Rental and owned properties (FOI)

​Request

I would like to know how many property’s are currently being rented or advertised to rent, compared to how many property’s are owned and lived in or being sold.

Response

The Government of Jersey does not hold any of this information. The Population Office does not require this level of information, and the Government is not involved in the property market.

There may be some relevant information contained in some publicly available documents:

The Judicial Greffe maintains the Public Registry of home ownership:

Public Registry services, fees and Stamp Duty 

The Housing chapter of the 2011 Census report gives some information on housing stock and ownership at that time, including Table 3.9 which covers tenure:

2011 Census - Households and Housing 

Statistics Jersey publishes statistics on transactions in the Royal Court in its house price index:

House price statistics 

A data table on ‘Weekly Court Transactions’ is available at the following link:

Open Data - House Price Statistics

It is worth noting that Share Transfer transactions do not go through the Royal Court and therefore are not included in these figures. An explanation is available at the following link:

Statistics Jersey - House Price Index

Articles applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

Article 4 - Meaning of “information to be supplied by a public authority”

(1) For the purposes of this Law, the information held by a public authority at the time when a request for the information is received is the information that is to be taken to have been requested.

(2) However, account may be taken of any amendment or deletion made to the information between the time when the request for the information was received and the time when it is supplied if the amendment or deletion would have been made regardless of the request for the information.

Article 23 - information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.