The best places to live in the UK

National World - LocalTV

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.

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