The Staines Property Market and Euro 2016

Just in case you're not lucky enough to be jetting off to France for the UEFA Euro 2016 football tournament, I thought we’d have a bit of fun looking at the different nationalities that have made their home in Staines. I was hoping it would give me a good idea of who best to soak up the atmosphere with. On a more serious note, I thought it would also be interesting to see how EU migration has affected our property market. During my research some interesting numbers appeared. Going into Euro 2016, France were 3/1 favourites, then Germany at 7/2, third Spain at 11/2, then England at 9/1, Italy 16/1, Poland 50/1, Romania and Wales at 100/1, Ireland at 150/1 and Northern Ireland 500/1. Don’t forget Leicester were 5000/1 at the start of last season! Of the 95,598 residents in Spelthorne, the Home Nations will of course find the biggest bodies of support: 79,435 of the residents are from England, 972 from Wales, 359 from Northern Ireland and 1,087 from Ireland; I can’t help feeling sorry for the 1,343 Scots who didn’t get into the finals! Mainland Europeans make up 3.6% of the population in Spelthorne. Of that 3.6%, 1.68% are from Western Europe and EU residents from Eastern Europe - i.e. the Accession Countries to the EU between 2003 to 2007 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Roumania) make up 1.92% of the population of the Spelthorne Constituency. Broken down into the relevant football teams, Spelthorne has … 217 French 404 Germans 269 Italians 163 Spanish 972 Poles 155 Romanians But what does this have to do with the Staines property market? Quite a lot in fact. Many of the Europeans were economic migrants, especially those from Eastern Europe. And this EU migration has served to fill gaps in skills and labour supply during the growth periods of the mid 2000’s. Subsequently over the last five years in Staines, EU migrants have done little to displace native workers but consistently take the jobs us Brits often turn our noses up at. And of course as there is no preferential treatment for council housing for EU migrants, so they have in fact increased demand for private rented accommodation in Staines. This has meant, as demand for housing in Staines has remained strong, Staines landlords have continued to buy properties to rent out. Therefore, the value of every homeowner’s property in Staines has been kept high because of the demand from these Staines landlords buying starter homes to rent out, allowing existing homeowners to move up the property ladder – benefiting everyone in the chain. Despite strong demand, rents have remained reasonable for tenants: in Staines, rents are only 20.1% higher than they were in 2005, not bad when you consider we have had 38.52% inflation in the UK economy as a whole over the same 11 year period. So EU migration has meant existing homeowners, landlords and the economy as a whole in Staines (and the rest of the UK) have benefited from better economic conditions and property prices have remained buoyant. No bad thing for Staines’ landlords. Now, I wonder who will win the footy?  Back to the TV! Written in June 2016