The housing market in Paignton

Whether you’re looking to buy, looking to sell, or even not looking at all – most people will always have half an eye on their area’s house prices.

And obtaining such information has never been easier with a number of websites detailing the market trends in any specific town, suburb or even street.

A good start for looking at the trends in Paignton is FindaProperty.com. This easy-to-use site breaks gives the year-on-year property prices since 1999.

Glancing at this shows that prices in Paignton peaked in 2007 and have since been on the fall.

Last year the average price of a Paignton property (detached, terrace, flats etc) was £132,175, greatly down on the 2008 average of £186.391.

Interestingly this figure of £132,175 in 2009 is significantly lower than neighbouring Torquay (£151,151) and also Brixham (£189,981).

Torbay prices last year were well below the South West Regional average of £239,938 indicating that the figures aren’t as high as one might think for being in the English Riviera. 

Good news for potential buyers then…

I spoke to one such buyer Rob Simmons. He and his family are looking to return to south Devon after living in Liverpool for about ten years.

“Obviously in the north of England the prices are lower than the Westcountry we don’t have too much money to play around with,” said Rob.

“We want to move to Torbay and Paignton prices seem to be a lot lower than Torquay or even Brixham.

He added: “We would ideally want somewhere close to the sea because of our kids – recently we’ve been searching estate agent websites for properties in Preston although we’ve not found quite what we’re looking for yet.”

Paignton certainly has no shortage of estate agents (especially in Hyde Road) vying for your business. 

Reads Davies, an independent estate and letting agents, has been a mainstay in the Bay now for more than 50 years.

Boyce Allen, in Torquay Road, has been around in Torbay for even longer, since 1927 in fact.  

Barbets, in Hyde Road, is renowned locally as too is Mashfords, also in Hyde Road.

Have you any experiences in dealing with any of these companies you wish to share?

For full listings of estate agents in the Paignton area, check out our business directory.

At findaProperty.com you also see the house selling trends on your own street. Even if you’ve no interest in moving it’s still very interesting.

For example a semi-detached property in Osney Cresent sold for £98,950 in 1999. The very same property was up for sale again in 2005 and went for £268,00 in 2005. Looking at similar sales on the street its value has probably not changed too much since 2005.