UK Property Recovery Predicted For 2012

The UK housing market will see a gradual recovery during 2012, according to the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA)NAEA chief executive Peter Bolton King said 2012 believes that some people have been quick to be overly gloomy about the housing sector’s prospects in the next 12 months but was also keen to stress that, in contrast, things won’t blossom overnight either.

Indeed, he feels that home purchases will be at similar levels to this year but house values will increase on a gradual basis.However, he feels that lenders need to do more to drive the market for first time buyers as currently a lack of available finance means that people are finding it increasingly difficult to get a foot on the property ladder.

“Next year will see a continued lending barrier facing those entering the housing market for the first time, with major lenders sticking to tight mortgage policies,” Mr Bolton King stated.“Clearly, when the Stamp Duty holiday disappears in the second quarter of 2012 it will become even more difficult for first time buyers to access the market.”

He also believes that regional variations will lead to what he terms ‘micro-markets’ across the country. This is where demand for property in some districts maintains a healthy market but creates a division from lesser desirable areas, which are left behind.He added: “Pressure for housing will increase in London and the South East throughout 2012. The top end of this market will also remain very resilient, and we believe that purchases from overseas investors will continue apace.

“Confidence in 2012 will be a key factor and this, to some extent, will be driven by the media.” David Warren, senior sales negotiator at Paramount commented: “The West Hampstead housing market has been consistent since 2009 after the slow down at the end 2007/2008 and prices recovered fully in 2010. We have now seen prices raise by a further five per cent from the peak prices in August 2007.

“The local area is only affected slightly by the first time buyer Stamp Duty holiday as only studios and the odd one bedroom flat will get into this bracket but we can definitely see where the rest of the UK will suffer with no stamp duty holiday and FTB finding it hard to get deposits together and mortgages agreed”

Recently, the Building Societies Association (BSA) stated that consumer confidence is returning to the housing market and more people will be looking to purchase a property in next year than in 2011.

NAEA News

Mortgage Approvals Reach Highest Level In 2 Years

Demand for property rose yet again in November according to the latest UK Housing Market survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

But the body warned that economic uncertainty is still holding the housing sector back from really flourishing.

Some seven per cent of surveyors said that they had seen a increase in the number of new buyer enquires last month, meaning that demand has continued to rise steadily for each of the past three months.

On top of this, newly agreed sales increased by 14 per cent and the average number of sales dealt with per surveyor or branch climbed by 15.4 per cent.

However, RICS warned that the market is still very subdued in many regions and, while the figures are certainly encouraging, they are still far short of those posted in the years prior to the start of the credit crunch.

RICS housing spokesperson, Alan Collett, said:”It is encouraging that buyer interest has edged upwards in the face of the endless diet of negative news from Europe and the turmoil in financial markets. However, a meaningful recovery still seems some way off.”

Despite these comments, e-surv revealed this week that mortgage approvals last month reached their highest levels in two years.

London Property Market News

Central London Parking Policy News

Westminster Council spent £400,000 preparing to charge drivers for weekend parking before consultations were complete, BBC London has learned.

The authority has faced protests over plans to charge for West End parking during weekends and evenings.

It has now emerged the six-figure sum was spent on signage despite residents’ opinions still being sought.

Labour said residents had been treated with “contempt”, but the Conservatives said the costs would be recouped.

Critics say the outlay on signage shows the consultation was meaningless in the first place and the council had already made up its mind to bring in the new charges.

‘Total contempt’
It comes after a High Court judge allowed a Judicial Review into the scheme, saying it was possible the council’s consultation period had been too limited.

The leader of Labour in Westminster, Paul Dimoldenberg, said: “Westminster’s consultation has been shambolic and no wonder the High Court was so scathing of the council’s efforts.

“The council has treated residents and businesses with total contempt with £300,000 having being spent on new parking signs even before the consultation period was over.”

Mortgage Rate and Home Loan News For First Time Buyers

While borrowing for a property purchase is far from an easy thing, one mortgage broker believes that first-time buyers are now seeing a host of new opportunities becoming available to them.

Andy Pratt, chief operating officer at London-based Alexander Hall, says that there are some positive signs for those looking to make the first move onto the property ladder with more and more lenders now offering mortgages at high loan to values (LTVs).

However, he is keen to point out that the best interest rates on the market are still those available to people with the ability to put down a larger deposit.

“It is still a 20 per cent deposit to get a good mortgage,” Mr Pratt stated. “[But] there are positive signs in terms of high street lenders coming to the market with higher LTV products.

“There was one good sign when we saw the high street lender Woolwich come to market with a 90 per cent loan to value, although the rate is a bit higher.”

He added that there are some bargain properties around for those prepared to look around carefully and potential first-time buyers should do all they can to ensure that the cost of Christmas does not knock back their ability to save a deposit.

And it’s a good time to have a mortgage for many as data released this month by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) shows that monthly mortgage payments are now on average at their lowest levels for almost eight years.

Due to a sustained period of low interest rates, with many people benefiting from long term trackers following the Bank of England base rate, the proportion of household income spent each month on funding a mortgage is 12.3 per cent, the lowest it has been since the beginning of 2004.

Mortgage Rate & Home Loan News

Million Pound Property Sales News

Bloomberg business week reports that Britain had 11 percent more houses valued at 1 million pounds or more available for purchase in the third quarter than it did a year earlier, Investec Specialist Bank said in a report today.

About 21,982 such properties were for sale with a combined value of 48.7 billion pounds, up 4.8 percent, according to research from primelocation.com commissioned by Investec, which said the market is “holding up well,” with a “huge” increase in mortgage applications in the category. The average valuation was 2.22 million pounds, a year-to-year decrease of 5.1 percent.

“This market is very international, especially in London,” said Jack Jones, head of Investec’s specialized banking lending team. “This has resulted in some people deciding to opt out of the capital’s million-pound property market and move to the home counties, which is more affordable.”

About 105 of the properties were valued at more than 15 million pounds, Investec Specialist said. Of the total, 44 percent, or 9,704, were in London and had a value of 26.9 billion pounds, with 10 percent in Surrey and worth 4.47 billion pounds, according to the report.

First Time Property Buyers News: First time buyers appetite for homes is as strong as ever

Aspirations for home ownership are as strong as ever, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

While getting a foot on the property ladder is far from easy, a new survey by the financial body had found that 85 per cent of young people still aspire to buying a home in the near future.

Raising a deposit is the most cited reason for difficulty in making the move, the CML stated. However, recent research showed that once on the property ladder first-time buyers now pay the lowest amount of mortgage interest in more than eight years.

The survey found that the average age of a first-time buyer is 33, not 37 as reported by some media outlets, and on average 36 per cent of all those buying a home for the first time do so without any financial help from friends or relatives.

Andy Pratt, chief operating officer at London-based Alexander Hall, said earlier this week that there are some positive signs for first-time buyers with more and more lenders now offering mortgages at high loan to values (LTVs).

First Time Property Buyers News

London Property Sellers Finish Early for Christmas!

Buyers in London looking for fresh choice of property may find their options more limited than usual at this time of year, with a 16% drop in the number of new sellers compared to the same period in 2010. This is the largest drop off seen in any of the regions of England. Average asking prices in the capital also dropped over the past month, down -1.2%, although prices are 6.6% up year-on-year.

Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove comments:

“London’s sellers seem to have finished early for Christmas this year, and decided to postpone their moving plans until 2012. Lack of choice to tempt them to trade up and high price gaps to the next rung up the ladder are more likely reasons, though the uncertainty in the Eurozone will be influencing some too”.

Markets like certainty, and so do people who are deciding whether to trade up in the property market and make a big financial decision. Agents report that many would-be sellers are postponing their marketing until the new year, influenced by the current wall-to-wall media coverage of the economic crises in Greece and Italy.

The current weekly run-rate of new listings is also down 11% compared to the previous month, highlighting the lack of suitable property to buy and consequent near record prices being asked. Following the setting of a new all-time high in asking prices in October, this month sees a fall from that peak of 1.2% (£5,486).

With the approach of the slower winter selling season, it is usual for there to be a drop in new sellers’ asking prices at this time of year. Last November saw a fall of just 0.4%. However, this November’s 1.2% fall is more muted than the rest of the regions in England, where the average reverse this month is 3.9%.

Shipside comments:

“Yet again the buoyancy of the London market leads the rest of the country. Whilst international buyers have helped pull prices up in the more select areas, the net effect has been that new sellers can ask prices on average 6.6% higher than a year ago. Given the unsettled nature of the Eurozone, and the off-putting uncertainty that it causes, bricks and mortar in the capital are proving to be one of the few inflation-busting investments around.

While the uncertainty in the economy will be putting off some Londoners from trading up, estate agents are filling their places by chasing buyers from Greece and Italy who see the capital as a safe haven”.

London Letting Rents Rise Forecast

Increased demand and the rising cost of maintaining property mean private tenants in the UK are likely to face a rise in rental rates this winter, it is claimed.

One in five of landlords also claim their arrears have increased compared with the previous quarter, according to BDRC Continental’s quarterly Landlords Panel research.

It found that almost half, 45%, have increased rents in the last 12 months, while over a third, 34%, said they are likely to do so in the next six months. Landlords cite the strength of demand and the increased cost of running a property portfolio as the main drivers for rent rises.

Young couples, singles and Local Housing Allowance (LHA) claimants are the groups potentially most likely to be hit by rent rises in the private rental sector. When asked which groups of tenant they let to, landlords indicated that young couples and young singles account for the greatest proportion of their tenants, while LHA could also likely to be affected, as 37% of landlords cater for this segment of the market.

The potential rent rises are predicted at a time when almost half of landlords have experienced rental arrears in the last three months and almost three quarters, 72%, of those who have sought possession of their rental property were driven to do so by rent arrears. Other reasons for seeking possession include anti social behaviour, which contributed to nearly half of possessions.

However, one third of landlords have never sought possession of their rental property and landlords wait an average of almost four months to obtain possession and pay £866 in legal fees alone.

West Hampstead Letting Agent Look At Smart Phone Technology

ARLA reports on What is a QR code and as an Estate Agent, why should I care!?

So you’ve all got yourselves your mobile ‘apps’ and are frantically getting to grips with the wonderful world of ‘social media’, but what about the latest craze to hit the world of business? – The QR (Quick Response) code.

Put very simply, QR codes are a form of barcode that make the storing and retrieving of data very quick and simple, principally through use of an app on a mobile phone such as an iPhone or Android device. Simply open the app, point the camera at the QR code, and wait for the magic to happen.

Scanning a QR code can perform a number of different actions from displaying text, contact information, composing an email, or opening a web page in your mobile phones web browser. The later of these actions is probably what you will see most often – point your camera at a QR code and be taken to a web page with all the information the company using the code would like you to see.

The QR wave

QR Codes were created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, but have since burst onto the scene in 2011 with virtually all major global brands including Subway, Coca-Cola, and the BBC making use of them on a regular basis. The technology should not be ignored. The increasingly common use of so called ‘smart phones’ to access the internet means QR codes offers interesting opportunities for estate agents to direct people from offline media to online.

Take a simple scenario in the world of the property agent. A prospective client walks past a property you’re marketing, scans the QR code you’ve added to the For Sale board and within 5 seconds is looking at a page on your website with all the information they need about the property. One more click and they’re making a call to your office to arrange a viewing. Neat eh?

Here are some advantages to using QR codes:

Simple, fast, and inexpensive to create and distribute
Connects people with detailed product information
Smartphone’s with QR code readers are becoming increasingly common
And here are some examples of what a QR code can include are:

URLs
Text
Phone numbers
Complete contact information
SMS text messages
Calendar events
An email address
A geographic map location

RLA Call for Support for London’s Private Residential Landlords

One of the country’s leading bodies representing landlords in the private rented sector has today called on Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone to do more to stimulate the supply of private rented housing across London.

As Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London today called for a system of effective rent controls, the RLA Chairman, Alan Ward responded:

“Ken Livingstone’s call for rent controls is an old idea which never worked in the past – until 1988 rent controls resulted in a shortage of supply and poorer conditions for tenants. Hardly a remedy for 2012. There is no doubt that rents in the capital remain far higher than anywhere else in the country but the answer lies in improved supply.

“With many, particularly young, people relying on the sector to provide housing to meet their needs, the RLA is calling on both Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone to support efforts to reform the taxation system to stimulate growth in the sector.

“Standards in the sector are best upheld when tenants have genuine choices about their housing options. Until we see a boost in supply, those choices simply do not exist.”

Commenting on Mayor Boris Johnson’s plans for a pan-London accreditation scheme for landlords, Alan Ward continued:

“With over 10,000 landlords in London already members of the London boroughs’ accreditation scheme, it would seem a waste of time and money re-inventing the wheel in this way.

“The Mayor should focus on supporting and encouraging existing accreditation schemes, freeing his office up better to target the minority of landlords who bring the sector into disrepute.

“This should be matched by a programme of serious tenant education, providing tenants with all the information needed to better hold their landlords to account for the service they provide. It beggars belief that some people spend more time assessing the state of a car they wish to by then the homes they seek to rent.”