Golding Homes – Rent Affordability Analysis
Background
Golding Homes (GH) was established in 2004 following the transfer of homes from Maidstone Borough Council, they have invested more than £283m in regenerating their homes and neighbourhoods.
GH manages more than 7,500 homes and provide services to more than 21,000 people across Kent. They are committed to providing excellent customer service and quality, safe homes for social, affordable and market rent, shared ownership and outright sale.
Approach
GH commissioned ARK Consultancy to complete a comparable review of local rent affordability in relation to the nationally recognised standard of Housing Affordability, where rent is no more than 35% of household income.
This review would help to inform GH’s board level decision making around the rent increase process for 2024/25, given the impact of the cost-of-living crisis for its customers.
Outcomes
For the report, we used various up-to-date sources which provide income and rent data for our analysis. We set out a comparable analysis of lower quartile incomes in GH’s operating areas with different types of rents and for a range of household sizes, by number of bedrooms.
The report also detailed the current relative impact of the cost of living and inflation increases on lower income households, which would help GH to assess the affordability of its rents.
Finally, we identified what a typical GH customer would look like, by identifying demographic patterns and this provided an indication of how GH could make a comparison to its own customers plus what a ‘typical customer’ profile may look like.
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