Housing Market
News covering issues affecting the UK residential property market, house prices, interest rates and buying and selling trends.
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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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Property market’s surprise revival during Xmas run-up
The number of homes sold in the UK unexpectedly increased by 0.2% during the usually quiet run to Xmas last year, the HMRC has revealed. It tracks all residential property transactions over £40,000 and says 220 additional homes were sold during December compared to the month before. The uptick in activity was felt by many agents across the UK as buyers, frightened off buying or moving as the Brexit aftershock rumbled on, returned to the market late in the year. One Winkworth franchisee on the South Coast even considered cancelling its branch Xmas party to cope with demand. More properties were also sold during 2016 than the year before, up by just under 3% to 1,057,340 despite the substantial reduction in sales following the introduction of extra Stamp Duty on second homes and buy-to-let properties in April last year. “Despite the figures showing a slight monthly rise in the number of homes being bought and sold, the housing market remains overshadowed by our nation’s ongoing supply crisis,” says Stephen Smith of L&G Housing Partnerships (pictured, left). “Two key factors are hindering the housing market from reaching its full potential. The first is the ever-expanding gap between supply and demand, and…
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Tenants not planning to buy
A growing number of tenants are not planning to buy and will probably rent for the long term, with little likelihood of buying a home. As letting agents experience growing demand, will there be enough properties? 38.4 per cent of tenants surveyed by The Deposit Protection Service said that they plan to remain in a rented home rather than buy property, The Deposit Protection Service (The DPS) has said. Most of those who said that they do intend to buy a property said it wouldn’t be likely within the next 12 months. 25.5 per cent said they hoped to own within six months, but 62 per cent said they didn’t expect to within the next year. The 1,000 tenants surveyed have their deposits registered with The DPS. Julian Foster, Managing Director of The DPS, said, “Renting is a vital part of the housing sector, and a significant proportion of the UK population choose to be tenants as it better suits their life plan or lifestyles. “However, buying a house is a significant financial undertaking, and renting will often also suit those who are saving for a deposit before accessing a mortgage. “The UK needs a flexible residential sector that suits the varied life choices and…
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Has the London rental market topped out?
The pressures and costs of living in the capital are persuading many tenants to look elsewhere to live as demand within the London rental market ‘slides’, it has been claimed. According to the National Landlords Association (NLA) the number of landlords in central London reporting a rise in tenant demand has dropped from 45% to 17% compared to January last year. But figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders also suggest that the reduction in demand among tenants is down to increased number of first time buyers in the market, something that Prime Minister Theresa May put at the heart of her vision for Britain when she came to power last year. The CML’s latest figures show first time buyer mortgage borrowing increased by 9% in November, year-on-year. But London’s rental market problems, coupled to looming tax increases for landlords, are either driving many investors out of the market, or frightening them off new property purchases. The CML say that landlord borrowing has fallen by 10% year on year. The NLA says just 5% of London landlords say they plan to buy further properties this year, down from 15% last year, while outside London confidence is much higher. In the North…
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Landlords turning to HMOs and commercial as extra buy to let taxes loom
Buy-to-let landlords are moving into HMOs and commercial property in a bid to mitigate or avoid the punitive extra buy to let taxes being introduced this April, it has been claimed. Allsop, which is the largest property auction house the UK, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that it has seen three times the number of buy-to-let landlords entering the commercial property since the new taxes were announced last year by the then chancellor George Osborne. “We’re getting a lot of investors into our market because of the [tax] changes to buy-to-let. Once they have bought one, they can’t believe the simplicity and want to do it again,” George Walker, commercial auction partner at Allsop (pictured, left), told the paper. Landlords are also converting existing single-occupancy buy-to-let properties into HMOs in a bid to increase their income and offset the likely extra taxes, according to bridging loan specialist lender Roma Finance. The company says it funded more conversions cases of this type during 2016 than in any other year. “One landlord we worked with calculated that in one of their properties they could rent out five rooms, vastly increasing income and yield, for just a £30,000 conversion cost,” says Scott Marshall, MD of…
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