Housing Market
The volume of housing sales fell sharply in 2008 and 2009. Since then the numbers of properties being sold has increased steadily, buoyed in recent years by increasing amounts of new house building.
In 2015/16 there were 488 affordable homes completed through planning, and 1,452 private homes. Combined, house completions increased 61% compared to the previous year.
Of the total building in 2015/16, 55% of home and 15% of employment floorspace were completed on previously developed, or brownfield, land. This misses the target of 65% for dwellings and the target of 40% for employment floorspace, but of the greenfield housing completions, 90% of these were on allocated housing land, and the majority of the employment completions were at the greenfield allocations of Normanton Industrial Estate Extension and the Newmarket development.
The Local Development Framework (LDF) Annual Monitoring Reports provide detailed information about housing and commercial building development over the past year.
In the 12 months to the end of June 2016, the median house price was £134,995, representing an annual price increase of 6%. The lower quartile house price was £100,000, representing an annual price increase of 4%.
In 2002, the median house price was 3.4-times the median gross earnings of people working full-time but by 2005 the ratio had risen to 5.6-times. Affordability for people on lower earnings had been similar, but continued to worsen until 2008, at which point the large downturn in the housing market brought prices down. Since 2013 the affordability ratios have been increasing again, as median and lower quartile house prices have increased by 8% and 14% respectively but earnings of residents have only risen 3%.
