Finding out the mix of owners and council tenants in an area

RHemmings

Hi all. I have seen advice to check the ratio between homes that are owned outright, and council homes in an area. But, I have no idea how to do this. Is it possible, and if so how?

I know I can check for house sales in an area on Zoopla, but I don't think this is going to be accurate. I heard someone say that they checked an area and they had a percentage figure to quote, but I don't know how they obtained it. 

Murphybear

May I ask why you want to know this?  Are you assuming that all house owners are perfect neighbours and all council tenants are evil, noisy, disruptive and the neighbours from hell?  I lived next door to the neighbours from hell a few years ago.  We rented privately and they owned the house.  After he physically threatened my husband when he complained about the noise from next door (the one and only complaint in 9 years) we decided to move.  The EA happened to be a friend and he had some tenants on his books who were difficult to place as they were sharers who worked difficult hours and tended to get home and play music at midnight.  He put them in the house  

elsien

It doesn’t necessarily help you any with any useful information anyway.
There are a lot of privately owned houses where I live. Many of them rented out, many of them HMOs. Most causing no problems at all.

Merlin139

I have a new estate being built behind my house with around 500 homes. Off the plans I can see which will be Affordable homes and which will be Social housing. 

Makes no difference to me who moves into these houses because I can have no control over it. Its quite possible when they are all built 50% could be rented out to tenants but at the moment only 10% will be for social housing.

Most of my neighbours in the last 22 years have been excellent and a couple have been a PIA! 

user1977

Plenty of sources online if you do some searching ("housing tenure" and "demographics" would be useful terms to use).

Not sure what you mean by house sales not being accurate - a major clue would be a lack of any recorded sales, which is more likely to happen where there's a stock of social housing.

YoungBlueEyes

I've used https://www.streetcheck.co.uk/ before, more for a general idea and interest than taking it word for word though.

And just to reiterate, council tenants/tenants in general vs owners really doesn't tell you anything. I lived next door to tenants in my previous house and they were lovely decent people. Next door to us now are owners and I spose in theory they appear to be nice well-to-do people. But they are screaming hateful scum who don't give a bu99ery about their noise/mess and how it affects the rest of our cul-de-sac. It's not a reliable measure, if that's what you're wanting that information for. You'd be better visiting the area at various times on various days to get a good idea of what living there could be like. 

RedFraggle

Is the request connected with lender mortgage restrictions? 

frugalmacdugal

Hi,

you could move into a 'posh' area and still have nuisance neighbours.

Exodi

Part of our survey included a 'Zoom Local' report that was extremely detailed, I'd definitely recommend one but no idea of the cost.

It includes tenure against the UK average, including 'Social Rented' statistics. It is 60 pages and includes tons and tons of different metrics, I wouldn't do it credit even trying to list them off. Let's just say it is incredibly detailed to the point of suspicion. It also includes the number of criminal offences reported and what they were.

While I won't pretend that I don't understand your reluctance to live next door to a council estate (you're certainly not the first, it's not even an uncommon request), I would say that if you had the neighbour from hell, it would probably be better that they were a council tenant instead of a homeowner. You can complain to the LA about a social tenant, who may be relocated, but you can't force another owner to sell their house because you don't get on.

In this sense, we've always treaded extremely lightly with owner-occupier neighbours. Fortunately we have always got on famously. 

DullGreyGuy

RHemmings said:

Hi all. I have seen advice to check the ratio between homes that are owned outright, and council homes in an area. But, I have no idea how to do this. Is it possible, and if so how?

I know I can check for house sales in an area on Zoopla, but I don't think this is going to be accurate. I heard someone say that they checked an area and they had a percentage figure to quote, but I don't know how they obtained it. 

There are many options providers on area demographics, mainly targeted at marketing companies so they can target their mail shots appropriately etc. 

It really depends on what you are trying to achieve as there are many other socio-economic considerations than just if a property is considered owned outright, owned mortgaged, rented, social housing etc. 

RHemmings

Murphybear said:

May I ask why you want to know this?  Are you assuming that all house owners are perfect neighbours and all council tenants are evil, noisy, disruptive and the neighbours from hell?  I lived next door to the neighbours from hell a few years ago.  We rented privately and they owned the house.  After he physically threatened my husband when he complained about the noise from next door (the one and only complaint in 9 years) we decided to move.  The EA happened to be a friend and he had some tenants on his books who were difficult to place as they were sharers who worked difficult hours and tended to get home and play music at midnight.  He put them in the house  

No. I wasn't thinking this at all. I just wanted another tool to compare areas. I'm sorry to hear of your issues with a home-owning neighbour, but I'm not sure it's relevant to me being able to collect various statistics about properties I might buy. 

EDIT: Having trouble with multi-quote on this forum. I will edit this post further. 

RedFraggle said:

Is the request connected with lender mortgage restrictions? 

No. I'm a cash buyer with no need for a mortgage. 

Exodi said:

Part of our survey included a 'Zoom Local' report that was extremely detailed, I'd definitely recommend one but no idea of the cost.

Thank you for this. I will look further into this Zoom Local report. 

Exodi said:

While I won't pretend that I don't understand your reluctance to live next door to a council estate (you're certainly not the first, it's not even an uncommon request), I would say that if you had the neighbour from hell, it would probably be better that they were a council tenant instead of a homeowner. You can complain to the LA about a social tenant, who may be relocated, but you can't force another owner to sell their house because you don't get on.

Everyone is assuming that I have a reluctance to live next door to a council estate. I don't, but want to know more about areas in general and it's just another bit of information to look.

I took my partner (who is from outside the UK and doesn't know the local situation) to two areas with large numbers of council properties to look at the area as she is more interested in minimising house prices than I am. In one case the house was certainly satisfactory but the whole area was littered with fly-tipping style rubbish. For the other area, she stood in fresh human excrement while walking through the local shops. She has absolutely ruled out both areas and I don't feel she is being unreasonable. I know that someone may say that someone may leave human excrement outside the shops in any area, this has coloured her view of the area. And, she doesn't know about council housing in general (though, I have explained it now.)