Haydock Estate Agents

Happy New Year for 2017 to all of my Haydock Property News readers!  Christmas and New Year is traditionally a quiet period for estate agents and it is often used by them to set their marketing strategy for the coming year.

It is therefore interesting to note that AHome4U have decided to close their office on West End Road in Haydock and consolidate their operations for sales and lettings into their head office in Prescot, some 7 miles away.  This leaves one of my businesses - Porterhouse Properties as the only remaining estate agent in Haydock. So what does this mean to Haydock homeowners in 2017?

Since the property market crash, the number of properties being advertised for sale has halved.  In January 2007 there were over 150 properties advertised for sale in Haydock.  Today, ten years later there are just 75 which in turn is down 10% on the numbers advertised a year ago.

According to Rightmove, 154 properties were sold in Haydock during 2016 with 50 of those being sold by Porterhouse Properties.  AHome4U were the joint second highest estate agents with 9 properties sold during 2016.

Whilst we are on the subject of Rightmove, an estate agent trading in the Haydock area is likely to be paying around £1,000 per month to use Rightmove's advertising portal, so it is hardly surprising that an agent selling just 9 properties in the Haydock area at discounted sales commission fees should consider closing their operation.

Online estate agencies have appeared over the last few years but only 8 properties from 5 different online agencies were sold in Haydock using this method during 2016.

AHome4U's demise may also be attributed to the fact that they have also been trying to occupy the same discounted sales fee sector as the online agencies.

The value of the high street estate agent should not be underestimated.  Local knowledge and expertise matched with excellent customer service at reasonable fees will always achieve the best outcome for property sales - something that the team at Porterhouse Properties clearly know a thing or two about!

From the sales figures for 2016,  Haydock homeowners still share this view!

12% Yield Potential on this Haydock Property!

Potential Investment Property?

I'm always on the look out for properties in the Haydock area that are potential investment properties and I've come across a property this week that looks to be of interest.  It has been advertised on a dual agency basis with our colleagues at John Brown Estate Agents and Mark Gilbertson Estate Agents, and is available with vacant possession.

It's a 2 bedroom mid terrace cottage situated at the top end of West End Road in Haydock priced at just £45,000.  This was originally built around the end of the 19th century as a miners cottage and whilst the miners and the mining industry are long gone in Haydock, the area is a popular residential location and has seen a growth in employment in recent years with the development of the light industrial and distribution hub at Haydock Island next to Junction 23 of the M6 motorway.   There is good public and private transport access being on a main bus route into St Helens town centre 2.5 miles away and is less than half a mile from the A580 East Lancashire Road There are good local amenities including a Tesco Express that opened recently less than a 100 yards away.

From the information supplied by the estate agents, the property may only need minor cosmetic work to make it habitable, although you may wish to check whether damp proofing may be required judging by some of the internal photographs.  Nonetheless, good examples of these popular terraced homes can attract asking prices of around £65,000, so some capital growth should be easily achievable.

From a rental perspective, my Belvoir business in St Helens manages an identical property a few doors along at £450pcm which gives a whopping 12% yield potential!

For more details on the property from Rightmove  click here

Florida Farm Development - Friend or Foe?

If you've driven down Liverpool Road in Pewfall recently, you cannot have failed to notice that all is not well with the residents of arguably one of Haydock's most sought after postcodes.

Bericote, a property developer, have submitted outline planning proposals to St Helens Council to build a 1.4m sq ft commercial development at Florida Farm North, adjacent to the A580 East Lancashire Road just a short distance from Junction 23 of the M6.

An artists impression of the Florida Farm North development

To the outside world, a commercial development that claims to involve the potential for bringing nearly 2,500 jobs to the Haydock area would seem to be of significant benefit to the local economy, so what's the problem?

Well, Florida Farm North, is currently Greenbelt and the residents of Pewfall, particularly those with properties situated on the south side of Liverpool Road enjoy a semi rural aspect that has made this A58 main trunk road a sought after residential location for as long as I can remember.

The proposed development will unfortunately replace the greenbelt view with an aspect looking over a major commercial zone despite the developers best intentions to limit the impact to the environment and aesthetics.

The View from a property on Liverpool Road

For property owners on Liverpool Road, the impact to their surroundings will undoubtedly be considerable and we are already seeing the consequences of the proposed development despite the fact that the scheme is only at the outline planning stage.  Amongst the hoards of "Save our Greenbelt" signs on Liverpool Road there are currently eight for sale boards that have been erected which represents almost 10% of the total number of properties currently available for sale in Haydock from an area providing less than 0.5% of the total housing stock!

This undoubtedly makes for a buyers market in this part of Haydock and it will be interesting to see how property prices are affected.

Regardless of whether the proposed development goes ahead, Pewfall will remain a sought after residential location in the long term, but the short term view is one of considerable uncertainty.

The St Helens Love Affair with its 17,400 Terraced Houses

Call me old fashioned, but I do like the terraced house.   In fact, I have done some research that I hope you will find of interest my blog reading friends!

In architecture terms, a terraced or townhouse is a style of housing in use since the late 1600’s in the UK, where a row of symmetrical / identical houses share their side walls. The first terraced houses were actually built by a French man, Monsieur Barbon around St. Paul’s Cathedral within the rebuilding process after the Great Fire of London in 1666.  Interestingly, it was the French that invented the terraced house around 1610-15 in the Le Marais district of Paris with its planned squares and properties with identical facades. However, it was the 1730’s in the UK, that the terraced/townhouse came into its own in London and of course in Bath with the impressive Royal Crescent.

One of St Helens' 17,400 terraced properties on West End Road, Haydock

However, we are in St Helens, not Bath, so the majority of our St Helens terraced houses were built in the Victorian era.  Built on the back of the Industrial Revolution, with people flooding into the towns and cities for work in Victorian times, the terraced house offered decent liveable accommodation away from the slums. An interesting fact is that the majority of Victorian St Helens terraced houses are based on standard design of a ‘posh’ front room, a back room (where the family lived day to day) and scullery off that.  Off the scullery, a door to a rear yard, whilst upstairs, three bedrooms (the third straight off the second).  Interestingly, the law was changed in 1875 with the Public Health Act and each house had to have 108ft of liveable space per main room, running water, it’s own outside toilet and rear access to allow the toilet waste to be collected (they didn’t have public sewers in those days in St Helens – well not at least where these ‘workers’ terraced houses were built).

It was the 1960’s and 70’s where inside toilets and bathrooms were installed (often in that third bedroom or an extension off the scullery) and gas central heating in the 1980’s and replacement PVCu double glazing ever since.

Looking at the make up of all the properties in St Helens, some very interesting numbers appear.  Of the 47,090 properties in St Helens …

5,080 are Detached properties (10.7%)

20,020 are Semi Detached properties (42.5%)

17,403 are Terraced / Town House properties (36.1%)

4,929 are Apartment/ Flat’s (10.4%)

And quite noteworthy, there are18 mobile homes, representing 0.04% of all property in St Helens. 

When it comes to values, the average price paid for a St Helens terraced house in 1995 was £29,530 and the latest set of figures released by the land Registry states that today that figure stands at £67,100, a rise of 127% - that’s not bad at all is it. 

But then a lot of buy to let landlords and first time buyers I speak to think the Victorian terraced house is expensive to maintain.  I recently read a report from English Heritage that stated maintaining a typical Victorian terraced house over thirty years is around sixty percent cheaper than building and maintaining a modern house- which is quite fascinating don’t you think!

Don’t dismiss the humble terraced house – especially in St Helens!