Is Falkirk bucking the national trend by increase its stock of houses?

A buy to let landlord popped into the office last week saying that he had seen a lot of new houses being built around Falkirk and wondered whether he should buy one of them.  As an experienced landlord, he was less interested in the low maintenance nature of these new houses, rather he was thinking more about whether buying a flat or a house would be better.

I did a bit of research and it interesting what I found.

There are currently far more houses in Falkirk than flats.  In total, 68% of properties in Falkirk are houses (split 20% detached, 26% semi detached and 22% terraced) with only 32% being flats.  Interestingly Falkirk has a higher proportion of houses (68%) than Scotland as a whole (63%) as the ‘Scottish as a whole’ figure is affected by the high proportion of flats in cities particularly Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The trend in Falkirk is to build more houses than flats.  Over the last 10 years more houses than flats have been built as 10 years ago 67% of Falkirk’s properties were houses and 33% were flats.  This trend is continuing if you look at the recent, current and projected building plans for Falkirk overall.  The main private sector developers (Taylor Wimpey, Barrett, Persimmon, Kier, Cala etc) are exclusively building houses which will more than offset any flats build by Falkirk Council meaning that overall less than 32% (the current proportion of flats in Falkirk) of properties being built will be flats.

Falkirk is bucking the trend seen across the country where the current proportion of flats (33%) is more than double the level of 20 years ago (15%).  More flats are being, and will continue to be, built across the country as a whole for a number of reasons:

• The current housing shortage is encouraging developers to create more and more flats.
• Institutional investors coming into the Private Rented Sector are building flats as they can manage blocks more effectively.
• The planning regime is encouraging the change of use of office and commercial buildings into flats in city centres.
• Councils are keen on high density flats as they can extract more council tax, which might influence planning decisions. They also need to solving the housing shortage on a local level.
• Developers are turning big houses into flats to increase their overall value.

So why is Falkirk bucking the national trend and building more houses?  I believe that it is a combination a few things.  Many people generally prefer to live in houses so will gravitate to where they are more common.  Many people like to live in new houses with gardens and green spaces around them and lots of this sort of houses being built around Falkirk.  Also, the back pocket is very important to people and lower house prices in Falkirk compared to Edinburgh and Glasgow attracts people into the area.

So back to my landlord, what did I say to him?  Well I advised him to ignore the larger new houses as the yields are never very good on these sort of properties.  I also advised him to have a look at some of the smaller new houses as these may fit his buy to let criteria.  Finally, remembering that he isn’t phased by doing works to properties, I advised him not to lose sight of the thousands of non-new properties in the area as many of these definitely will fit his buy to let criteria and particularly to think about flats as these are becoming a rarer commodity in Falkirk!

Having this detail of information at our finger tips, allows us to spot trends in the local market, which then enables us to give the very best advice to our clients. We don't charge for that advice.  If you want some advice, phone me on 01324 649840, come and see me in our offices (6 Vicar Street, Falkirk) or email either of us (falkirk@thekeyplace.co.uk).