UK homeowners face future of shrinking properties as housing prices continue to rise

The latest property trend gives ‘downsizing’ a whole new meaning, but do we really want to live like this?

Life size: as prices get bigger, square footage is getting smaller... and smaller (Getty)

Us Brits may occupy some of the smallest spaces in Europe, but even a one-bedroom flat could soon seem spacious compared to what the future may hold for hopeful homebuyers.

One developer is taking the whole issue of limited space in our city centres to a new level with what’s been dubbed the “micro home” – a one-bedroom flat with a sliding wall so the owner can choose between one bedroom or two really tiny ones.

Inspired Homes, the firm working on the concept, pitches it as the solution for cash-strapped first-time buyers who need extra income from renting out a second bedroom, either for the mortgage, or to get them through the month after forking out in an eye-wateringly expensive market.

Designed for life?

We may each own more stuff today than ever before but Martin Skinner, chief executive of Inspired Homes claims these tiny spaces are likely to play a major role in the future of the British housing market.

“High spec, well-designed micro-apartments are growing in demand not just because they are more affordable but also because of the changing way people live,” he says. “For example, with growth of the sharing economy and more possessions like music and film collections stored in the cloud, it is now much easier to live in smaller apartments than it was in the past.”

Living loopholes

Tiny homes have long been touted as a solution to providing more affordable property but historically the government’s nationally described space standard made it difficult for developers to obtain planning permission, even when there was customer demand.

However, these space standards do not apply for office-to-residential conversions, meaning that home-builders have had greater freedom since 2013 when new rules came into force encouraging such developments.

And the housing White Paper published at the start of the year suggested the government plans to review current space standards as part of ensuring consumers are offered a wider and more affordable choice.

Providing greater customer choice is one thing but this could also be seen as the final slide towards a future in which first-time buyers are forced to accept homes so small that they couldn’t swing a kitten, even if they could afford to give up the floor space to a litter tray.

National issue

London and other big cities are of course particularly affected by shrinking home sizes, thanks to the limited space and almost unlimited property values. Buyers may well prefer a micro-home if the other options are limited to paying rising rents to live in someone else’s property or moving out of the city altogether.

But this isn’t just an urban problem. One study carried out by the University of Cambridge recently found that 55% of UK dwellings fall short of the accepted internal space standard.

In fact, the UK has the smallest homes by floor area in Europe; the average newly built home here is just 76 sq m compared to 137 sq m in Denmark.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has warned that more than half of new homes are being built to a scale too small for families to live in, describing them as “tiny, rabbit-hutch new-builds”.

Jane Duncan, president of the institute declared in 2015: “We urgently need new homes, but building small homes or cutting corners when converting office buildings to flats is short-sighted and fails the people these new homes are meant to serve.

The government must take action to ensure a fairer minimum space standard is applied to all new homes across the country.”

Instead of acting to enforce minimum standards as RIBA demanded, it seems the government is willing to consider doing away with them altogether.

Does it matter?

It could be argued that we need to get real. Space, particularly within cities, is at a premium. And, while Halifax figures suggest that the housing market is beginning to cool, supply issues are likely to ensure prices do not fall far.

So maybe new buyers need to accept smaller homes in order to get a foot on the rung of the housing ladder. Some ministers certainly seem to think so.

In October last year the housing minister Gavin Barwell told the Conservative conference that relaxing the rules on the size of new-build flats could help prevent young buyers from being priced out of the market.

“Now look: most people, given the choice, would like to live in a nice big home,” he admitted. “But I think for many young people – if I was 22 today, I would rather have the chance to own that than be priced out.”

However, some academics argue that space is not simply a ‘nice to have’ optional extra, it is fundamental to our wellbeing.

“A lack of space affects quality of life,” concluded the Cambridge report. “As well as simply allowing people to have a comfortable standard of living, additional space can also reduce stress by allowing members of the same household to engage in different activities at the same time, and ease feelings of claustrophobia experienced in small spaces.”

Desperation is never a good look for buyers but the property market is so seriously undersupplied that there’s huge competition for the new homes available.

That doesn’t just drive up prices; it can affect standards as well. Recent months have seen concerns expressed over some of the major builders’ quality and the selling of leaseholds to investment companies that force up ground rents.

The fear now is that adequate space is yet another standard that will fall by the wayside if the UK keeps failing to build the number of homes we need.