A few days ago I had met an Architect who mentioned something quite interesting regarding the amount of rooms being built in properties, he said back in the mid 2000s the developments that he was asked to draw were a balance of one and two bed properties, whereas today the majority of buildings he is designing are more toward two and three bedrooms. This made me think can the Camberwell Property market relate to this?

The size of a property and more importantly the number of bedrooms is an important consideration when investing in the property market.  Knowing when and where the demand for tenants is going to come from in the near future as well as understanding the supply side of the buy to let market should form an important part of your property research.

Interestingly in 2001, there were 10,329 households in the two Camberwell wards with a population of 23,426 whereas by 2011 the number of households had grown by 9.5% (11,311) and the population has increased by 16 % (27,163).  You can see from these figures, the population is increasing at a faster rate than the number of households.

During the period 2001 to 2011, the population of Camberwell grew as you would expect in an international city such as London, but although the housing stock also grew, it has not kept the pace with population growth. In fact, the average household size in 2011 5.8% bigger (as 2.4 people per household), the first time for at least 100 years it had not fallen between censuses.

The household formations figure for Camberwell as follows:

• Couples / One family and no others – 15.73%
• Other households – 23.71%
• One-person household was decreased by -4.17%

This decline within the one-person household was most likely because of the affordability of living as a single person in London.  This turn is likely to have forced more people into the couple/family household category.  Finally, there is a big jump in the Other Households group which also covers HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation).

As the pressure on household, density increases Landlords / Developers are taking large traditional homes and converting them into an accommodation with a greater number of self-contained bedrooms where they look to achieve more realistic rental yields in an expensive property market.

So, how does this affect Camberwell Homeowners and Landlords? As there has been an increase in larger households in the last decade, it looks like landlords will look to buy larger properties to rent out which is potentially good news for homeowners of this type of property who will get a good price for their home as they sell it on.