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Latest property news
Interview: the Knight Frank executive who went ‘proptech’
A proptech start-up called OneDome that offers agents the tools to book viewings online has won over £3 million in funding from several backers including Sir Nigel Knowles, the founder of legal firm DLA Piper. The company has also persuaded one of Knight Frank’s senior people to jump ship. Rachel Dipper, who until June was Head of Residential Marketing at Knight Frank, is now heading up OneDome’s promotional effort as Vice President of Marketing and Partnerships. The company also has a former Skype employee leading its technology build and one of its co-founders is former JP Morgan executive, Babek Ismayil (both pictured front row, above). “We offer agents the ability to take on the online disrupters and offer online bookings, without having to partner with another brand,” says Rachel (pictured, left). The company, which has been going about a year and has 12 staff in London and a further 40 in Ukraine, has signed up Essex agent Yaxley Homes to its service and says it has a further 15 agents getting ready to join as well. OneDome offers a platform that enables agents to drive sales and vendor enquiries to their own website, earn referral fees for conveyancing and mortgage enquiries,…
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Latest property news
Build-to-Rent investment set to triple by 2021
Nearly a quarter of all the UK population will be living in rented accommodation in just five years’ time according to Knight Frank, driven largely by a huge expansion in build-to-rent (BTR). Investment by the City in BTR is set to rise to £70 billion by 2021, the report reckons, up from the current £25 billion. Some 65% of this money is being and will be spent in London, Knight Frank discovered after interviewing the key 26 investors in BTR. “The strength of the UK PRS sector has grown demonstrably in recent years. As consumer demand for affordable, flexible accommodation continues to rise, PRS is firmly establishing itself as a key opportunity for institutional grade investment, due to its long-term potential,” James Mannix, Head of Residential Capital Markets at Knight Frank Knight Frank’s report also reveals that 68% of renters expect to be renting in three years’ time rather than moving on to the property ladder, helping increase the number of private renters to 5.79 million. Current trends Other trends driving this, it says, include the costs of Stamp Duty when buying a property, the needs of young professions to be more mobile as they move around the UK with…
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Latest property news
Knight Frank says extra buy-to-let Stamp Duty must go
Knight Frank chairman Alistair Elliott has today added his voice to the growing industry backlash against last year’s introduction of an extra three percent buy-to-let Stamp Duty levy. Elliott (pictured, left) this morning told City AM that “increasing tax doesn’t increase housing supply” and called for the recent second homes levy to be reversed during the next budget. Knight Frank also claims that the Stamp Duty change has had a bigger effect on the property market than the Brexit vote, particularly in central London. In Chelsea, it says, the number of house sales has dropped by 10% year-on-year. Government figures show that after the Stamp Duty was introduced in April the number of buy-to-let properties purchased dropped off by a fifth, and buy-to-let lending dropped by 65% over the same period, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Elliott is not the only high-profile person to be tackling the government on this issue. Last week Cherie Blair led a failed attempt in the high court by a landlord action alliance called Axe the Tenant Tax Group to reverse the government’s planned reduction in tax allowances for landlords, due to come into force next year. And the property industry is not…
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Housing Market
UK house prices set to rise in 2016
With record-low interest rates for at least another few months and housing supply set to remain low, the general consensus among households across the UK is that property prices will increase in 2016, albeit at a slower rate than in 2015. The latest data from the House Price Sentiment Index (HSPI) from Knight Frank and Markit Economics found that house price growth this year is expected to be led by the East of England and London, with more modest levels of price increases set to be recorded in many other parts of the UK. The future HPSI, which measures what households think will happen to the value of their home over the next year, increased marginally this month to 70.5 from 70.3 in December. This is the highest reading since June 2015, but remains below the peak of 75.1 reached in May 2014. Expectations for residential property price growth among households in the East of England hit an all-time high of 81.1, suggesting that they expect to see the highest rise in property values over the next year. Home prices in London, where an average HPSI reading of 79.1 was recorded, is also expected to outstrip the national average. In…
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Housing Market
House prices set to rise
Residential property prices look set to increase by an average of £60,000 over the next five years, hitting more than £320,000 in 2020, according to Cebr, the Centre for Economics and Business Research. The economic forecaster expects the average price of a home in the UK to reach £263,000 this year, up 5.6 per cent on last year, but believes that the market offers further room for growth of 3.5 per cent in 2016, with further annual price rises of in the region of 4 per cent in the four years that follow. If accurate, these price hikes will take the average price of a UK home to £321,600 during 2020 – £58,600 more than the average residential property price in 2015, according to Cebr. Nina Skero, CebrEconomist and main author of the report, believes that capital growth will be primarily fuelled by a growing “reduction in the number of properties being put on the market” as a result of low levels of housebuilding, as well as other factors such as an ageing population and the rising cost of moving up the property ladder. He commented, “The price gap between a first-time home and a larger family home has skyrocketed…
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Housing Market
Annual property price growth set to hit 10%
With demand from buyers continuing to heavily outweigh the supply of homes coming on to the market, residential property prices in Britain’s 20 biggest cities is expected to be increasing by 10 per cent by the end of this year, according to a new report. The latest research by property analysts Hometrack revealed that annual home price inflation is currently running at 8.4 per cent but it estimates that this rate of growth will rise in the coming months, fuelled by high demand and low supply, as well as a strengthening domestic economy, which is fuelling optimism in the market. The report also found that the average price of a residential property rose by 4.3 per cent in the last quarter to reach £226,200, with quarter-on-quarter gains led by Oxford, up 8 per cent, followed by London (6.6 per cent) and Glasgow (6.4 per cent). In contrast, Aberdeen was found to be the weakest performer with no real movement in home prices during the first half of 2015. “Rising demand for property against a backdrop of low supply continues push city level house prices higher,” said Richard Donnell, Director of Research at Hometrack (left). “It looks increasingly likely that city…
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