are moving home really fast, yet the gap for the successive two slices broadens remarkably. (i.e. the slowest movers). See for yourself!

• The quickest 25% of Berkhamsted home movers (i.e. 1^st to 10^th) moves every 3 years & 0 weeks – that’s a quick move!
• The next fastest quartile (i.e. 11th to 20^th) of Berkhamsted home movers moves every 9 years & 15 weeks.
• The following 25% quickest quartile (i.e. 21st to 30^th) of Berkhamsted home movers moves every 18 years & 20 weeks.
• Finally, the 25% slowest quartile (i.e. 31st to 40^th) of Berkhamsted home movers only moves every 28 years & 26 weeks.

Looking at the top 50% of the quickest movers, half of Berkhamsted homeowners move home again within 7 years and 45 weeks.

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