Property Management in Colne

We manage property across East Lancashire, but Colne is where our office is. That matters more than it sounds. When something needs looking at, someone is there the same day, not the following week from Preston.

Colne is also a particular kind of rental market and it needs handling accordingly. Here is what letting here actually involves.

What Colne’s rental housing is like

Colne is a mill town and its housing reflects that. Around 61% of the town’s homes are terraced, far above the national picture, with roughly 19% semi-detached and under 7% detached. Just under a fifth of all housing in Colne is privately rented.

In practice most landlords here own stone terraces. They are solid, they let steadily, and they come with their own maintenance realities: stone that needs pointing rather than rendering, timber or sash windows in the older stock, slate roofs, and in the three-storey weavers’ cottages up around Castle Road, layouts that modern tenants ask questions about.

The town has distinct pockets and they do not all behave the same way. Castle Road and the Castle area are stone weavers’ cottages, some three-storey. Chatham Street, Montague Street and Langroyd are original cobbled streets with pillared terraces. Keighley Road mixes Victorian terraces with neo-classical buildings and older cottages. Newmarket Street has Victorian shops with traditional terraced housing behind. Primet Bridge, Waterside and the town centre are where a good deal of the rental demand sits.

Conservation areas, and the EPC problem they create

Colne has three conservation areas: Albert Road, Lidgett and Bents, and Primet Bridge. If your property sits in one, external alterations are controlled and permitted development rights are tighter than elsewhere.

This collides directly with energy efficiency. The obvious route to improving a poor EPC on a stone terrace is replacement double glazing, and in a conservation area that is exactly the thing you may not be able to do straightforwardly. Landlords tend to discover this at the point they need the certificate, which is the worst possible moment.

There are ways through it. Secondary glazing, slim-profile units that satisfy conservation officers, insulation and heating improvements that lift the rating without touching the frontage. But it needs planning rather than panic, and it needs someone who knows which street falls inside which boundary. We check this before we take a property on.

Do you need a licence to let in Colne?

Colne sits in Pendle, not Burnley, and that distinction matters. Burnley Council runs selective licensing across seven areas and landlords there need a licence for each property. Those schemes do not extend to Colne, because Pendle Borough Council sets its own policy.

We are not aware of an active selective licensing scheme covering Colne at present. Pendle has consulted on the idea before, so it is not settled forever, but as things stand letting in Colne does not carry the requirement that letting in Padiham or Burnley Wood does. If you own property on both sides of that boundary, our guide to selective licensing in Burnley covers the other side in detail.

What a two-bed terrace lets for in Colne

A two-bedroom terraced house in Colne typically achieves £700 to £850 per calendar month. Where a property sits in that range comes down to condition, street, and whether there is parking or a decent yard.

For comparison across our area: Barrowford £750 to £900, Nelson £650 to £700, Clitheroe £800 to £950, Barnoldswick £700 to £850. If you own in more than one town, that spread is worth knowing before you set a rent.

How quickly property lets in Colne

Our average is around four weeks, and that figure is honest about what it includes: marketing, viewings, referencing and credit checks. It is not four weeks to find someone and then a further fortnight of paperwork before they move in.

Most of our tenants here are local people and working professionals. Tenants with local ties and steady employment tend to stay longer, and every avoided void is worth more than a few pounds on the monthly rent.

“Horsfall look after my house in Colne. They helped me source the property at a good price, found a tenant, and now fully manage it for me. Excellent service.”

— C Conway, Colne — sourced, let and managed