RICS
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Housing Market
Property sales dry up ahead of Election
The upcoming Election is to blame for residential property sales drying up, but a general lack of housing stock coming onto the market could fuel another surge in home values after the election, according to the latest monthly market survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). The research reveals that political uncertainty surrounding next month’s General Election is deterring many purchasers, with buyer enquiries and house sales falling. But despite the dip in demand from purchasers, a general housing shortage across many parts of the country led to 21 per cent more surveyors reporting an increase in home prices in March, up from 15 per cent in February. Furthermore, 15 per cent more surveyors expect prices to appreciate even further over the next three months compared with 10 per cent in February, fuelled by the existing supply-demand imbalance in the market. Nationally, the market in Northern Ireland continues to outperform the rest of the UK with the strongest home price growth last month and the highest price expectations over the next three months. However, across much of the rest of the UK, particularly in Wales and Scotland, price gains over the next three months are expected to be…
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Latest property news
ZPG add RICS to agents’ professional affiliations
Agents that list their properties on Zoopla and its sister portals, including PrimeLocation, can now showcase their professional associations and redress schemes that they are signed up to across the Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) platform of websites, including the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which has been addedto ZPGs recently launched feature in the past few days. Zoopla members wishing to activate this new feature can do so under their profile in ZooplaPro and activate the display of logos of their affiliations on all relevant agent directory pages, property details pages and professional reports across the ZPG platform. In an attempt to distance themselves from rogue agents and promote professionalism and better standards of service, many agents sign up to various industry bodies that offer professional guidance and self-regulation, in order to offer consumers greater confidence and protection, as well as sharpen up their own industry knowledge and specialist skills. Rob Clifford, Chief Executive of Century 21 UK, said: “Our membership [to RICS and ARLA] delivers greater confidence to clients that we are working to industry best-practice guidelines in what is still a non-regulated industry. Clients can also take a great deal of comfort from the fact they are…
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Features
Home sale free-for-all!
Changes to the rules on selling homes could mean that buyers have little protection when using online intermediaries.
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Features
Speeding up conveyancing
What's wrong with it, asks Kate Faulkner, and do we go about speeding up conveyancing.
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Features
Masters of all they survey
PROPERTYdrum asks the two leading surveyors’ organisations, RICS and RPSA, to put the case for what is often seen as an unwanted complication to selling houses.
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Features
