Kudos to Rightmove, who have managed to increase pre-tax profits by an astonishing 40% during one of the worst property market busts in living memory. The money has apparently come from holiday homes and lettings businesses, and a successful rise in fees... despite all the talk, not too long ago, of Rightmove being relegated to history following the launch of the National Association of Estate Agents' own portal. While we're on the subject of the agents, Rightmove also reports that they've evidence that a fifth of all estate agencies went out of business last year. More here.
If the plan was to create some attention, it worked... this story's creating some headlines this morning. A GfK document is claiming that almost four million UK homeowners (one-in- are in negative equity. That's a figure way in excess of, in fact, pretty much double, any previous estimate, and it's twice the negative equity peak of the 90s crisis. Does the figure hold water? According to this, it's derived from interviews with 60,000 respondents. I don't know enough about the data business to judge whether that's a large enough sample (there are approximately 12m mortgage payers in the UK) but I do know that - given we're only in the early stages of a national job loss cycle - it's potentially very worrying.
A report, today, by the E-Homebuying Forum suggests merging conveyancing lawyers and estate agents into one single concentrated disliked profession. Its "Blueprint for the Future of Homebuying" seeks "Faster Certainty" in the homebuying process, by a combination of "Greater Transparency", "Greater Efficiency" and "Greater Commitment". Other specific suggestions include estate agency regulation, wider use of automated and electronic systems across the process and legally-binding pre-contracts with financial penalties. We like the last bit, but we're worried about the first. Estate agents are employed by the vendor, and their job is to sell a property. Lawyers are employed by the buyer, and part of their job is to warn the buyer why - on occasion - he shouldn't buy the property. You can read the document here.
It's a £2m mansion in West Sussex, inherited from her mother. The woman, who has never had a job, but also owns a B&B which creates income of around £30k annually, took out a £1.2m mortgage on the property in 2005, to spend on a property development project. She's been unable to make repayments, and her lenders have attempted to evict her. She plans to sue them for reckless lending. After all, it's only fair. More here.
The facts: it's a big ruby-lookalike surrounded by diamonds, it was lost in Hackney (which makes it, arguably, the most valuable item in a radius of several square miles) yesterday, while Kirstie was shooting her new series. There's a £1,000 reward, and a special website here.
It's a brave broadsheet journalist who, these days, will point out what - to professional investors - is the obvious: if you wait until you have proof that the market has reached it's lowest point, you've missed it. Yes, you can wait, and buy at the same point on the way up. But time isn't on your side, you'll end up having to move quicker, and pass some of the bargaining power over to the vendor. How far the market has yet to all, of course, nobody knows. The only certainty is that the piece will no doubt be followed by reader comments accusing the writer of self-interest.
There's nothing we like more than a new property price toy, and this one's great. Go and play with the Times's new buy v rent calculator. Slot in a property price, the rental cost of an equivalent property, your potential mortgage deal and savings rate, and an informed view of where the market's going... and it will spit out a graph that shows you how long you'll need to wait before you're saving money by buying rather than renting. Very nice.
It's on Castelnau, just across Hammersmith Bridge, in Barnes. It's a one bedroom flat, with high ceilings and a spacious look. It was also - apparently - once home to Sir Anthony. Price: £395,950. Particulars: here.
Time for a round-up of news from the trough. First off, it appears that former deputy leader of the Tories and a man reputed to be worth £27m has been asking us to cough up some cash to help him have the moss removed from the walls of his five-bedroom home in two acres of Wiltshire. If you feel that's money well spent... good for you. Elsewhere, fellow Tory MP Chris Grayling is said to have claimed more than £100,000 from the state to pay for a London flat just 17 miles from his family home. The £104,183 claim is across six years, during which time the flat increased in value by as much as £200,000. It appears the property might be little more than an investment at the taxpayers' expense, since Grayling's neighbour didn't recognise him when shown a photograph. On the other side of the political divide, has Foreign Secretary David Miliband been caught out juggling properties to avoid tax? It certainly looks like it. Finally, let's hear it for Jacqui Smith, who is furious about all the accusations of greed. Okay, she did take £116,000 of taxpayers' money and spend it on her family home. But, if she'd have felt really greedy, she could have grabbed a further £58. Oink, oink, oink. Now tell us how the greedy bankers need to be punished.
The Rock owes only £9bn, so - obviously - it's time to start lending. Alistair Darling is said to have given the go-ahead to £14bn of home loans over the next two years.
Last year's repo-stats are in... 40,000 repossessed homes in 2008, which turns out to be slightly lower than the Council of Mortgage Lender's predictions. Interestingly, though, the crunch appears to have finally fed through to the buy-to-let market, with landlords in arrears outnumbering homeowners generally.
Londoners are confident, according to Rightmove, and if they could only get the loans, they'd be setting out on another crazy bricks-and-mortar buying spree.
This is the sorry and extraordinary tale of a Trinity Road, Tooting, flat - the scene of a recent suicide - shown to a mentally ill man by Wandle Housing Association. The flat apparently came with some unusual mod cons:
Yeah, that would be the rope hanging from the rafters through a trap door. The man was severely traumatised by what surely can't go down as the best viewing in estate agency history. The Housing Association completely deny the rope was in any way connected to the previous occupant... but that it was there for "another purpose".
Moneywise investigates, and discovers you'd do well to find the 1% or 1.5% commission rate you might have found a couple of years ago. Now, think 2% or 3%. Also, they suggest there's a growing trend in which agents charge a fixed fee based on a percentage of asking price, and stick to it even if the property sells for considerably less. I wouldn't complain too much about the former. One and a half per cent is effectively a discounted rate, reflecting ease-of-sale... a gesture that the agent's prepared to play fair, and really wants your property because there's a shortage of stock. Remember, in America, you can expect to pay 6% in commission. The latter, though... that sounds like a case of seller beware.
Not sure how we missed this one. Ex-Rothschilds designer kicked to the curb. Priceless neighbor comment: "A great sense of relief." Posh repo-victim: "I want my house back. I want compensation."
Yep, that one. Sold for £265,000. The new owner, who snatched the property from under the noses of some celebrity interest, is said to be a telephone bidder from the local area.
According to research by the Letting Protection Service - a company offering referencing and insurance products to landlords - it's only a matter of time before a prospective tenant tries to pull a fast one. And don't assume you're safe just because you like the look of her crinkly old church-goer's smile and well-fitting dentures.
In a poll of 10,000 landlords, a surprising 21 per cent said that they had received a fake reference from a prospective tenant aged 60 and over. A total of 43 per cent had problems with faked references from prospective tenants aged over 50.
It's the South Eaton Place townhouse owned by the late controversial politician until his death in 1998. Powell's widow sold the property to its current owners. It was also where he was living when he made his career making/ending Rivers of Blood speech, and was fired from the Conservative front bench. Continuing on the political theme, it overlooks Blunkett's ex-grace and favour home. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, three reception rooms, £3.65m. Particulars here.
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), or if you've creative ideas about how we might work together, contact me here.
The Times's Anne Ashworth and Rebecca O'Connor talk to a number of agents on the subject of bargains, cash-buyers and the (far from discredited) theory that catching a falling market within 10% of the bottom is a decent deal (the nature of a recovery is that investors who wait for firm evidence of a recovery miss the boat). Inevitably, the readers don't like it:
And more of the same. Yes, agents want the market to pick up, but it's in their best interests to sell lots of houses cheap, rather than a few expensive ones. Furthermore, if the market has dropped by around 20%, and it's possible to knock a further few thousand off with a confident cash offer, then is it really so naive to wonder whether that's a decent deal? It shouldn't need pointing out, but at some point we will reach the bottom of the market.
The slightly clichéd assumption made by estate agents is that a weak market leads to a "flight to quality" as purchasers concentrate on "best in class" properties that are likely to retain their value. Conversations with investors and more market savvy purchasers at thee current time reveals [sic] that the market downturn is providing them with opportunities to buy into future growth areas.
Where?! Where?!
The document namechecks Fitzrovia (not just Fitzroy Square, but "more peripheral" locations), Bloomsbury (when Kings Cross eventually pulls its pants up), Paddington ("properties on a par with Notting Hill") and the South Bank.
And I think that's a fair compromise. For now. But - after Mervyn King's assessment of the economy yesterday - how long before it'll be a case of... bring back to rabbits and it's a work day?
Foxtons founder (and flipper, moments before the crash) Jon Hunt has apparently proved his knack for timing is more than fluke, by shorting troubled developer Hammerson by the order of 1.3m shares. The exact timing isn't known, but movement in the Hammerson share price suggests he's had plenty of time to make a killing.
But it's not for our money, it's for foreign money, which is worth so much more these days. The agent's Marsh & Parsons, the branch manager will be ex-Chesterton, ex-Foxtons Guy Major, who also wins the Most Masculine Name In London Property Award. More here.
The third month of growing enquiries hasn't stopped a sense of falling prices... the number of surveyors reporting falls compared to those reporting rises increased, the average number of properties sold by an agent in the month slipped to 9.9.
Okay, give me one year's Groucho Club membership, tickets for Rigoletto and an hour with one of your fleet in the UK's most icy car park, and I'll take two.
So our Home Secretary claims her big constituency home - the one she shares with her husband and kids - is her second home, and that she actually lives in London, in a room in her sister's pad. Despite this admirably cost-saving arrangement, she claims £24,000 a year in expenses. It's all - she insists - perfectly legal, and - of course - it is. Which is the point. It shouldn't be. And our public servants should be judged on what's ethical, not just legal. This - for your pleasure - from July 2008:
UK estate agents are apparently averaging four shags a week, twice the national average, and more than any other profession. Okay, it's not like there's much else for them to do, but at least they're not sitting around moping.
Old habits die hard, and it's even harder to wean the British public off their property addiction. I'd heard, anecdotally, from a number of estate agents that January had been something of a good month, but I'd just assumed they were drunk or high or something. But here's the Halifax House Price Index telling us that January prices rose, yes that's rose, on the month, by a matter of 1.9%. A blip? Very possibly... people in the industry are only convinced of a change of direction once the three-month average moves from red to black or vice versa. But now here's the Guardian getting the same story I've been getting... not only that, but gazumping too.
Last November, we reported that TV's Phil Spencer was downscaling his Garrington Home Finders business. Today, the picture looks a lot worse, with Spencer appearing to admit he's dependent on a buyer if he's to keep the company afloat. He's also said to have been paying his employees' salaries out of his own pocket for several months.
Karen Menzies is upset with Foxtons, after the "single professional female" they moved into her Cathcart Road flat turned out to be a Russian prostitute who damaged the property, failed to pay any rent and took drugs. Menzies's complaint is that Foxtons provided a (Foxtons) reference for the tenant, despite the fact she apparently owed a previous landlord £6,000 in unpaid rent and damages. She did, however, hand over the keys to the woman before the previous landord's references arrived... something that a lot of people might consider unwise, Foxtons-reference or not. Foxtons have also offered to contribute to the legal costs involved in evicting the woman... something you don't see everyday. It will be interesting to learn the outcome of this one. More here.
Rankin - one of the country's most gifted photographers (and, more recently, an engaging TV documentary maker) - is, according to the Telegraph - a little over-exposed to London property.
Knight Frank's posh London property index has just suffered its second-biggest monthly decline, dropping 3.7% in January, knocking prices 21% on the year. City jobs-losses are presumably a prime culprit, and this is a figure that presumably factors in the advantage London's most sought-after postcodes enjoy when the pound is low. It comes - however - after several years of double-digit growth.
It wasn't four months ago that we were reporting that Paris Hilton had been spotted snapping up brothels in the east... now - according to this - she's just bought in Camden. Keep going Paris, the London property market needs you.
We are looking for people in the process of a building/renovation project who have discovered they may have a protected species such as a bat, great crested newt, badger, bird or red squirrel on their site. This may mean their plans for the project have to change or could be delayed. Is this you? How has this made you feel? Are you in a state of shock? Are you concerned about the extra costs and delays? Are you worried this may stretch your budget a little too far? Or are you just flaming mad that you are being told what to do on your own personal property? If so we would love to hear from you.
Contact Kristy on 020 8965 6694 or email her here.
