Our housing market
It is important we know the facts about our housing market, and that when we work together to tackle issues, we get the right focus and involve the right partners. For this reason, the Housing Board has worked hard over the years to gather and share data on all aspects of housing in our area. This page sets out some of that data.
Our Strategic Housing Market Assessment
The Cambridge sub-region’s Strategic Housing Market Assessment, known as the SHMA, provides a robust and credible assessment of our area’s housing market.
Housing Market Bulletins
Every three months we publish a housing market bulletin to show local housing market trends, comparing local figures to East of England and England figures. Since our 20th edition we’ve also covered Peterborough.
You can find al the Bulletins here.
Specialist Housing Need
The Autumn 2019 Specialist Housing Need report identifies what housing provision there is currently for people aged 18 to 64 with disabilities or mental ill health and the future need for such homes or schemes within Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk.
Broad Rental Market Areas
Broad Rental Market Areas are set by government and are used to set the amount of support a household might be able to claim to support their housing costs, known as Local Housing Allowance (LHA). 
The Cambridgeshire Atlas | BRMAs sets out
- the boundaries of all 152 of England’s broad rental market areas (known as BRMAs)
- the local housing allowance rates which apply to each property size, over time.
- local authority boundaries as well as BRMA boundaries.
First launched in December 2014, the Atlas was updated in March 2015 to show LHA rates for 2015-16, which you can compare to 2014-15 and 2013-14 rates. From 2016-17 local housing allowances, along with other working-age benefits, were frozen as announced in the 2015 summer budget. However new rates were published by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) in January 2016, and again in January 2017 and are available as open data here BRMAs showing LHA rates as slight changes were made in some areas.
About the VOA data
The Valuation Office Agency provides excellent information and resources about BRMAs and Local Housing Allowances, including What is a Broad Rental Market Area? and What is Local Housing Allowance?
LHA direct can be found at https://lha-direct.voa.gov.uk/search.aspx where you can search for the LHA rate for your area by typing in your postcode. There is also a LHA bedroom calculator at https://lha-direct.voa.gov.uk/bedroomcalculator.aspx.
Please note: this atlas is available only in HTML5 format, which is designed for use with more modern browsers
Affordability analysis
In June 2017, Savill’s consultancy produced a detailed affordability analysis for Greater Cambridgeshire (that is, Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire).
Building on this work, further affordability analysis was undertaken by the housing sub-region, known as the Diamond Affordability Analysis. You can learn more about both here.
Housing Profiles
The Cambridgeshire Atlas | Sub-Region Housing Profiles (Parish) and Cambridgeshire Atlas | Sub-Region Housing Profiles (Ward) contain data about the population and housing stock for parishes and wards in our local area, as well as some market information and demand indicators for affordable housing from Home-Link.
Future Affordability Projections Project 2011-13
Future Affordability Housing Projections’ looks at potential impacts of various reforms on sub-regional housing over the coming ten years. The work was undertaken by the County Research Group in three phases:
1. Tenures and trajectories: The first phase looks at predicted housing stock and affordable tenure mix (published 2011).
2. Incomes and Affordability: The second phase of the project looks at affordability of different tenures for different groups of residents (published 2012).
3. Applicants and Availability: The third phase of the project looks at future (projected) social housing lettings and who may take up those lettings (published 2013).
A final discussion note summarises each of the three phases and raises some key strategic questions and issues to monitor in future.