How much extra do parents spend when their adult children move back home?

Alex Johnson presents his round-up of this week's property news, including the link between house prices and unemployment, critical DIY, and and Leicester's relegation battle

This three bedroom terraced house is situated in a private close in Black Lake Close, Egham. Features include a lovely oak conservatory, private parking, and a large lawned garden. On for £850,000 with Chancellors.

Parents with adult children living at home spend an extra £456 a year on their children compared to ‘empty nesters’, up from £372 in 2014. More than a fifth are also paying their adult children's phone bills, a quarter are still buying them clothes,10 per cent shell out for Netflix subscriptions, and to top it all, a quarter don't expect to get back the money they have loaned. Overall, the Scottish Widows study found that ‘full nest’ parents spend £122 a month on their grown-up children and as a result, a fifth have had to take out a loan or go overdrawn to meet living costs, compared to nine per cent of empty nesters. Almost one in 10 full nesters admit they are skipping meals to save money.

Prices vs unemployment

The gap in house prices between areas with the highest and lowest levels of unemployment has widened over the past decade, according to Lloyds Bank. Average house prices in the 20 local authorities with the lowest rate of unemployment have jumped by £89,446 to £352,224 since 2006, with Wokingham and South Cambridgeshire the highest performing areas.

This is nearly five times the rise for those with highest unemployment, which increased by £18,657 to £139,520 over the same period. The worst affected areas are Hartlepool, Blaenau Gwent, West Dunbartonshire, Blackpool, Knowsley, and Walsall, all of which saw only single digit growth.

Heating up

New research from E.ON reveals people spend an average of £2,500 to improve the energy efficiency of a property once it is theirs. The data also shows that they are more concerned about the feel of a house than its likelihood of flooding or the amount of improvement work required. One in three say they place little importance on energy efficiency measures like the central heating system, double glazing, or the energy efficiency rating when viewing a property for the first time and add that they may not have bought it had they known the cost of making it more energy efficient. Homeowners in London are the most likely across all regions to find their property more draughty than they’d expected after moving in, with one in four feeling the cold.

Retirement housing

Knight Frank is calling for action to deal with the need for an increase in new housing for the ageing population across the UK. It estimates that just three per cent of new-builds in the pipeline are designated ‘elderly’ or ‘sheltered’ housing but at the same time its research shows that around 25 per cent of over-55s want to move into some sort of retirement housing in the future. “Increasing housing supply is widely recognised as a priority," says Gráinne Gilmore, Head of UK Residential Research at Knight Frank, "but now there needs to be equal emphasis on delivering a range of housing to suit all demand, across all age groups. There needs to be more housing options for those looking to downsize, especially if they would like to live in an environment offering light-touch to more substantial care.”

Garden bucket list

Three quarters of people dream of owning a swimming pool in their back garden, while half are also very keen on installing a hot tub there, according to a survey by Alfresia.co.uk. The most popular dream theme for a garden is an oriental water garden, followed by a cottage garden. A separate survey by Homebase indicates that on average it takes us just over an hour to properly mow the lawn, and an hour and a half to clean decking.

Leicester relegated

The Deposit Protection Service estimates that if football clubs were ranked by average deposit size for their postcode, Fulham would be top of the Premier League, with Everton in bottom spot in League Two. Tenancy deposits for people renting near Craven Cottage, Fulham’s home ground in SW6, average £1,682.76 during the 2015/16 football season and those near Everton’s ground, Goodison Park are considerably lower at £383.26. Using this system, eight Premier League clubs would also be in the lowest division - Stoke City, Sunderland, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Southampton, Newcastle United and Everton. And Leicester City.

Critical DIY

New research from comparethemarket.com’s marvellously titled Institute of Inertia suggests around 11 per cent of UK homeowners have had to pay for emergency repair work on their homes because a delayed DIY job escalated to a critical state - this emergency repair work costs an average of £460 per household. A separate survey by Hillarys indicates that the average British male spends £666 more than the average British female per year correcting DIY disasters and that men cause more than double the number of DIY disasters per year than women.

Style decisions

More than one in three women have sole control on the style decisions made in the home they share with their partner, compared to one in five men. However, the Furniture Choice poll also shows that men's belongings take up 72 per cent of the living room and 71 per cent of the kitchen. This trend continues elsewhere in the home, with men’s things occupying two thirds of both the bedroom and bathroom, and 65 per cent of the garage.