Lancaster’s New 3 Speed Property Market 

“What’s happening to the Lancaster 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 Lancaster 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 city.  

 For ease, I have named them the … 

 

  • lower Lancaster Property Market. 
  • lower to middle’ Lancaster Property Market. 
  • middle’ Lancaster Property Market.  

 The ‘lower and ‘lower to middle’ sectors of the Lancaster 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 Lancaster 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’ Lancaster 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 .. 

  •  lower’ Lancaster housing market – the bottom 10% (in terms of value) of properties sold 
  • lower to middle’ Lancaster housing market – lower Quartile (or lowest 25% in terms of value) of properties sold 
  • middle’ Lancaster housing market – which is the median in terms of value 

 …. and if you look at the figures for Lancaster City Council area you can see the three different sectors (lowerlower/middle and middle) have performed quite differently. 

 

Lancaster City Council Property Market – Sold Prices  Price Paid in 1995  Price Paid in 2017  Percentage Uplift  

1995 – 2017 

Lower (Bottom 10%)  £27,000  £84,000  211.11% 
Lower to Middle (Lower Quartile)  £34,950  £109,000  211.9% 
Middle (The Median)  £50,758  £167,509  230% 

 Percentage Changes in Prices Paid for  Lancaster Property

You can quite clearly 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’ housing market.  Therefore, interestingly, if we applied the best percentage uplift figure (i.e. from the ‘middle’ market percentage uplift), to the ‘lower’ 1995 housing market figure, the 2017 figure of £84,000, would have been £89,105 instead. 

Now, I have specifically not mentioned the upper reaches of the Lancaster 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 Lancaster’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 Lancaster property market – looking at the stats for the up-market Lancaster property market from Land Registry, only 8 properties in Lancaster (and a 5 mile radius around it) have sold for £1,000,000 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 Lancaster Property Market, but many Lancaster “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 Lancaster.