by Paddy Shennan and Claire Miller
Is the price right for potential home-makers and investors in parts of Liverpool – or have these areas found themselves unfairly downgraded?
The ECHO has reported that new figures show Liverpool has some of the cheapest house prices in the country.
According to the Office of National Statistics, in 2013, 21 places in England and Wales had average house prices of £50,000 or less – and three of those places were in Liverpool.
The figures showed the area around Sandhills, Bank Hall and Kirkdale stations had an average house price of £46,000, while houses to the west of Walton Lane sold for an average of £46,750.
Meanwhile, the area east of Oakfield Road in Anfield had an average house price of £49,000.
Cheap at double the price?
We headed out to the area around Sandhills, Bank Hall and Kirkdale stations to test the temperature – and the housing market.
There’s a two-bed terraced house for sale in Chirkdale Street – 0.2 miles from Kirkdale station, half a mile from Bank Hall and one mile from Sandhills – for £40,000, £6,000 less than the average house price for the area.
Surely people would be tempted by this?
“You can’t go wrong at £40,000,” says Sarah Purcell, manager of Entwistle Green’s Walton Vale branch.
“It’s unbelievable how prices have come down since the recession hit six or seven years ago – and parts of north Liverpool, especially, have been hit quite badly. It’s a predominantly working class area and people being made redundant led to houses being repossessed.
“The area now attracts a lot of investors, not least from London and the south, but we would love to attract more first-time buyers. It is attractive in so many ways – the houses, which are certainly affordable, are solid and traditional, close to the football grounds and the amenities of County Road, close to Kirkdale station and close to the city centre.
“I think it’s important to try and break the cycle and get more first-time buyers because we don’t want streets of properties that are all rented out.”
How low can we go?
In the area around Sandhills, Bank Hall and Kirkdale stations, the cheapest property we found on the internet was a two-bed terraced house in Bardsay Road, Walton.
It was listed at £25,000 and is 0.7 miles from Kirkdale station, one mile from Bank Hall and 1.2 miles from Walton.
When we arrived, a “sold” sign was up. We weren’t surprised.
The traditional mid-terraced house was being sold by the “modern method of auction”, which allows for longer periods of time for exchange and completion – Block Management and Property Specialist Ltd of Walton later told me the sale was still going through and, for that reason, they couldn’t tell me the price agreed.
But it had to be a bargain. It looked in need of a little TLC, but it’s just a couple of streets away from the mighty Gwladys Street, which backs onto the mighty Goodison Park!
The ‘Flower Streets’
There’s a two-bed house in Snowdrop Street – one of the “Flower streets” and just 0.3 miles from both Sandhills and Bank Hall stations – on the market for £39,995.
It is being marketed by Sutton Kersh, and its city centre branch manager, James Howarth, says of the area it’s in: “There are not many amenities. It’s quite a deprived area – and a very mixed area of commercial, industrial and residential properties, and lenders don’t like that.
“Properties in the north end of Liverpool tend to be much cheaper than in the south end these days. It’s almost like it’s stuck out on a limb – like Liverpool on a national level. Liverpool would have grown more as a city if it was more accessible.”
He adds: “The majority of these sort of properties are normally bought by investors but even they are struggling to rent them out now, and rental incomes are becoming more limited. There is not quite the demand there was.”
Lower still... fancy a £10,000 house?
The lowest-priced house we found when searching in Liverpool did not fall within the area around Sandhills, Bank Hall and Kirkdale stations – but it’s not far away.
A terraced house in Walton Breck Road (see main picture, above) has been listed for £10,000 by Venmore Auctions of Liverpool and will be sold by public auction on March 31 at Liverpool Town Hall.
It’s in need of full refurbishment which might cost the buyer in the region of £25,000 – but that would still leave someone with a house for £35,000!
Ronan Connolly, auction sales manager for the Venmore Group, says: “It has formerly been a retail unit with flat above, but there is the potential to convert it back to a single three-bedroom terrace house, or convert to flats, subject to the relevant planning consents.”
He adds: “House prices in this area of Liverpool, close to Anfield stadium, are probably low due to the football club, housing associations and council purchasing numerous family homes over the years with the intention to expand the stadium, which has only actually taken effect. Regeneration proposals, projects and plans for the Anfield area have changed numerous times. Houses were left empty over all that time, causing a detrimental effect to the streets in the area as home owners moved out and the majority of properties in the area became rentals.
“Tinned-up properties were prone to vandalism and house prices plummeted because of this – nobody wants to live beside a tinned-up property let alone buy one!”
London – another world
You wouldn’t get much for £46,000 in the capital – which, not surprisingly, has the most expensive street in England and Wales.
In 2014, townhouses around a private garden in Trevor Square, Knightsbridge were going for an average of £12.8m.
James Howarth, Sutton Kersh’s city centre branch manager, says: “London and other hotspots around the UK, mostly in the south, represent another world. There were, for example, studio apartments in one part of London which sold for £120,000 just a few years ago which are now going for £500,000. But I think more and more people will be priced out of the London market in the next 12 months, and it would be nice if more investors bought in these sort of areas of Liverpool.”
Meanwhile, the least expensive street in the country was...
The least expensive street in England and Wales, according to these new figures, was Waterloo Walk in Sunderland, where flats sold for an average of £14,050 in 2014.