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| Can you Afford to Live in Cornwall? |
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Page 1 of 6 Steve Bough reports on the housing crisis in Cornwall. Cornwall may well be one of the most desirable places to live in the UK but since the house price boom, which has affected us all over the last decade, actually owning a property in the place where you were born is now often not an option. With no signs of house prices abating and even less chance of well paid employment, affordable housing in the duchy has now reached crisis point. Steve Bough reports. You may not think there is a housing crisis in Cornwall but there is. House prices in The Duchy are enormously high, especially in comparison to the low wages, though, in fairness, house prices are high all over the country. However many other regions don’t have as many second homes and such low incomes as Cornwall, all of which has a dramatic impact on the housing situation. Take this statistic for example: official figures for St Just-in-Roseland parish show that there are 234 second and holiday homes, and just 596 homes in which people are in full-time residence. That’s a lot of homes standing empty for large slices of the year. In fact it’s reported that one in three homes in Cornwall are bought as second homes by people from outside. Across all of Cornwall, it’s the same. In the Kerrier district, people are suffering a terrible housing crisis. Average house prices in Kerrier are £185,000 while average local wages for the district for the year 2005 were only £16,368. Potential first time buyers have pretty much no chance to own their own homes, even ones in the £120,000 mark, of which there are very few. How many people can find £50,000+ to put down on deposit? Even then, you’d still need a huge mortgage. It’s similar reading for the whole of Cornwall, with certain pockets such as the north Cornish coast, Helford and the far west being particularly hit hard. In Newquay, it’s reckoned that the opening of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen has added at least £50,000 pounds to property prices, according to one local estate agent. If you can’t buy, then the other option is rented accommodation. However, this too is in short supply and across Cornwall rents average around the £500 mark. Again not cheap especially if you’re on a low income, which many in Cornwall are. There is of course no easy solution to the housing crisis. And let’s face it, most homeowners want their property to increase in value and, if we’re honest, many of us would like to have second homes too, if we could afford it. |
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