News

Once upon a time we wanted a house in the country - now it seems we'd prefer a flat in town - by Catherine Riley

The Times (Bricks and Mortar) 14th January 2005

Moving out of the city to rural idyll - the chocolate-box cottage with a thatched roof and obligatory rose-framed doorway - has long been considered every urbanite's dream, the implication being that only thoses with an unhealthy interest in the seamier side of life or with no concern for their children's welfare would want to stay in a town a minute longer than necessary.  A house in the country - isn't that what we all want?

Apparently not?, according to new research.  It seems that what we actually want is a flat in town.  In the lastest new homes index from SmartNewHomes.com, an umbrella website featuring more thann 100 housebuilders across the country, figures show that the increase in popularity of city-centre regeneration schemes - in places such as Leeds, Manchester and East London - is laeding to a huge demand for apartments.  For the first time the number of new flatsfor sale has outstripped that of new houses.  Apartments now account for 52.8 per cent of new properties for sale - quite a jump from last year's figure of 41.4 per cent.  "There is undoubtedly a stronger demand for flats and apartments today than ten years ago, particularly in urban areas where there are more singles, couples, younger professionals and investors active, and where there is a general trend back towards town-centre living," David pretty, chief executive of the Barratt Group, said. " Moire than 80 per cent of our new development is now on urban brownfield land, and when that is coupled with changing demographics and the government's requirement for more homes at higher densities, it is not surprising that more than 40 per cent of our output is now flats and apartments.  This compares with less than 20 per cent ten years ago."  Yet we are not returing to the dark days of the sixties, when urban housing meant concrete monoliths rearing up out of patches of wasteland, but seeing challenging new designs transforming some of the less salubrious corners of our cities.  Thoses who believe that the volume of housebuilders can only do square, mock tudor boxes should take a look at Thamesmead in southeast London or Clarence Dock in Leeds. "As industry leaders in urban regeneration, we have for many years been using dynamic architechural practices to design bespoke solutions for many of our urban sites, " Pretty said as result , our apartment developments have won many industry and deisgn awards and confounded perceptions about large-scale housebuilders." 

And its is not just the ordinary apartment that is in demand - some purchasers just cant get enough of life at the top.  According to SmartNewHomes.com, the average price of a penthouse is £500,000.  The average price.  Barrat recently sold a penthouse in its tradewinds development for 1 million - not an unreasonable sum for a top end London Property, but this is not in Chelsea but near London City Airport in the Borough of Newham, where the average property price is £162,000.  Nor is the trend in apartment living confined to brand-new properties.  Ressearch by Primelocation.com, the website owned by the UK's leading estate agents, has shown that at regional level all areas, with the expection of the North, have shown an increase in flats as a percentage of available property.  In the West Midlands and Wlaes, the figure has grown from 9.7 per cent to 12.6 per cent. 

In theory, this should be good news for the first-time buyer, the newly divorced and older purchaser looking to downsize.  Unfortunately, the cost of all this urban regeneration doesn't come cheap.  The average price of a new home last month was £266,380, which, though a 5 per cent drop on th previous year, still hovers tantalising above that punitive £250,000 stamp-duty threshold.  And smart apartment buyers who take advantage of developers' schemes that pay stamp duty need to take into account service charges.  The more facilities your building has, the more you will pay.  And these charges can be high - even on older properties.  A ten-year-old one bedroom flat in Rotherhithe, Southeast London, for example is on the market for £220,000 but the building's pool, sauna add more than £2000 a year to the cost of running your home - great if there are two of you who are gym-goers, not so great for the solo counch potato.  We think of ourselves as a nation obsessed with renovating, updating and restoring - but in our time-precious lives would we now rather not have to deal with ageing boilers, leaky roofs and putting five-lever mortice locks on every window, door and airbrick in our house?  Has the time finally come when an english man would rather his home were no longer the whole castle but instead a newly renovated wing of it with decent plumbing, underfloor heating and a ten-year NHBC guarentee?