7 Million Front Gardens Lost To Car Parking Space But Are Landlords Cashing In?
Landlords with Garden Parking Can Charge Premium Rents
Around 80% of Britain’s 26 Million residential homes and Private Rental Sector properties were originally built with a front garden plot, according to figures released by the RAC Foundation.
Although today almost 1/3 of front gardens of privately owned and landlord buy to let rental properties have been turned into hardstanding which means 7 Million front gardens are now parking for cars, says the RAC’s new report – Spaced Out: Perspectives on parking policy.
The authors say this is a total area roughly equivalent to 72 Olympic Parks and the need for extra parking spaces is due to the huge rise in car ownership, up from just 2 Million cars in 1950, to 28.5 Million in 2011.
Houses built between 1919 and 1964 were deemed most likely to have been built with a front garden and therefore it is these properties that are most likely to have seen the change.
Even where properties have garages they are generally used for general storage rather than for vehicles or they have been integrated into existing properties and have been converted into extra accommodation space.
Landlords with rental properties with hardstanding parking areas in the front garden or even off-road parking are able to charge premium rents in certain areas of the UK due to the lack of permitted parking on streets, attracting working young professional tenants with cars and can even secure uninterrupted cashflow by taking out Rent Guarantee Insurance.
Tenants are looking for properties to rent that suit their individual needs and the majority of working professionals are vehicle owners, so parking does become an issue for them, if rental properties do not have the correct facilities to satisfy the tenants requirements then they will not appeal and will see increased void periods.
Car ownership is set to keep on rising, but where are these vehicles going to go? Unless more streets are going to be clogged up with parked cars, front gardens will continue to disappear under a raft of concrete, which may be good news for landlords but not so great for flood water run-off or even wildlife according to the report.
