Wales sees the largest rise in house prices across all of UK
WALES has seen the largest annual house price growth in the year to December 2020 out of the four UK nations, according to new data.
The data released as part of the UK House Price Index Summary, compiled by the Office for National Statistics, shows that house prices increased by 10.7% in Wales during that time.
But this figure is for house price growth, not the highest house prices; England can still claim to have the highest average house prices four nations.
According to property portal Zoopla, in England the current average value of a house is £320,757 compared to the Wales average of £199,113.
But this lower average value that gets you more property for your pound this side of the border is just one of a number of reasons why Wales has experienced such a rapid growth during 2020, according to industry out of the experts. Some of the rapid increase can be attributed to the stamp duty holiday on house sales less than £250,000 until March 31, 2021, but property professionals say there are many other reasons, including the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Carol Peett, managing director of West Wales Property Finders, has experienced first-hand this rise in demand that has resulted in Wales’ house price growth, at least in her region.
Ms Peett said: “As property finders who have specialised in finding properties for our retained clients for 17 years, we have never seen so much activity in the market here since the first lockdown.
“We thought that the initial wave of buyers after the first lockdown ended would subside and the frenzy of activity die down.
“But this has built into a tsunami with absolutely no sign of it slowing down – we have taken on more clients in the first month and a half of 2021 than we normally do in a full year.”
Ms Peett said there are three main types of buyers currently driving the demand – people who are Welsh but live elsewhere and want to come home, house-hunters who want to ditch living in a city and or large town if they possibly can, and people looking for second homes.
She said: “Huge numbers of people have been looking to move out of towns and cities now that working from home has become the norm so they are no longer confined to living near their offices.”
Ms Peett continued: “People cooped up in flats or townhouses with small gardens trying to entertain their children when schools are closed and everything has locked down has prompted a surge of people to look for more open spaces and fresh air for their families.
“We have seen large numbers of people from Cardiff and Newport, for instance, looking to buy holiday homes in coastal areas like Pembrokeshire
and Ceredigion due to the huge popularity of staycations – particularly with Covid-19 restricting foreign travel.”
James Groombridge, regional managing director at Acorn Property, Group, can offer a UK national perspective.
He said: “The average cost of living in Wales is considerably lower than the UK average, though where you live in Wales influences by how much, and property in Wales offers some of the best value for money in the UK.
BY NOW it’s a familiar story, not least to the people who live there: people in Rhondda Cynon Taf are dying in proportionately greater numbers than anywhere else in the UK.
The area has consistently been one of the hardest hit, both in terms of the number of cases and the amount of deaths.
And for many people, that can lead to a reflex reaction. It’s because people aren’t following the rules, they cry. But it’s not that simple. As we move towards a full year of coronavirus restrictions it is important to ask why this particular part of South Wales has been so badly affected. As we have seen through the pandemic, anyone can catch coronavirus. So why has the virus been so devastating in RCT?
Firstly we need to establish how bad it has really been. RCT is top of the table which shows the areas of the UK with the most deaths per 100,000 people. It is one of five areas in Wales making up the UK’s top eight worst-hit areas.
ONS data for the amount of deaths from Covid per 100,000 people in Wales only between March and December show again that RCT is the very top.
The same is true for health boards and is even more stark.
RCT, as well as the surrounding health board areas, is a bit of an enigma when it comes to the rates of the virus. This is not because it has high rates, but because these rates have been consistently high. This is not what has been seen in other areas. Aneurin Bevan had very high rates at the start of the outbreak, and so did Caerphilly when it became the first part of Wales to go into a local lockdown. But it also had periods of relatively low levels.
The same is true for Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board, which covers North Wales, an area which often seems to spike after the rest of Wales (the First Minister has indicated that this may be because of close links to the north west of England). However, despite these spikes, the area has also seen low levels of the virus.
The death rates in RCT are consistently the highest or second highest whereas other areas move around more.
Heather Lewis, a public health consultant working for Public Health Wales, leads a specialist team in the Cwm Tâf area which monitors and informs public health decisions on managing the virus there.
“It certainly feels as if we have been hit hard because there have been sustained high rates within the RCT and Cwm Tâf area,” she said.
“Whereas other regions have peaks and troughs, as you would expect, in RCT there does seem to have been this sustained level of positivity. That, fortunately, is coming down since the most recent lockdown, but before that there were sustained high levels which were really hard to get on top of.
“Initially it was people in care homes that were affected, then after the summer period it moved into the younger age groups. There have been differences in who is affected, but there has been a sustained high level.”
Why is RCT suffering such sustained high levels of Covid?
Some dismiss the problems seen in areas like Rhondda Cynon Tâf as being mainly caused by people not following the rules. This is a gross oversimplification that underplays the efforts of the vast majority of people living in these areas.
Much closer to the truth is that people are dying on a larger scale in RCT because they live in one of the most deprived parts of the UK.
Perversely, the community spirit and support people give to one another may be playing a part in the high Covid rates.
However, non-compliance has played its part. And while it might not be the reason for sustained community transmission, it did play a role in seeding the virus in these areas in the first place.
There have been highprofile incidences such as a club trip to Doncaster races that stopped in several pubs, and three RCT pubs given closure notices for not following rules. There have been similar instances in different parts of Wales.
“There have been some issues with non-compliance but I would say they are a minority,” said Heather Lewis.
“In the summer was non-compliance that brought the virus into communities, definitely. I would say that at that point everybody had Covid fatigue.
“As soon as the restrictions were lifted people couldn’t wait to go on their holidays and they couldn’t wait to see one another again.
“There was definitely non-compliance. There was the trip to Doncaster, for example, and there were other examples. I would stress that there are only pockets of non-compliance.
“We did see a phenomenon back in the summer with pub culture, where younger people would congregate together in pubs before the rule of four was so tightly enforced and we found then that we had some non-compliance.
“But it wasn’t wilful noncompliance, it was just young people having a few drinks and forgetting they had to socially distance.
“This was just around certain premises. We have it had people who have gone on holidays in the summer and come back and had house parties where they have given it to everyone in the party.
“However, the vast majority of people from what I see are working really hard and making massive sacrifices to try and get the numbers under control.
“The small amount of rule breaking may be the reason the virus entered communities, but it is not the reason for the sustained high numbers or higher death rates.”
So if it isn’t rule breaking making the virus more widespread in RCT, what is it? According to Ms Lewis, there are number of entrenched societal issues that have created a perfect storm in the area.
Employment
Firstly, people in RCT are simply more likely to be in roles which require faceto-face interaction with others.
Carers, supermarket workers, manual labourers – all those professions that we gladly clapped for because the pandemic showed us just how essential they are.
But it is the nature of these roles that you are more likely to catch Covid as you have more face-toface contact with people.
Added to this is the fact that these jobs are, in the main, not well paid and often insecure, which leads to people feeling they cannot miss work.
“It just isn’t as simple when you have people on zero-hours contracts or low wages who feel it is very difficult for them to not go to work and also difficult to self-isolate because of the physical environment,” said Ms Lewis.
“If your primary concern is getting enough for rent, food and heating your house, it is hard.” Family ties
One of the great things
about RCT is that sense of community.
Eighteen months ago the Western Mail went to Penrhiwceiber in the Cynon Valley where, according to official numbers, half of children grow up in poverty.
But being officially classed as living in poverty doesn’t mean a lack of support.
And Ms Lewis says that the inherent closeness within communities means somewhere like RCT requires a greater behavioural change than somewhere with a more transient population like Cardiff.
“I was born in Rhondda Cynon Tâf and I still live in Rhondda Cynon Tâf. In the area where I was born everybody will know everybody. There are no secrets there unfortunately!” she says.
“You have social and family networks to look after one another, to look after each other’s children. Often multiple generations will live in the same street or town. I can think of one street where, of the 20 houses, about seven of them are occupied by the same family.
“So you have that interaction and reliance on one another. So you go to your mother’s house and you feel safe there.
“So while in Tesco you will wear a mask and keep your distance, you might not be as alert to those risks at your mother’s house because you feel safe in that environment.”
These ties are not just comforting, they are essential.
With lower incomes it is hard to afford childcare while doing jobs that can’t be done from home.
This means a reliance on grandparents and other relatives.
This increases lines of transmission that means that community spread is harder to get on top of.
Housing
Even if you had 100% compliance with the rules, the nature of much of the housing in the Valleys means that the virus easily spreads. “There are a lot of terraced streets that are closely Lewis.
“The houses are very small so families are very close together and it’s not as easy for them to selfisolate.”
Small and cramped housing is not just detrimental in terms of virus transmission, but also for those having to lock down in close quarters.
If you have multiple young people trying to home-school simultaneously it is far harder for them to continue their education, especially if they are having to share computers with siblings. packed,”
Mobility
said
Ms
“Car ownership is much lower in RCT than other places,” says Ms Lewis.
This has a number of impacts on the virus: firstly, people are more reliant on public transport, which opens up more lines of transmission.
Furthermore, people, especially the elderly, can be reliant on others giving them a lift in order to get, for example, to a doctor’s appointment. This mixing of vulnerable people with those who may well be asymptomatic is another way the virus can spread.
This inability to travel also poses an issue for healthcare planners with regard to testing.
If people are not able to travel far, they may be unable to get a test (you wouldn’t want people with symptoms hopping on the bus).
This means it is harder to get a handle on just how much Covid there is in the area.
Ms Lewis added: “If people haven’t got a car, where do you put a testing centre in order to make it accessible to lots of people?”
General ill health
Even if all these other factors that help the virus spread were not in place, RCT would still likely have more deaths than average.
“We know that who live in the deprived areas will those most have poorer health and lower life expectancy,” says Ms Lewis.
“If you look at RCT it has higher levels than average of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and stroke, all of the conditions that cause higher mortality, and RCT has it in spades.”
It’s important to that RCT is not homogenous area.
There are differences across the county and it is perhaps clumsy to speak about it in generalities.
Some parts have been hit harder than others, but it is hard to know exactly because the data can be skewed if there is a care setting in the area.
Ms Lewis said: “There have been areas like lower Rhondda that keep coming up.
“Tonyrefail is another one that keeps coming up. Penrhiwceiber and other parts of the Cynon Valley as well.
“There are areas which were not as significantly affected but sometimes the numbers get skewed if they have got a care home there, for example.” note one