20 May 2015
9.2 billion pounds of Welsh property value wasted storing junk
Read Time: 4 mins
Homes in Wales are amongst the most cluttered in the UK and homeowners are losing more than £7,000 of their property values to junk, according to new research from Clearabee, the on-demand rubbish removal company. Across 1.3 million households in Wales, £9.2 billion worth of property space is currently wasted storing old and discarded items.
Clearabee’s survey, which was conducted by research consultancy Populus, has revealed that Welsh households contain enough junk to cover an area of 5.7m2 on average, which is about seven per cent of the living area in a modern three bedroom house. Almost half (48 per cent) of homes in the Principality contain enough junk to fill a small bedroom (8m2 or more).
Only people in the North East of England match Welsh households for the amount of old and discarded items they hoard in their homes. At the other end of the junk scale Scottish households hoard just 4.5m2 each on average; just one in three (31 per cent) households have enough junk to fill a small bedroom.
Across the UK, the average home has enough junk to cover 4.8m2 of floor space. This is equivalent to the size of a king sized bed and represents six per cent of floor space. With house prices currently at £2,054 a square metre, the value of space wasted storing junk in the average UK home is £9,797. In total, UK residents are wasting £259 billion worth of space storing junk in their homes.