On the right track?

When visiting Guildford railway station at around 6 a:m, one recent morning, I was staggered to see just how busy the platform was for the next train travelling up to London Waterloo. It made me wonder a number of things. How early do these commuters have to get up in the morning; and secondly, have they saved time by buying a property to live in, situated close by to the station?

While we are fortunate to have two railways stations in Guildford plus further stations on the outskirts off the town in Shalford, Worplesdon, Farncombe and Godalming, most passengers travel from Guildford mainline station, possibly because it has so many connections to London and other major towns in the South East.

This is confirmed by a report published in 2015. This studied the number of passenger journeys in and out of the UK's railway stations. The busiest station in the country was London Waterloo with an estimated 99.2m entries and exits in 2014/15, followed by London Victoria with 85.3m suggesting the majority of commuters into London are likely to be living in the South East.

The report confirmed that the busiest station in Surrey (and 40th in the country) was Guildford with 8.1m passenger journeys. Woking was the second busiest (7,462,936 passengers), followed by Epsom (3,740,752), Redhill (3,629,342) and Staines (2,825,096).

So, if Guildford is the busiest railway station in Surrey and people prefer to have a short journey from home to the station how does this affect the property market?

Guildford mainline railway station

There are 54, 147 and 369 properties on Rightmove currently available for sale to prospective buyers looking to move to a location within 1/4, 1/2 and 1 mile of the station respectively, and therefore within a 20 minute walk.

There are currently 305 more flats and houses, of all types, for sale at least a 10 minute walk away (1/2 - 1 mile) than within a 1/4 mile walk, where there are just 56. This might be because much of this area within 1/4 mile of the station is occupied by Network Rail and the University of Surrey. There are more semi-detached properties on the market within a mile of the station than any other type of house, followed by detached and then terraced. One third of the properties on sale in this area are flats.

Zoopla quotes the average price for property in and around the railway station was £558,347 in August 2019 with flats selling for an average of £331,904 and terraced houses for £479,224.

This compares to the area 1/2 mile away from the station where the average price for property stood at £480,553 in August 2019 with flats selling for an average of £187,312 and terraced houses for £474,683.

The average price for property located 1 mile from the railway station stood at £400,884 in August 2019 with flats selling for an average of £331,904 and terraced houses for £402,368.

These figures therefore suggest that it it is more expensive to buy a property close to the station but gets cheaper as one travels further out from this location. This is possibly because there are fewer properties within the 1/4 mile distance so drives up price, or indeed buyers are willing to pay more for a property located close to the station.

However Zoopla also states that property values increased by 14.61%, in the last 5 years, for properties located more than 1/4 mile away from the station but only 11.52% for those located closer to the station.

If you would like to talk to us about property in Guildford please feel free to call me on 01483 600840 or go to https://instantvaluation.newman.uk.com/ to discover how much your property is worth today.