Housing Market
News covering issues affecting the UK residential property market, house prices, interest rates and buying and selling trends.
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Conveyancing volumes at highest since financial crisis
Last year conveyancing volumes hit their highest point since the financial crash of 2007/8, an industry market tracker has revealed. Search Acumen, which uses Land Registry data to examine competitive pressures among conveyancers, says the number of properties sold exceeded a million during 2016, up from a low point of 650,000 in 2009, although the market has yet to regain its pre-crash highs of 1.3 million. The number of conveyancing firms is also increasing, says Search Acumen’s Conveyancing Tracker, rising by 4% to 5,357 firms, breaking a five-year long run of decline. Since 2007 approximately a quarter of conveyancing firms have exited the industry, the Search Acumen data shows. “The number of firms operating in the market might have decreased [but] conveyancers are becoming more productive and are adapting to the challenges in the market to meet the increasing demand for property,” says Mark Riddick, chairman of Search Acumen (pictured). Riddick says the industry’s improved performance came despite a “testing year for the conveyancer” that has included changes to Stamp Duty, the EU referendum and, before that in 2014, the Mortgage Market Review. “The sector very much adopted a ‘business as usual’ attitude, disallowing the multitue of obstacles from the…
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Which? says over-pricing costs vendors £4.3bn a year
Consumer champion organisation Which? has launched a scathing report on sales agents that will make painful and probably infuriating reading for many. Its research found that of the 370,000 property sales it looked at between October 2105 and September 2016, one in five had been heavily reduced in price between asking and final agreed price, and that the optimistically-valued properties sold more slowly and for less. More controversially, Which? says online-only and hybrid agents sold more homes that hadn’t been reduced in price compared to traditional agents. Also, Which? says its data suggests overvalued properties take 64 days longer to sell than the rest, and that properties that start out over-priced don’t generally later achieve a higher one than an ‘uninflated’ one. The best-performing agents across the UK for selling above the asking price are also revealed, as are those Which? says are the ‘worst’. In London these include Fine & Country, James Pendleton, EasyProperty, Camerons Stiff & Co, Watson Bull & Porter, Faron Sutaria, Chestertons and Marsh & Parsons. Outside London it includes Redferns in the SW, Nick Tart in the West Midlands, Boxall Brown & Jones in the East Midlands, Aldreds in the East of England, Whitegates in…
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Home repossessions at 35 year low
Home repossessions by banks dropped by almost 25% last year the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has revealed. During 2016 some 7,700 homes home were taken back by banks, down from 10,200 in 2015, the lowest number since 1982. The CML also says that mortgage arrears were down last year by 7% and that it is part of a long-term trend (see graph). Repossessions peaked in early 2009 following the financial crisis at approximately 50,000 a year then began a prolonged year-on-year decline as the economy recovered, with some of the largest reductions over the past two years. “It is encouraging to see another improvement in arrears and possessions during a year in which borrowers were clearly helped by the downward trend in mortgage rates,” says Paul Smee (pictured, left), director general of the CML. “But customers do need to be ready for a time when the outlook may not be so benign, with pressure on real incomes increasing and as interest rates begin to move upwards again. “Lenders remain committed to helping borrowers work through any period of temporary payment difficulty and remain in their home wherever possible.” The number of buy-to-let mortgage arrears during 2016 also fell, by 11% compared to the year before,…
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RICS property market survey reveals weak January
The sales market remained quiet with both enquiries and transactions little changed at the start of year during what is usually a busy period, while the rental market faces a lack of supply as landlords exit the market, says the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) property market survey. Only five percent of its members reported an increase in demand for properties for sale, which is the weakest since last August, and the supply of fresh properties to the market reduced, RICS says. Supply has been weakening over the past consecutive 11 months now and many of RICS’ agent members’ stocks are reaching historic lows. Despite the worrying news, RICS says its agent members’ outlook was growing more positive about a bounce back as the year progresses, particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland. RICS also says prices have been rising across the UK except in London, where they have been in ‘negative territory’ now for nearly a year. In the rental market, the government’s unremittingly hostile measures are taking their toll and RICS says the flow of new landlord instructions ‘failed to improve’ for a fourth consecutive quarter. RICS also says the imbalance between lowering supply and increasing demand for…
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Third of all asking prices have been lowered, says online agent
Online agent HouseSimple reckons a third of properties for sale in the UK have had their asking prices reduced since they were first marketed, based on listing data is obtained from Zoopla. The agent looked at 100 large towns and cities across the UK and found that in eight the percentage of homes reduced was in excess of 40%. All are in the north or Scotland and include Stockton-On-Tees, Aberdeen, Halifax, Middlesbrough, Blackburn, Rotherham and Darlington. Only one city in the south experienced asking price drops in excess of the 31.3% average – Oxford – where HouseSimple says 36.8% of homes for sale have had their price lowered. Of the three largest cities in the UK, London has the highest percentage of properties currently being marketed (30%) that have had a price reduction since they were initially listed. This compares with 27.6% in Birmingham and 19.9% in Manchester. HouseSimple says this “suggests that estate agents in the Capital are finding it harder to secure a sale and are having to drop asking prices to attract buyers”. “Price reductions can indicate that there are too many sellers and not enough buyers, but actually there has been a lack of stock coming…
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Housing White Paper: building great expectations?
There’s a sense of excitement, The Housing White Paper lands in my inbox; will it give a Spring bounce to our housing market? The screen goes grey as 104 pages flip past, am I missing something? A new thought, idea, plan or action? Theresa May, Prime Minister, couldn’t be in Parliament today as she is busy with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, which is understandable, she cannot be everywhere, and her Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is qualified to present this hugely important document. Mrs May says, “Our broken housing market is one of the greatest barriers to progress in Britain today. Whether buying or renting, the fact is that housing is increasingly unaffordable – particularly for ordinary working class people who are struggling to get by. “Today the average house costs almost eight times average earnings – an all-time record. As a result it is difficult to get on the housing ladder, and the proportion of people living in the private rented sector has doubled since 2000. “These high housing costs hurt ordinary working people the most.” All fine and well, but what is the grand plan? It isn’t grand, it doesn’t even seem to be a…
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The ‘sword of Brexit uncertainty’
Rightmove may have slightly more trouble helping buyers to ‘find their happy’ in 2017.
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Average renting period – 10 years
A typical tenant in the UK believes they will be renting a home for at least another 10 years, a survey by AXA has found.
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House Prices rose by 6.9% in 2016
Average house prices in the UK rose by 6.9 per cent in the year to October 2016 (down from 7.0 per cent in the year to September 2016).
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Developers launch new type of home, the uberhaus
When is a two-storey flat a house, and when is it a duplex? Developers L&Q and Countryside have decided to blur the lines at a development currently under construction in West London with a new concept called an uberhaus, which translates roughly as ‘wonderful home’ in German. The glossy brochure for the site heralds a new type of living, but what will agents think of the concept when it comes to selling these apartments? The 52-acre and £600m Acton Gardens is new small town being built within W3 which will eventually include some 2,500 homes including a school, three parks, a central plaza and hub, a school as well as half a dozen apartment blocks containing townhouses and two and three bedroom apartments. And then there are the uberhaus apartments. Or are they houses. The joint developers have decided to join the two together by creating a hybrid and, in the process it is claimed, launched a new home concept. The three and four bedroom uberhouses are within an apartment block but, like a house, have all the living rooms including the kitchen downstairs on the ground floor including a patio garden, while all the bedrooms are upstairs. “We set out to…
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