The best places to live in the UK

Local TV

Following the Times’ list of the best places to live in the UK, we speak to Zoopla’s Executive Director, Richard Connell, about what makes a place desirable for house buyers.

Transcript

00:00A lot of the places that come at the top of these best places to live, they are accessible

00:04to kind of major employment centers, you know, whether that's close to Edinburgh, whether

00:10it goes to sort of York or Manchester, accessible to London, Bristol, Bath, those sort of markets

00:17basically.

00:18Obviously, we're in more difficult times at the moment.

00:20Has that affected sort of the way people look at housing?

00:23Absolutely.

00:24I mean, eight in 10 people buying a property use a mortgage.

00:28So what you can afford with a mortgage, what mortgage rates are, you know, it's particularly

00:34acute for first time buyers who need to typically put down quite a large deposit now, averaging

00:40around about 20% of the value of the property, you know, used to be close to 5% 30 or 40

00:45years ago.

00:46So affordability matters to first time buyers, it matters to upsizers.

00:49Things like green spaces, nice places to visit and cultural things, are they very important

00:54to home buyers?

00:55Yeah, absolutely.

00:57I think it's the overall, I think what people focus on the most is their home.

01:01What's the immediate environment?

01:03What do I want on my kind of local area?

01:06And then I think what really makes places jump up the rankings is it's got a, you know,

01:09a great stock of housing.

01:12It's got all the right kind of facilities, local services, etc, the accessibility.

01:17And then what really makes people jump to the top of the ranking then is all these other

01:20things basically, it's the parks, it's the, you know, with lots of people walking dogs

01:25and things, or, you know, just it's that sort of the extra things that people want

01:29as part of a, of a sort of the full experience of living in a location, basically.

01:35Looking ahead then, are there any areas that you're aware of up and coming areas that you

01:40could maybe sort of trends moving towards best places to live list?

01:45Anywhere that's lower down on the list now that you feel like an area or a region that

01:48might sort of have a bit of a boost on that list next year?

01:53I think the, I think it's all about affordability.

01:55I think a lot of these places on this list are reasonably expensive.

01:58They're the sort of asset-rich places.

02:01I think the more active housing markets or the ones that are going to do well are those

02:05offer great value for money and almost these places of tomorrow, value for money, but offering

02:10elements of these places, so accessible, affordable.

02:14I think, yeah, that the real housing market is really being shaped by affordability and

02:17access to housing with higher mortgage rates, higher house prices.

02:22So that's going to be the key factor, I think, that shapes tomorrow's list of emerging markets

02:27and areas where people want to move to live.

Category

Transcript

Recommended