Housing Market
News covering issues affecting the UK residential property market, house prices, interest rates and buying and selling trends.
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Homeowners think property values are still rising
Knight Frank/Markit’s latest House Price Sentiment index finds confidence in growth.
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Strewth! Purplebricks launches in Australia
It is two years since hybrid estate agency Purplebricks launched in the UK and since then the company has recruited more than 300 Local Experts, grown revenues to £18.6 million, grabbed a two percent market share and recently claimed a property book value of £2.76 billion. It’s all come at a heavy price. Marketing and advertising costs this year will increase its annual losses to £11.9 million, up from £5.4 million the year before. But the ambitions of backer Neil Woodford and founding brothers Michael and Kenny Bruce seem to know no bounds. As well as predicting a turnover of £73 million and profits of £44m by 2018, it has just been announced that Purplebricks has officially launched in Australia. It will initially focus on two of the country’s juiciest property markets, Melbourne and Brisbane, before rolling out further afield. In its statement released today Purplebricks says Australia’s traditional model of charging 2.2% of the sales value plus marketing-costs makes its offering a ‘compelling proposition’. The company is charging vendors a flat fee of Aus$5,400 to include photography, marketing and advertising on the main Australian portals. “Australia is a natural second market for us to target. It is a large…
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Brexit: property market in Remain areas performing worst
The post-Brexit property market is performing worst in areas that voted Remain during the EU Referendum, it has been claimed by agent group Spicerhaart. In what seems a strange twist to the EU Referendum debate, the multi-brand property group says sales in cities where the Remain vote was strongest have experienced a 50% increase in the number of abandoned sales compared to strongly Leave areas, where the number of abandoned sales decreased by two percent. Spicerhaart says it gathered the Brexit property research data from 20 of its branches, but the company is not specific about which cities they are in. But this is likely to include London, Cambridge, Oxford, Brighton, St Albans and Bristol where more than 60% of each city’s voters elected to remain in the EU. The company has branches in several of these Remain hotspots including its 70-plus Haart and Felicity J Lord branches in London, and its handful of Haart branches in Cambridge and Bristol. “With the announcement of a cut in interest rates, which will see the country’s cheapest ever mortgage rates fall ever further, it will not be long before we see a return in confidence and business as usual,” says Paul Smith,…
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Summer in the cities
The Hometrack UK Cities House Price Index has found that annual house price inflation plateaued at 10.2 per cent in June, the same level as May 2016, but still ahead of 6.9 per cent growth seen in June 2015. Bristol remains the fastest growing city in the UK with a year on year growth rate of 14.7 per cent, but year-on-year house price inflation in London and in other cities in the south of England, such as Cambridge and Southampton started to slow between May and June 2016. Conversely, large cities in northern parts of the UK such as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds have registered strong growth in the last quarter on the back of more affordable prices, lower interest rates, improving local economies and higher yields making purchases attractive to investors. For all cities in England and Wales, excluding London, new listings have grown 10 per cent faster than the 12 month average, this rises to over 15 per cent in London. In contrast is an 8 per cent relative fall in sales in London i.e. 8 per cent fewer homes sold per month in the last 3 months compared to the 12 month average. Richard Donnell, Insight…
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Stamp out slum landlords!
A new report from Multi-Let UK, an HMO investment and management company, states that 70 per cent of HMO investors want the authorities to crack down on HMO landlords who are abusing the law; 52 per cent want local councils to make more inspections to identify HMOs that are not up to standard and 73 per cent believe that slum landlords are giving HMOs a poor reputation. Findings from the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), show that private landlords are taking £5.6bn in rent on homes that ‘don’t meet legal standards’ and 740,000 families are living in homes that present a severe threat to the occupants’ health; while Shelter says that 250,000 people live in accommodation that is unfit for human habitation, or where the landlord exploits or harasses them. Figures from the Residential Landlords Association show that 2,006 landlords were convicted between 2007-2015, with the average fine standing at £1,500. Daniel Hill, MD of Multi- Let UK said, “In many areas there are HMO landlords providing poor quality accommodation which fails to meet the statutory requirements, putting tenants’ wellbeing and potentially lives at risk. “The good news is that the majority of HMO landlords are taking a proactive approach and…
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Families are largest lettings group
Families are the most common household type in the PRS for the first time, according to the latest research from the National Landlords Association (NLA). The findings show that more landlords now let to families with children (48 per cent) than any other household type, overtaking young couples (47 per cent). This represents a shift compared to four years ago, when young singles made up the largest group (53 per cent), followed by young couples (51 per cent), and then families with children (51 per cent). For the majority of families surveyed, renting privately is a stable option, with almost 8 in 10 (76 per cent) reporting they were happy with the length of their tenancy and a similar proportion (79 per cent) reporting their tenancy was renewed or stayed the same at the end of the initial fixed term. Richard Lambert, CEO, said, “There is a genuine contrast between the experience of renting in the 21st century shown in this research and the prevailing housing culture in Britain that only views it as a stopgap – something to be tolerated while waiting for the opportunity to buy your own house.”
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Rightmove data indicates a skewed market with winners and losers
Price of property coming to market falls by 1.2% (-£3,602), – exactly the same as the 1.2% average drop over the last six years.
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Rents still rising
Demand outstripping supply leads to average rents rising by 4 per cent in London and 2.3 per cent across the rest of the UK.
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Dream of homeownership slides across the UK
New analysis by The Resolution Foundation suggests that the cost of housing crisis has spread.
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Homeowners bowed by Brexit blues but still expect modest price growth
Most householders believe that the value of their home has slipped since the EU Referendum result.
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