Friday 21 April 2017

£2.47bn – The total value of all Falmouth Property Market


“How much would it cost to buy all the properties in Falmouth?”

 

 
This fascinating question was posed by the 13-year-old son of one of our local landlords when they both popped into my offices recently. I thought to myself, I would sit down and calculate what the total value of all the properties in Falmouth are worth … and just for fun, work out how much they have gone up in value since his son was born back in the autumn of 2003.

 
In the last 13 years, the total value of Falmouth property has increased by 38% or £679.86 million to a total of £2.47 billion. Interesting, when you consider the FTSE100 has risen by 72.4% and inflation (i.e. the UK Retail Price Index) rose by 38.7% during the same 13 years.

 
Well what does £2.47 billion allow you to do?

Amongst other things it would be more than enough to wipe out the debt of the NHS which stands at a cool £2.45 billion Guardian (May 2016).

 
You could buy Bayern Munich or Arsenal football clubs but not Manchester United, Real Madrid or Barcelona. Forbes 2016.

 
It is also enough to provide the spending money for every tourist that visits Lanzarote in the last year (Wikipedia). Obscure I know but this is where I'm editing this from!

 
When I delved deeper into the numbers, the average price currently being paid by Falmouth households stands at £270,758.… but you know me, I wasn’t going to stop there, so I split the property market down into individual property types in Falmouth; the average numbers come out like this ..

 

Falmouth Property Market
Average Value of a Detached Property
Average Value of a Semi-Detached Property
Average Value of a Terraced/Town House Property
Average Value of an Apartment
£385,313
£265,143
£197,286
£198,190

 

... it got even more fascinating when I multiplied the total number of each type of property by the average value. This reinforces a previous article where we wrote about Falmouth being the land of the semi-detached property!

 

Total Value of all the Falmouth Detached Properties
Total Value of all the Falmouth Semi-Detached Properties
Total Value of all the Falmouth Terraced/Town House Properties
Total Value of all the Falmouth Apartments
£715,526,241
£733,650,681
£539,183,638
£480,610,750

 

So, what does this all mean for Falmouth?  Well as we are ploughing the unchartered waters of 2017 and beyond, even though property values are already declining in certain parts of the previously over cooked Central London property market, the outlook in Falmouth remains relatively good. Although clearly unaffordable for many in recent years, this is a different level of ‘ludicrous’ compared to London.

 

 We still believe Falmouth house values will remain resilient for several reasons. Firstly, demand for rental property remains strong with continued immigration and population growth.  Secondly, with 0.25 per cent interest rates, borrowing has never been so cheap and finally the simple lack of new house building in Falmouth not keeping up with current demand, let alone eating into years and years of under investment. This can mean only one thing – yes it might be a bumpy ride over the next 12 to 24 months but, in the medium term, property ownership and property investment in Falmouth has always, and will always, ride out the storm.