Bricks
& Mortar6 Friday May 27 2022
the times
some locals, has definitely put the area
on the map. “There is one area of rapid
interest: York, Thirsk, Northallerton,
Darlington — anywhere within that
corridor where you can commute easily
down to London. People do think, ‘If
Rishi can do it, so can I.’ There’s a lot
of talk about moving the Treasury to
Darlington too, which is raising interest.”
In Ilkley, with its outstanding non-
selective co-ed grammar school, thriving
town centre and proximity to glorious
countryside, Patrick McCutcheon, the
head of residential at Dacre, Son &
Hartley, says: “It’s hard to find a price
band, property or style that isn’tLeeds in November 2021. Wales has had
some catching up to do for a long time.
“We’re pulled by the Humber’s figures
as well, don’t forget,” Stoyle adds. It’s
important to recognise that the
Yorkshire market is not all about prime
properties in gilded locations, such as
York, Harrogate, Leeds and the wild
beauty of the Yorkshire Dales — not to
mention the ridiculously pretty villages
of the Howardian Hills, north of York,
such as Brandsby, Crayke and Gilling.
Gilmore predicts “more room for
additional price growth in some of the
most affordable markets across the
region”. Potentially, this will bring aboost to towns in West and South
Yorkshire, such as Wakefield, Rotherham
and Doncaster, which have been left
relatively untroubled by relocators from
the south heading for the smarter
hotspots of North Yorkshire.
Meanwhile, Ed Hartshorne, the
managing director of Blenkin & Co in
York, smiles at the idea of a “Rishi
corridor” around the chancellor’s
Georgian manor house in the village of
Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton,
estimated to be worth at least £2 million.
He says that the presence of Rishi
Sunak and his controversial plan for a
new swimming pool, which has outragedT
he pandemic made
many people want to
move to Yorkshire, with
the buzzy town of Ilkley
so popular it took the
crown in The Sunday
Times Best Places to
Live this year. However,
there could be trouble in paradise.
Although the property portal
Rightmove’s latest figures show a healthy
10.5 per cent year-on-year rise in sold
prices, Yorkshire and the Humber has
been overtaken in growth by Wales
(13 per cent) and the North West
(11.1 per cent).
When the first lockdown ended two
years ago, the best Yorkshire homes
were selling so quickly they were going
under offer before hopeful London
relocators had got as far as Wetherby
services on the A1.
Speaking in May 2021 Mark Manning,
a director of Fine & Country estate
agency in the market town of Wetherby,
said that the number of “outside area”
buyers he’d spoken to had increased
by a whopping 250 per cent in the
previous 12 months.
After this unprecedented
boom, fuelled by buyers
fleeing cities (especially
London) for fresh air,
home working
potential, good
schools and easy
rail links back to
the smoke if
required (fastest
journey time from York
to King’s Cross: one hour
and 49 minutes), is it
inevitable there will be a bust?
Grainne Gilmore, the head of
research at property portal Zoopla,
certainly sounds a cautionary note: “We
expect the current level of price growth
to ease through the rest of the year, and
are forecasting price growth to be 3 per
cent in Yorkshire and the Humber by the
end of this year.”
“It’s cooling,” says Toby Cockcroft, the
owner of the York-based prime estate
agency Croft Residential. “Some people
will say it’s cooling far quicker than they
can control.” He adds: “We’re selling
houses, but are we going to the sell the
volume we’ve sold over the last two
years? No. Stock is low. Scarily low.
Honestly, it’s going to get harder and
harder. Time to put your tin hat on. The
market’s going to change.”
While Cockcroft can confidently bring
to market outstanding properties such
as Myddelton Lodge in Ilkley, a grade I
listed, 16th-century manor house with 11
bedrooms for £4.95 million, he says that
buyers in the prime Yorkshire market
“have got an eye on the back pocket”.
“We’re getting the offers, but they’re
certainly opening up at 10 per cent
beneath the guide price,” he says. “There
will always be people with deep pockets.
But you have to take into account factors
that have come into play — pricing, the
state of the economy, inflation and
lifestyle choices. How many people wake
up at the moment and say, ‘I’ll tell you
what, love, let’s spend £2 million on a
house’? It’s more likely to be a case of,
‘Let’s just keep track of prices for the
next three or four months.’ ”
Ed Stoyle, the head of residential at
Savills in York, is more optimistic. He
feels that any drop in property prices
“won’t be quite such a cliff edge as the
last time [2008] — it will be a gradual
slowdown. It won’t be a significant
correction, it will just go down slightly.”
Stoyle believes that the confirmation
of the high-speed HS2 rail link between
Manchester and London may have
helped to give the North West the boost
that Rightmove reports; the government
scrapped the proposed connection to
Top: the Yorkshire
Dales. From left to right:
Fir Tree Farmhouse,
near Stokesley, is on
sale for £1.5 million
through Robin Jessop;
a six-bedroom
farmstead in Ruston,
seven miles from
Scarborough, is on the
market for £895,000
with Savills; Wheatley
Chase, 1.5 miles from
Ilkley, is on sale for
£3.75 million through
Dacre, Son & HartleyTrouble in God’s
own country?
The Yorkshire housing market boomed during
the pandemic — but now there are signs of cooling.
Jayne Dowle reports
Stock is low.
Scarily low.
Time to put your tin
hat on. The market’s
going to change