Paramount have seen a great improvement to the North West London property market in 2009, we have had a lot of new people registering and a lot of the buyers who have been registered for a couple of years coming back to the market, this means Paramount now have over 1600 serious applicants currently looking for properties.
There has been a constant flow of properties coming to the market this year but unfortunately never enough to keep up with demand. This has meant that the property market has gone up by 10% this year and if it’s the perfect property in a great location it can be nearer 15%.
What does a 10% rise mean to 2007 prices?
The property market reacted directly to Northern Rocks share plunge in September 2007 and confidence quickly left the market, prices started to fall and carried on falling until late 2008. At the worst of the downturn (late 2008) we saw properties being agreed at 20% below 2007′s high and in some cases, where people were moving up the market and agreeing some great prices or desperate to sell, we even saw offers being agreed at as much as 24% off 2007 figures.
This information seems different to what we are reading in the papers and seeing on the news?
The West Hampstead, Kilburn market is largely made up of city workers, these buyers and Vendors often know before the rest of the UK what is happening, this make our drops quicker and earlier than you will see across the UK and moves equally rapidly when recovering.
The great thing about buying in West Hampstead and Kilburn is that we always have a market, the area is predominantly made up of young professionals who have to move in the good times and bad, the most common reason being babies arriving but can also be jobs changing, couples moving in together, and people wanting to upgrade their property.
We have buyers in good and bad times, in the low times people are happy to buy a property at a keener price and when the confidence comes back to the market it generally gets very busy, a lot of this will be because our purchasers are mainly in rented accommodation (paying their landlords mortgage off) or living with parents and getting to the point where they need to buy, they also will generally have large deposits (family will often contribute) so even when mortgages were harder to get our local buyers were still able to get a good deal with their large deposits and good jobs.
In 2008 Paramount still did half of the amount of transactions that we did in 2007 even though the market was definitely slow we still had movement. Across the UK, areas that have a more general mix of people, the families and elderly tend to stay put in the bad times and the FTB out of London often needs a 95% mortgage or 100% mortgages, these just haven’t been on offer over the last couple of years. These factors have slowed down markets across the UK and even in London where this mix applies but West Hampstead and its surrounding areas have seen a much improved market.
The figures that we see on the news are generally gathered from the Land Registry and Building Societies, these figures are up to three to four months behind what is really happening today on the property market, this means these figure are undeniably correct but out of date.
West Hampstead, Kilburn and surrounding areas are a great place to live with many restaurants, shops and great transport Links but even more importantly than that, your biggest investment in your life is safe, as you will see from above we have a good strong market through the good times and a better market than most that recovers quickly in the bad times, as long as you don’t have to sell through the bad times you should be fine, unless you are moving up the market and then this is the time to move.
The property market has always recovered from any low’s over the last 50 years, London has a shortage of properties and all the experts say this is only going to increase over years to come, so your current home or new home should be safe.
