Burlington Court is a Retirement Living development in Bridlington in North Humberside, which opened in mid-2006. It has been managed by First Port since this date.

We were disappointed by Burlington Court’s sales performance at the time as it took much longer to sell than expected.

In part, this was because of the low car parking provision provided on site, which was lower than normal at the time due to the nature of the site’s layout and the conditions required by the local authority (totalling 14 spaces for 36 units).

As you know, one of our major focuses in recent years has been on increasing parking ratios in our developments as many of our customers have increasingly retained the use of their car, and this has had a positive impact on more recent sales.

The site was also challenging because of its location within Bridlington, and the local area is seen to be one of the less in-demand locations in the town.

It is immediately adjacent to some disadvantaged areas which sadly do not have a positive reputation in the town.

Another reason for the challenging sales conditions was the fact the site opened at the peak of the housing market which quickly became the national recession that hit in 2007/8.

At the time, our average sales period for a typical development was around three years, and this unfortunately coincided with the downturn.

As a result, the site didn’t sell out until 2011 and this had a big impact on the prices that we were able to achieve. Again, as you know, our sales periods have since improved substantially, as we have improved our product and market conditions have got better.

We now achieve 50% of our sales off plan on average and target selling out in full in 12 months, which helps to create good forward momentum for resales.

Looking at the home.co.uk report (see link), prices for flats in Bridlington between July 2006 and October 2016 (the latest data point) show that local prices have not recovered since the recession, falling 25% of average, which explains some of the drop. http://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices_report.htm?location=bridlington&startmonth=07&startyear=2006&endmonth=10&endyear=2016

Because the site proved to be so difficult to sell due to the above reasons, we were required to offer significant incentives to support the purchases.

These averaged c£15,000 per apartment (or around 10.5% of the Land Registry price), in addition to a number of shared equity deals, and should be factored into the prices as the incentives are not included on the Land Registry data (which only records total price paid).

With regard to Chestnut Court, which is now selling in Bridlington, this new development has fewer apartments and features our latest specification, which, as you know, has moved on significantly in the past 10 years.

It has a much greater share of two-bedroom apartments, more car parking spaces (as mentioned above, and is close to 1 space per apartment with 29 spaces for 32 units), en-suites, walk-in wardrobes, and extensive landscaped grounds.

We have also made significant improvements to our leases, included introducing 999 year lease periods.

In addition, the new site is located in Martondale, a suburb of Bridlington which is one of the most in-demand areas of the town, and this gives us confidence that the development will perform well in future years.

We also now provide all management services in-house and are the head-lessee on all new developments, which means no third party is involved in our developments.

However, we appreciate these changes do not benefit the homeowners at Burlington Court.

While it is of course disappointing to see examples of developments where prices have fallen, this is not always the case.

The majority of properties managed by McCarthy & Stone have increased in value when resold (based on data relating to managed properties resold in 2016) and historical data suggests around a third of all our properties outperform their local market.

A number of other points were made in our more detailed response to you on resales, which notes the typical premium paid for new build retirement properties (of around 10-15%) and the lifestyle benefits offered by retirement living, and is on your website here.

Both First Port and McCarthy & Stone offer resale support (through Retirement Homesearch and RetirementMove respectively). If either of these services would be helpful to the homeowners at Burlington Court, please let us know and we can arrange for them to contact the residents.