Primelocation offers buyers and sellers an international reach, and its portal is a mine of useful information, including useful guides for homeowners, landlords and movers. It features property from 4,000 leading estate agency firms, and the voice of Terence Stamp in its ads... which makes me happy. The Rat and Mouse needs the support of forward-looking organisations like Primelocation if it's to continue bringing you your daily dish of property news and gossip, so we hope you'll support them in return, by using the search box in the top right hand corner.
If your firm is interested in advertising on the Rat and Mouse (stop press: 200,000 page impressions in December), contact me here for more information.
It's Bank of England data... 31,000 approvals in December, up from 27,000 in November, but still the second lowest on record, leaving 2008 58% down on 2007.
An exhibition of art work by underground graffiti artist Banksy went on display yesterday at... drum roll please... Chesterton's new Sloane Avenue branch. Graffiti and west London estate agency? An odd combination? You bet... but also a clever and forward-thinking market positioning from an agency that dares to be different. The exhibition runs for a month.
But I thought a buyers' market was when there, well, weren't many buyers? Anyway, apart from an example of an agent being allowed to have his cake and eat it (the market's quiet, it's a great time to buy, and I can prove it, because there are loads of buyers), this is an interesting piece about a first-time buyer in London, searching in the £100,000 region. We like the SW4 property... nothing wrong with concrete.
Today, the Woolwich unveils a one-year 2.29% fixed rate mortgage. If you've decent equity in your property (you'll need 40%), and your mortgage is big enough to justify the £995 fee, it looks like a good bet. More here.
According to Nationwide, January saw a 1.3% fall in house prices, leaving them down 16.6% on the year. The three months to January figure dropped by 4% on the same time period year. The equivalent in the last Nationwide report was 4.2%. Interestingly, this particular figure - which is often used within the industry - has been improving for four consecutive months, providing some evidence that the rate of fall might be slowing.
Gone, from Park Lane and Clarges Mews. Daily Mail readers can sleep easy once more. While they were there, the squatters had been giving classes in a range of skills, from bicycle maintenance to dancing the charleston.
That's what we, at the Rat and Mouse, call trust. The banker is, of course, ex-Lehman boss Richard Fuld. The house is a Florida mansion. The reasoning... clearly an attempt to protect assets from furious shareholders. The wife? Not complaining. More here.
It's based on a survey of estate agents, and it shows a 1% fall in January, leaving the index 9.4% down on the year, and 10.2% of its August 2007 peak. Those figures appear overly mild to me. It now takes an average of 12.3 weeks to shift a property, and most properties can expect to achieve 88.3% of asking price.
Expensive property's not shifting... but it seems nobody told the Candy Brothers, who have just dumped a couple of flats and a block of offices with residential planning permission onto the market with a collective asking price of £100m.
Click the link for plenty of skeptical estate agent commentary. FYI, the properties include this £40m six-bedroom apartment in Chesham Place, apparently the second most expensive flat in London.
The idea is that it will be particularly suitable in the case of buy-to-let mortgages that have gone wrong. The lender will not only keep the existing tenant, but look to extend tenancies, rather than try to flog the property in a declining market.
Estate agents will be excited... between them, the pair could singlehandedly revive London's prime market. But we, at the Rat and Mouse, are skeptical... Hollywood celebs PR-ing movies by telling Londoners how much they love the city? Heard it before.
It's traditional for Savills to do their MIPIM entertaining on board a well-equipped (read driving range, read cinema) yacht. Not this year, apparently, when credit crunch conditions will bring some of the UK's most upmarket agents ashore. Personally, I'd consider that the final straw. Expect to see the Rat and Mouse continuing to enjoy the life to which it's become accustomed.
Primelocation offers buyers and sellers an international reach, and its portal is a mine of useful information, including useful guides for homeowners, landlords and movers. It features property from 4,000 leading estate agency firms, and the voice of Terence Stamp in its ads... which makes me happy. The Rat and Mouse needs the support of forward-looking organisations like Primelocation if it's to continue bringing you your daily dish of property news and gossip, so we hope you'll support them in return, by using the search box in the top right hand corner.
If your firm is interested in advertising on the Rat and Mouse (stop press: 200,000 page impressions in December), contact me here for more information.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders reports December mortgage lending at its lowest level since April 2001. Meanwhile, Revenue and Customs data show December completions 41% lower than December 2007. More here.
Understandably angry, I'd say. She's used the Merton Council housing solutions system to find a tenant for her house. A mother of five moved in, caused £2,000 of damage, then refused to leave after the 12 month tenancy agreement expired, and caused a further £8,000 of damage before being evicted. To make matters worse, the local council assisted the tenant in fighting the eviction. Read more here.
A 0.55% rise in December, the Primelocation Index's second monthly rise, leaving London asking prices 3.8% up on December 2007. Strong neighbourhoods included west and south west London; there were small falls in Islington, the City and Docklands. Here's Primelocation's Head of Insight, Andrew Smith:
"Over the past couple of months prime agents have reported a modest upturn in activity (albeit from a very low base), a trend which can be attributed to the impact of falling prices, lower interest rates and a rise in demand from overseas buyers attracted by the dip in the value of Sterling."
The Penrith cottage - where Withnail and the (never named) narrator went on holiday "by mistake" - is up for sale, through Savills, asking price £145,000. It's apparently pretty much unchanged since filming, although it's attracted its fair share of graffiti from fans of the film. So it's in a state, and planning permission is necessary before it can be made habitable. It's also remote. But it's a proper piece of cinema history.
She's back from Australia, she's £3m in her pocket, and a dad who's a partner at Behr and Butchoff in St Johns Wood. Dani's looking for a bargain, but her dad - sensibly - has started talking up local market.
Love it. Family's family but property, that's business.
But Dani - who's smarter than the average Behr - doesn't give up that easily. Click here to read more as she looks around one of her father's properties, then brands it "pokey and dated".
It was never going to be straightforward. But exactly why the proposed BBC relocation programme, from London to the regions, is back in the news I don't know. As far as I can tell, none of the details are changed... perhaps it's because of the increased risk the taxpayers will be shouldering by buying properties at 95% market value and then guaranteeing to cover the differential if agents flog them at a loss in a falling market.
That's Cluttons' James Hyman, talking, primarily, about posh neighbourhoods (the piece name checks Clapham and Chelsea). His argument? If you've got cash, neither the banks nor the brokers know what to do with it, buying's cheaper than renting right now, so the clever people are shoving it back into property if they can find the right deal.
The announcement this morning of the Government's latest scheme to help struggling mortgage payers stay in their homes effectively sees not-for-profit housing associations attempt to beat the sell-to-rent-back companies at their own game. They will buy your house; you stay in it by renting it back.
Right. But there's an element of confusion here. The Government's £200m will - apparently - pay for a mixture of purchases and temporarily loans (which the homeowner can pay back at a more financially secure time). If it's the latter, are housing associations really set up to process and run loans? If it's the former, what happens in ten years' time when potentially thousands of ex-homeowners wake up to the realisation that the Government now owns what used to be their increasing asset, and which the Government picked up at the bottom of the market during a temporary dip?
Fresh out of Lokku Labs (the search experts behind Nestoria) comes Where Can I Live?, a clever property-transport mashup for Londoners still with jobs. You tell it the nearest public transport to your place of work, a maximum commute time and how much you can afford (to spend on property or rental), it gives you some suggested locations where the average property price and commute times meet your criteria, and even leans on the Nestoria data to suggest actual properties. Sweet.
Sinitta's selling her Putney six-bedroom house. The Colinette Road property has six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a garage, a big garden and the very nice glass-walled dining room above. It's on the market for £3.95m. Particulars here.
... for Tony Blair. According to this one of the Blairs' Connaught Square neighbours has just sold their (identical) house for £4.3m, that's £650,000 above what the Blairs paid in 2004. According to the agent, houses are holding up well, particularly on the Blairs' side of the street, where the properties are larger and wider. He also suggested the Blairs' neighbours might be profiting from the presence of the former PM, as the new owner was attracted to the increased security in the area.
The DCLG house price index is possibly the only thing I like about the Government. Based on completions, it's more meaningful than many of the other indices. In fact, I'll admit, I'm perversely excited about December's 12-month figure, due out in about four weeks. I know... I'll get help. For now, it's all about November, which shows a 1.9% fall in the month, a 4.4% fall in the four months to the end of November, and an 8.6% drop over the year... suggesting that the Government's completion price-based data is going to show a significantly smaller drop on the year than figures published by Halifax and Nationwide. Interestingly, first-time buyers are getting the best of it. Annual average house prices for ftbs in November were 11.8% lower than a year ago. Download the actual report here.
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors figures show house sales continuing to fall, to 10.1 per agent in the three months to December (from 10.6 the previous month), once again breaking the RICS record. Confidence among estate agents (the number not expecting continuing house price falls), meanwhile, has improved very slightly, and new buyer inquiries are up for the second consecutive month, suggesting there might be a growing pool of interest either looking for bargains are preparing to enter the market once the worst of sliding prices is over.
Story of the weekend... according to the Observer Foxtons owners BC Partners have been told by creditors to inject £50m into the firm or risk seeing the firm go into administration. It's been clear for some time that Foxtons wasn't going to meet its debt obligations, but - as far as we know - this is the first time anybody's called bust.
Meanwhile, suggestions here that Jon Hunt - who flogged the firm just before the market went tits up - is looking at piling back into property... commercial this time. Every experienced or senior estate agent I've discussed the Foxtons sale with has described Hunt's timing as lucky rather than skillful. But if you believe otherwise, watch commercial closely.
Foreign buyers are taking advantage of the weak pound to secure some impressive London property bargains. In fact, if you're Japanese, you're looking at prices 50% below where they were a year ago. Posh agents report cash-rich foriegners pushing deals through in days.
Meanwhile, head over to This Is London to read the real life case studies of a bunch of brave people (one from Sweden) who feel now's just the right time to buy property in London.
Remember the Grosvenor Street squatters who, toward the end of last year, helped themselves to a piece of prime Mayfair real estate, moved in and drove the Daily Mail nuts with their flagrant disregard for everything that's sacred in this country? Anyway, they were evicted. Or so we thought. Actually, it appears they've traded up the property ladder, leaving the frankly tatty £6m house for something much more suitable... a Clarges Mews property that sold for £22.5m at the height of the boom. The current owners (a management company) only realised the house had become occupied when a Christmas tree appeared in one of the windows. The temporary residents are hosting film screenings and a variety of free workshops at the property. Legal action has been taken.
BC Partners paid £390m for the London and Home Counties estate agency chain not more than a slit second before the property market imploded. According to a BC partner - quoted by Bloomberg - they were anticipating a slowdown in volume in the London market... of 30%. No-one was anticipating 70%, and if they had, they might have let Jon Hunt keep the firm.
A likely story... he was just doing an Elvis like we're all tempted to once in a while. Other claims include spectacles stolen by magpie and the theft of a large and valuable collection of sex toys.
It's a 0.5% cut, bringing the base rate to 1.5%, its lowest since the Bank of England was founded in 1694. Sensible? I honestly can't see any way in which this works. It's like backing into a corner, using a manoeuvre that's been failing consistently for most of last year. The big question... where next?
Robin Ellis converted big London houses into fantasy-homes - swimming pools with depth-adjustable floors, car-lifts and other rich-boy toys, before his company automatically retracted itself into administration shortly before 2008 became 2009. Now, the Standard takes its life in its hands with some alarming allegations regarding Ellis's way of doing business. More here.
Ah, the science that is TV. The Telegraph goes behind the scenes and looks at property television, where the viewers, apparently, can't get enough, no matter what the market's doing.
It's coming, according to London Development Agency boss Peter Rogers, unless we start building again. He cites pent-up demand and poor supply , but didn't - interestingly - predict when the explosion is due. More here.
The Mail examines Wayne Rooney's investment in developments in Aldgate and Whitechapel, via the Formation Group, which specialises in advising wealthy sports and showbiz stars what to do with their copious cash. Building work is being funded by Iceland's Heritable Bank. The Aldgate building (above Aldgate East tube) is apparently under threat. Other footballers have invested in property in the US and Dubai, as well as a range of property for investment and personal use closer to home. But it's not the footballers who are taking the property crash to heart the most. How about former super-middle weight world champion Glenn Catley, who doesn't sound too impressed with financial advice from well-known property investor Jonathan Power.
It might not get the coverage the Halifax index got a few days ago (there are only so many ways of saying the same thing) but the Nationwide index closes the year nasty. A 15.9% drop on the year is the biggest since Nationwide began keeping records, and it follows a December drop of 2.5% (after a modest 0.4% drop in November had us all wondering whether things were leveling out).
However, 1.8m immigrants arrived in the Capital over the same period... resulting in the current situation in which - apparently - one in three London workers comes from overseas. The flight of indigenous Londoners is blamed on high property prices... if you want to own it, you need to leave London. But if you want to rent it - and don't mind being crammed into a small conversion with half a dozen other immigrants - London's great. Note that this research ends in 2007. It will be interesting to see whether rising unemployment sends eastern Europeans back home, unemployed Brits back to London.
While we were away, a fascinating piece in the Telegraph about seven London lodges, all in the Royal Parks, which have been spruced up and are being made available to rent. They're not cheap, of course, but the perks, combined with the originality of the addresses, are impressive... and include Royal Parks gardeners tending your plot, detached living and parking in central London and acres of parkland on the doorstep. At the bargain cosy end of things, try West Lodge in Hyde Park: a double bedroom, off-street parking and garden near Knightsbridge and South Kensington, for £550 a week.
