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Latest property news
Google gathers senior estate agency for invite-only digital seminar
After a nearly ten-year hiatus tech giant Google appears to have begun re-engaging face-to-face with the property industry. During the late noughties there was an outcry when it appeared that Google might begin targeting consumers directly and cut out agents from the property selling and renting process, although this was denied by the tech giant at the time. Nevertheless, the Californian-based online search firm subsequently scaled down its attempts to court the ‘for sale by owner’ sector and concentrated instead on other markets, much to the relief of agents. But now it’s back. The tech giant this week opened the doors of its UK head office to host a meeting of estate agents to mull over how to get instructions online. One of Google’s more senior UK executives, Harvard-educated Roxanne Brownlee (pictured), who works with larger, high-growth clients, did the presenting. Google, along with digital agency Fountain and 24/7 live managed live chat firm Yomdel, also offered up online strategies to help combat the challenges of competition from online hybrid agents, the privacy issues created by GDPR and Brexit. And Fountain should know – it helped hybrid agency Ewemove achieve rapid growth during its start-up phase. “Yomdel and Fountain began…
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Latest property news
Jon Notley’s Zero Deposit launches with backing from four key agents
Tenant deposits alternative Zero Deposit has launched, several months after it was originally expected kick-off, as deals with several key agents were negotiated. Co-founded by Jon Notley, the former commercial director at ZPG, Zero Deposit now says it has the financial and distribution backing of Connells, LSL, Knight Frank and the Acorn Group. “The robust nature of its offering is why we have given it our backing,” says Tim Hyatt, Head of Lettings at Knight Frank (pictured, left). “Given the constant raft of legislative changes taking place in the lettings industry on an almost monthly basis, it is great to see such a positive, well-executed initiative coming to the market.” Zero Deposit also has deals set up with the insurance company providing cover for its product, Munich RE as well as ZPG and TDS, which is providing its dispute resolution. 1,000 branches The agent deals are arguably the most crucial, giving Zero Deposit access to tenants renting properties through some 1,000 branches across the UK. This morning’s launch is restricted to the four named agents backing the venture and who will now be rolling out the Zero Deposit product, although Jon Notley says after a few weeks his company will…
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket shares begin trading at £1.63p, plummets to £1.48p
Shares in OnTheMarket began trading on London’s AIM stock market today kicking off at £1.63p, valuing the company at £100 million, and quickly rising by 2p to £1.65 before dropping to £1.48p by end of trading on Friday. The OnThemarket shares issue, which it says has raised £30m out of a hoped-for £50m to finance its battle for market share with Rightmove and ZPG, is the conclusion of a long and tortuous road for CEO Ian Springett’s ambitious portal project. It launched in January 2015 two years after founding members Knight Frank, Savills, Strutt & Parker and Chestertons first convened to form parent company Agents’ Mutual Ltd. OnTheMarket.com positioned itself as a mutual organisation of agent members, but introduced a controversial ‘one other portal’ rules that made agents choose between either Rightmove or Zoopla as their ‘other portal’. Last year agent Gascoigne Halman took OnTheMarket to court, claiming the ‘one other portal’ rule was anti-competitive, but lost the case. This cleared the way for OnTheMarket to demutualise, which took place following a vote of its 2,700 agent members late last year. Former members of the mutual organisation were allocated share options based on their size of listing and length of…
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Features
House price indices: why we’re Living on ‘Hope Terrace’
Designs on Property tracks and summarises the monthly property indices. Kate Faulkner says, “Lower rates of growth appear to be here to stay, but I don’t think the public or investors appreciate this major shift in property price growth fortunes; we need to be prepared for what happens when they do.”
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Latest property news
Knight Frank partners with Housing Hand
Knight Frank, Northwood and Liv Group have joined them to offer the Housing Hand guarantor service to tenants, through their branches and websites.
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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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