The number of UK homeowners moving each year has been declining since the late 1980s, when at one stage, people moved every eight years. Yet since the pandemic's beginning, something has appeared to buck that trend.

Newspaper stories and social media posts painted a picture of homeowners moving from the city centres to its suburbs, from the suburbs to the towns and countryside around the UK. Areas like the Cotswolds and coastal towns around the country got swamped by the 'race for space', significantly affecting housing markets - including ours here in and around Alfreton.

So how many did move and how long had they been in their homes before they moved?

In the UK, there are 28.3 million households, of which 19.3 million are owner-occupied and 4.4m owned by private buy-to-let landlords. That's around £7,035 trillion of residential property in private hands!

Eight years before the initial lockdown in 2020, an average of 79,646 properties were sold each month in the UK, meaning just under a million UK households move home annually.

So, what uplift was there in people moving home after the first lockdown in 2020?

In 2021 and early 2022, an average of 102,021 people moved home monthly, taking the average move time to once every 16 years. So even though there was an uplift in people moving home, it was nothing like the 1980s.

It shows that in the 21^st Century, once you have succeeded in buying a property you can call home, there isn't much enthusiasm to move again.

We love our homes in Alfreton, but let's be honest, most of us still want to 'do better' with a larger house, a different location etc., which typically requires us to climb up the Alfreton property ladder.

Everyone remembers back to the 1980s, when we had an upbeat booming property market as a backdrop, and UK homeowners moved home every eight years; so now, with the average move time in years in the mid to late teens, this equates to each homeowner only moving around three to four times in their adult lifetime.

Or could it be something else?

I'm sure that you are familiar with the phrase; “lies, damn lies and statistics"?

The home moving statistics above hide some great details about the UK property market.

When homeowners get into their 50s, 60s and beyond, their inclination to move home drops like the proverbial stone.

The average time a homeowner without a mortgage moves home is 24 years and 27 weeks - and just over 7 out of 10 outright homeowners, i.e. without a mortgage, are 65 or older. 

Homeowners with a mortgage tend to be younger to middle-aged. Homeowners with a mortgage move on average every 10 years and 11 weeks.

So, whilst I cannot determine which house seller has a mortgage and which doesn't, I can look at how quickly people move home in Alfreton. 

Therefore, I have taken a look at the last 50 property sales in Alfreton and found some interesting results.

Yet the devil is in the detail... there appears to be a two-speed Alfreton property market …

Then, let's split the findings into quarters.

·     Top 25% fastest Alfreton homeowners in 2022 moved on average after 3 years & 1 week

·     The following 25% of fastest Alfreton homeowners in 2022 moved on average after 7 years & 40 weeks

·     The next 25% of Alfreton homeowners in 2022 moved on average after 20 years & 13 weeks

·     Whilst the 25% slowest Alfreton homeowners in 2022 moved on average after 27 years & 0 weeks

When looking at the properties that fall into the slower time bands - the ones that don’t move/sell so often - they tend to be the larger properties where the homeowners have lived often for 30 or 40 years.

The one glaring fact from these statistics is that once homeowners get into their 60’s and 70’s, their tendency and inclination to move home declines significantly.

This means the homes on the lower rungs of the Alfreton property ladder are selling quickly as younger aged homeowners occupy them ... yet once Alfreton people tend to get older, their tendency to move diminishes.

This obstructs the younger generation of Alfreton homeowners from wanting to buy the bigger Alfreton properties these mature Alfreton homeowners live in.

What is holding the older generation back from selling and downsizing to free up family homes for families that desperately need them? Some will be apathy, and some will be wanting to hold on to the homes they brought their families up in, yet the bottom line is that, as a country, we must reconsider how we can encourage older homeowners to sell their large homes to release them to the younger families that desperately need them.

One suggestion could be some form of tax break, yet the government doesn't have the money to give massive tax breaks.

One thing I do know we, as a country, have seen a lot of demographic change together with an increasingly ageing population, so it’s not just about how many households we build but whether we are constructing the right kind of homes for the older generation?

Thought-provoking times are ahead for the Alfreton property market!