£6.22bn – The total value of all Rugby Property Market

“How much would it cost to buy all the properties in Rugby?”

This fascinating question was posed by the 14-year-old son of one of my Rugby landlords when they both popped into my offices before the Christmas break (doesn’t that seem an age away now!). I thought to myself, that over the Christmas break, I would sit down and calculate what the total value of all the properties in Rugby are worth … and just for fun, work out how much they have gone up in value since his son was born back in the autumn of 2002.

In the last 14 years, since the autumn of 2002, the total value of Rugby property has increased by 88% or £2.91 billion to a total of £6.22 billion. Interesting, when you consider the FTSE100 has only risen by 68.9% and inflation (i.e. the UK Retail Price Index) rose by 38.7% during the same 15 years.

When I delved deeper into the numbers, the average price currently being paid by Rugby households stands at £209,401.… but you know me, I wasn’t going to stop there, so I split the property market down into individual property types in Rugby; the average numbers come out like this ..

Rugby Property Market
Average Value –
Detached Property – £337,000
Semi-Detached Property – £204,997
Terraced/Town House Property – £161,392
Apartment – £107,500
… yet it got even more fascinating when I multiplied the total number of each type of property by the average value. Even though detached houses are more expensive, when you compare them with the much cheaper semi-detached houses, you can see detached properties don’t actually fare much better in terms of total pound note value of the semi-detached houses.

Total Value of all the Rugby
Detached Properties – £2,234,647,000
Semi-Detached Properties – £2,220,937,498
Terraced/Town House Properties – £1,276,126,544
Apartments – £485,362,500

So, what does this all mean for Rugby? Well as we enter the unchartered waters of 2017 and beyond, even though property values are already declining in certain parts of the previously over cooked Central London property market, the outlook in Rugby remains relatively good as over the last five years, the local property market was a lot more sensible than central London’s.

Rugby house values will remain resilient for several reasons. Firstly, demand for rental property remains strong with continued immigration and population growth. Secondly, with 0.25 per cent interest rates, borrowing has never been so cheap and finally the simple lack of new house building in Rugby not keeping up with current demand, let alone eating into years and years of under investment – means only one thing – yes it might be a bumpy ride over the next 12 to 24 months but, in the medium term, property ownership and property investment in Rugby has always, and will always, ride out the storm.

In the coming weeks, I will look in greater detail at my thoughts for the 2017 Rugby Property Market.

Iain Havell