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Housing Market Assesment
HOUSING MARKET INFORMATION
MAY 2008
Macclesfield Borough Council has commenced the process of developing an appreciation of the local active housing market prior to the production of a more involved Strategic Housing Market Assessment.
The requirement to determine Three Local Core Housing Market Indicators arises from Communities and Local Government Advice Note – May 2007. The indicators that focus on the local active market are deemed to be:
- AFFORDABILITY
- GROWTH IN HOUSE PRICES
- LOW DEMAND
- AFFORDABILITY – is considered by comparing lower quartile earnings to lower quartile house prices. The emphasis is on assessing affordability for those on lower incomes (the lowest 25 per cent of earnings), including young households and first time buyers. The affordability ratio for Macclesfield Borough is currently 10.8 Q4 2007 (9.98 - 2006) compared with 9.35 for Congleton and 8.91 for Crewe & Nantwich.
Note: a ratio of 6.0 and above indicates major affordability problems.
- GROWTH IN HOUSE PRICES – house prices are an expression of the relationship between housing supply and demand. If demand exceeds supply prices will generally rise. Over the last 11 years house prices in the Borough have consistently increased shown by a median price of £74,000 in 1996 rising to a median price of £220,000 AT Q4 2007 (£195,000 – 2006).
- LOW DEMAND – occurs where housing is difficult to let or sell because there are not enough households in the area looking for a home (insufficient demand). The accepted measure of low demand is where the lowest 15 percentile of sale prices is less than 70% of the lowest 15 percentile of sale prices in England. Since 1996 sale prices in Macclesfield Borough have always been greater than England as a whole.
The data sources used to produce these indicator results may be accessed as follows:
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