37% of all people are renting property in Bo’ness – is this healthy?

 

Renting used to be a dirty word in the 60‘s and 70‘s.

You either lived in a ‘Rigsby Rising Damp‘ style bedsit with woodchip on the wall and a coin operated electric meter that buzzed in the night, or you lived in a council house. 

In the latter part of the 20th Century, the British were persuaded that rent payments were ‘wasted money’ so lots of them bought their own home.  However, owning often makes less financial sense and and the rate of home ownership is now reducing as there is now no stigma at all to renting.

In fact, of the 6,692 households in Bo’ness, 1,867 rent their homes from either the local authority or a social provider, a further 543 rent from private landlords and 53 are lucky enough to live rent free.  This means that, in total, 2,463 households in Bo’ness are rented meaning that 37% of Bo’ness people are tenants.

The idea of home ownership is deeply embedded in the British psyche: in fact, 63% of Bo’ness households are owner occupiers (or 4,229) which is broadly in line with the whole of Scotland where 62% are owner occupier.

Housing is at the heart of Government policy, as John Swinney has promised to oversee the building of tens of thousands of new properties a year so first-time-buyers can buy their first home and John Swinney & Philip Hammond between them have changed the tax laws for buy-to-let landlords in Bo’ness and across the wider UK.

To get votes, Thatcher (and everyone since) ran election campaigns promising everybody their own home and, as a country, we seem to equate home ownership as the main goal of British life. However, there has been a shift in this prevailing attitude recently.

So as more and more people are renting nowadays, are we turning to a more European way of living? Well, I believe as a country, we are.

In fact, home ownership could be affecting your health. The UK, according to Bloomberg, is only the 21st healthiest country in the world. Germany is at No.10 and Switzerland at No. 4 and home ownership is at 52.5% and 44% respectively in those countries— and in the UK and Scotland as a whole it’s 64.8% and 62% respectively.

In Bo’ness, 75.6 % of homeowners who own their house outright said they were in ‘very good’ or ‘good’ health whilst, at the other end of the scale, 5.3% said their health was ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.

Looking at renting, the census splits tenants renting properties in Bo’ness into two types. 68.9% of Bo’ness local authority/social tenants said they were in ‘very good’ or ‘good’ health and 10.9% were in ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ health, whilst ‘private rented tenants’ in Bo’ness were the healthiest, as 90.3% of them described themselves in ‘very good’ or ‘good’ health and only 2.5% were in ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ health.

I am not suggesting that low home ownership rates in Switzerland and Germany are directly linked to health, nor, do I expect Brits to all go to Berlin, Interlaken or Dusseldorf and realise how happy people are when they don’t need to worry about all the stresses with accompany home ownership.

The numbers for Bo’ness do go some way to back up the argument and they are the same across the whole of the UK.

Nonetheless, I do think that substantially all of the upside to home ownership in recent years has been a function of monumental rising house prices. Bo’ness landlords have seen this, too.

Now that’s come to an end, it‘s hard to see why anybody would want to buy? Renting is here to stay in Bo’ness and it‘s growing incrementally each year.

Even with the new tax rules for property landlords in Bo’ness, buy-to-let is still a viable investment option for most people in the Town.

There has never been a better time to purchase buy-to-let property in Bo’ness, but buy wisely.

Gone are the days that you would make profit on anything with four walls and a roof. Take advice, take opinion, do your homework, and speak to property experts in Bo’ness.

To keep up-to-date with the rented property sector in Bo’ness, visit my property blog here.

If you would like to explore how I can help you with your property investments, or should you require any advice about investing in the Bo’ness property market, wish to enquire about our Investment Analysis Reports, Property Sourcing, Residential Lettings or Property Management services, please do not hesitate to pop into my office at 19 Main Street, Bo’ness (next to Tesco and opposite Lidl) or contact me on 01506 828096 or at news@thekeyplace.co.uk.

www.thekeyplace.co.uk

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