Abington – the place to buy a property?

Information is so important when making decisions on what (or not) to buy in the Northampton property market. Many of you reading this are owner occupiers (ie you own the house you live in). However, some of you are landlords and anecdotal evident suggests a lot of you both own your own property and have a rental property at the same time in the area. This month I want to talk about the relationship between owner occupiers in Abington and the rental market in Abington. The demand for rental properties is much greater than the supply and in some circumstances, we have four to five prospective tenants for each decent property. As always, the demand is much greater for properties that are good areas, such as Abington. Also, we are noticing that tenants are staying longer in their chosen property with some tenants signing for the third and fourth years. This is obviously causing problems from the supply side so we are relying on new investment Landlords to bring in properties.

In knowing Abington, I can seek out the hotspots in the rental market and show potential landlords where there could be an opportunity. The majority of properties sold in Abington during the last 12 months terraced properties which on average sold for £183,200. Semi-detached properties had an average sold price of £222,100 and flats averaged at £120,300. Abington, with an overall average price of £199,268, was similar in terms of sold prices to nearby Northampton (£198,900), but was more expensive than Kingsthorpe (£172,700) and cheaper than Hardingstone (£224,800).

In Abington Ward, there are 9,477 people living in 4,214 properties. It is the home ownership percentages that really got me interested, as it is this information, tied in with our intimate knowledge of the Northamptonproperty market, where we can match tenant demand to an under supply of rental properties. Interestingly, Rightmove have recently published information on Abington to say 19,510 people searched for Abington properties in the last 4 weeks (on the house buying side of their website), whilst 5,273 searches were made for rental properties in Abington over the same time period.  Impressive don’t you think! The demand for both sales and rental properties is really there in Abington.

In Abington, of those 4,214 households, 54.84% own their property (compared to the Northampton average of 62.68%)

However, there are 1,316 privately rented properties in Abington (i.e. 32.12% of Abington properties are privately rented compared with the Northampton average of 16.51%). The reason the private rental sector is much higher is that Abington has a low proportion of council house tenants. The properties do sell well, in fact, in the last two years, the number of properties sold in Abington has been exceptional …

·         179 Abington Detached properties sold

·         175 Abington Apartments sold

·         226 Abington Semi Detached houses sold

·         725 Abington Terraced Houses sold

Therefore, if you are considering buying or selling a property in Abington, be it owner occupation or for investment in the near future, I am always happy to give you my considered opinion on the property, so why not pick up the phone and give me a call on 01604607080.