Canterbury’s ‘Generation Stuck’ and Their £1,676m Tied-up Equity
The predicament of the Canterbury 20 to 30 year olds who rent and their inability to get onto the housing ladder is often discussed in the press.
There are 4.43m properties in the UK that are still in the private rented sector (compared to 2.13m in 2002).
This group of people in their 20s and 30’s, who rent from a private landlord, are often called ‘Generation Rent’.
Yet would it surprise you that since 2017, the number of UK households in the private rented sector has reduced by 260,000 whilst the number of homeowners has increased by 1.1m?
In this article we want to talk about another set of people,
not ‘Generation Rent’, but ‘Generation Stuck’.
Generation Stuck are our middle-aged and mature homeowners of Canterbury. They are the generation that could be described as late ‘Baby Boomers’ (born in late 1950s and early 1960s) and the early ‘Gen X’ (born in the mid 1960s to early 1970s).
These 50 to 64 year old Canterbury people feel stuck in their homes, and therefore we have nicknamed them ‘Generation Stuck’. Their inability to move could be holding back those younger Canterbury ‘Generation Renters’.
So, let us look at the numbers involved.
In Canterbury, there are 2,189 households, whose owners are aged between 50 and 64 years old and are about to pay their mortgage
off on property that is worth £763.5m.
There are an additional 2,617 mortgage free Canterbury households, owned by 50 to 64 year olds, worth £912.78m, meaning …
Canterbury ‘Baby Boomers’ and Canterbury ‘Gen X ‘are sitting
on £1,676.3m worth of Canterbury property.
According to the Census, 47.8% of homes occupied by 50 to 64 year olds have two or more spare bedrooms.
This is backed up by the annual English Housing Survey that states nationally, 49% of properties occupied by these ‘Generation Stuck’ are ‘under-occupied’.
Under-occupied is categorised as having at least two spare bedrooms.
Looking at the statistics closer to home …
47.2% of Canterbury 50 to 64 year olds have two or more spare bedrooms, making it the 204th highest local authority in the country
(out of 348 local authorities).
The rising number of older Canterbury homeowners who want to downsize their Canterbury home are often held back by the lack of suitable housing options for older people and the difficulties of moving.
Lots of over 50 year old Canterbury people cannot move home in the way that they would like, due to a lack of suitable housing options and so can find themselves ‘stuck’ in homes which are no longer suitable for them as they age.
Only 1 in 29 people over the age of 50 move home each year,
compared to 1 in 15 for the rest of the population.
Helping mature Canterbury homeowners (Generation Stuck) to downsize their homes at the right time will also allow younger Canterbury people (Generation Rent) to find the Canterbury family homes they need – meaning every generation wins, both young and old.
However, to ensure downsizing works, we need more choices for these “last-time-buyers”.
That means building more bungalows or more ground floor
apartments suitable for the middle to older generation.
One way this could be done is by changing the planning rules to force builders to build these types of properties, whilst the other could be the changing of the stamp duty tax breaks for downsizers.
In this way, older Canterbury people will be more able to move into homes which suit their specific needs, improve their quality of life whilst meeting their goals in life, all without them becoming detached from their friends and family locally in the Canterbury area.
These are our thoughts, please let us know yours.
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