It's the second house price rise in three months, 1.2% in May, leaving the average house price 11.3% lower than this time 12 months ago, after a 15% gap in April. Nationwide's chief economist is - however, cautious... pointing to similar small bounces during the early 90s and daring to hope - at most - that the data might translate into a moderation of the rate of fall. More here.
Estate Agent Today is first out of the gate with news of an announcement by Australian digital publishers REA Group that it will be "reviewing" its UK operations. REA's UK operations are led by property portal pioneer and still currently third biggest property search name Propertyfinder, which is co-owned by News International.
After nine consecutive falls, average UK rents remained unchanged in May, according to FindaProperty. The figure - £819 - remains, however, 5.5% down on the year.
In other landlording news, Property Hawk is urging landlords to write to their MPs demanding the Government abandon its mooted landlord licensing scheme.
It's thousands of years old, and at one time served the people of Peckham (the "Pecks") and the people of Dulwich (the "Dulls") with their drinking water, when taxis refused to bring Evian south of the river... or something. Anyway, it's been rediscovered, in a 64-year-old woman's back garden. According to the Telegraph:
Parking space letting agents Park Let have just compiled a 2009 League Table. At the top of the list Sloane Avenue, where a parking space can be let for £538 per month, adding up to £6,456 a year. Sounds like a lot? Then you clearly don't own a property with parking on Sloane Avenue. Anyway... here's the table:
And it's all down to property, according to research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. In 2007, CEBR estimated there were 489,000 people living in the UK with assets of £1m or more. But much of those assets were in the form of bricks-and-mortar... now, the figure's more like 242,000... yep, half. CEBR expect the number of millionaires to start rising again in 2011.
.... as cash-strapped parents turn from private education and go looking for the best the state has to offer. The data is from PropertyIndex.com, and comes just as private education has started to shrink for just the second time since the early 90s.
More data by National Association of Estate Agents property portal PropertyLive... this time showing that almost seven in ten wannabe first-time buyers have given up hope about being able to afford to step onto the property ladder. Eagle-eyed readers (and sub-editors) will have spotted that if they've given up hope, they can't be wannabe ftbs... but we know what they mean. NAEA-sponsored... the data appears to be directed toward the Government... a disguised call for help in loosening lending criteria.
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That's all the housekeeping for now. Move smooth this Bank holiday weekend.
A 30% fall from peak to trough, and a recovery that should start by the end of 2009, says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, driven by a shortage of supply and an improvement in general economic conditions.
Love the Godfather print above the fireplace... it's what you might call a cheeky little interior design conceit, except not in front of the owner, unless you don't mind walking home with your face in a carrier bag. Because the house belongs to Terry Adams of The Adams Family, Clerkenwell's near-legendary organised crime outfit. He's been in prison since February 2007, so it's about time the house was sold, and the proceeds used to pay off Adams' debts. You can read more here (apparently the property was extensively bugged by the police, so the new owner might want to consider a bit of a sweep before moving in). The particulars - which, perhaps not surprisingly, make no reference to the property's celebrity ownership - are here.
Asda to the north of you, Tesco to the east of you... New Barnet won't stand for it. (And - anyway - they've already a Sainsbury's.) The battle is over two substantial areas of land and radical plans for redevelopment that would effectively replace existing businesses and create small stores, homes and, yeah, supermarkets. More via the BBC, and check out the New Barnet resistance, here.
The article goes on to cite the new Lloyds 95% mortgage - which accepts a 5% deposit on the basis that 20% of the loan value is held in a Lloyds savings account... effectively an insurance or guarantor element which can be provided friends or family - as an example of a new breed of innovative mortgages set to launch on top of the new interest rate stability. Watch this space.
Knight Frank's London residential report is out, download it here. Few surprises... an upturn in enquiries at the start of the year, a bit more sales action, lack of supply supporting prices after the big falls of 2008. The most eye-catching illustration?
Properties - a the bottom end of Prime - are showing, according to KF, modest price rises over the last three months.
A survey by financial/professional advice-search website Unbiased shows that a further five million Brits are considering or have considered becoming landlords. The figure brings together those letting rather than selling and those simply seeking a lodger to help make ends meet.
Mark and Karen Ball's £1m "dream home" - three storeys, gym, sauna, triple garag - began to crack apart just days after completion. The problem? Dodgy foundations... a perfect metaphor for something... the Commons, the economy perhaps... but at 6pm I no longer have the energy to decide what. Anyway:
Results of a survey commissioned by PropertyLive (the property search portal launched, with much fanfare, by trade bodies, including the National Association of Estate Agents) shows 70% of British property surf online without any intention of buying, but just because they're property-prurient. Twelve per cent are still valuing their friends' and neighbours' homes. In London, the figure's unsurprisingly higher, at 16%. More surprisingly, the most obsessed age group was 25-34. Remember, the average first-time buyer is now 34-years-old.
It's the fourth consecutive monthly rise in asking prices, by 2.4%... the largest monthly rise May has ever seen. It leaves asking prices 6.2% down on the year, the smallest amount since October. So what's going on? The lowest number of newly listed properties any May since 2003 might be a part of the story.
First it was the case of the impotent Mortgage Rescue Scheme, now - it seems - the Government's shared ownership project - MyChoiceHomeBuy - isn't living up to its promise. Estate Agent Today claims to have been receiving emails from estate agents unhappy (understatement) about collapsing chains... chains built on MyChoiceHomeBuy. The scheme was aimed at key worker first-time buyers, and promised up to 50% of purchase price. Except now, there's apparently no cash in the bank...
And this looks like an experience common across the country. Do the maths, factor in the chains, and it's a lot of unhappy potential movers, lost revenue for agents, wasted money for movers. Another case of the Government's unique definition of "help"?
Council of Mortgage Lenders figures show a 29% rise in lending for March, with 40% borrowing by first-time buyers. Buy-to-let lending, however, crashed... down 70% in the first quarter, compared to the same period in 2008. It accounted for just 6% of all mortgage lending.
According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, it's a 50% increase year-on-year, from 8,500 homes in the first quarter of 2008 to 12,800 in the first quarter of 2009. Pre-repos, loans with more than 2.5% of the balance in arrears, were up 62% measured over the same period. Sounds bad? The CML were actually fairly bullish about the figures, and are expected to revise downward their headline-grabbing 2009 prediction of 75,000 repossessions.
Before you get too excited... we're talking about the American unemployed erectile dysfunctional, not the British unemployed erectile dysfunctional. But watch this space.
Transactions in the prime London market, while still low, are rising quickly, but available stock isn't, apparently, keeping up. The article, quoting the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, suggests HIPs might be a culprit. But I don't see the cost of a HIP being relevant at that end of the market... and, complicating things, RICS disputes M&P's assertion that transactions have lifted significantly. Interesting read, though.
That's a long time to wait without any income, and the insult added to the injury is that errant tenants regularly trash the gaff, too, leaving thousands of pounds in repairs. Oddly, I wasn't aware of Landlord Action. They take the whole eviction process, from serving notice to kicking to the curb, off a landlord's hands, charging for each step separately. They're also involved in debt recovery. Clearly, a landlords can take all this on themselves, but I can see the sense in passing it to an organisation with lots of experience.
New figures by ratings agency Moody's suggests 3.55% of landlords are at least three months behind on mortgage repayments... a significant rise from 0.95% this time last year. The data suggests landlords are finally catching up with homeowners in the arrears race. At the end of last year, the Financial Services Authority revealed that 3.4% of all mortgages were in arrears.
Fathom Financial Consulting and Zoopla have compared auction data with Land Registry sale data to show that residential property sold at auction over the last few weeks is, on average, shifting for 25% less than estate agency-sold homes. According to the FT:
Melville House is an 11-bedroom, listed mansion in Fife, with cricket pitch, tree house, commercial kitchens and cinema, and it was on the market six years ago for £4.5m. It didn't shift, and the owner ran out of money. Particulars, here.
The headlines shriek Surge In Homebuyer Interest, but - as usual - the RICS figures are a tortuous and confusing read. Forty-one per cent of surveyors reported a rise, rather than a fall, in new buyer enquiries, from 32% in March. That's more surveyors. But less than 300 were surveyed, and less than half of those apparently didn't report a rise. So exactly what kind of a surge is that? In London, things are more positive (70%, from 63% last month). But, hey, it's spring... and we're talking about movements from an unprecedentedly low base. Don't want to be the voice of doom... but let's think independently about this.
According to Ombudsman data, complaints against estate agents are down 38% in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the last quarter of 2008. It's a sizable drop... but then, there's been a sizable drop in the number of estate agents, the the number of opportunities they have to get out and meet the public. Interestingly, that didn't stop them offending people last year, during the early days of the crash. 2008 saw a 60% drop in sales, but only a 3% drop on complaints, year-on-year.
Homes in Kensington & Chelsea - according to the FT house price index - have lost 25% of their value (taken over a three month average) in 12 months, putting the average price of a home their down below the £1m mark, to £873,331. Nationally, April - the 14th consecutive month of falling prices - saw 1.1% knocked off values, leaving house prices at January 2006 levels.
According to the Daily Mail, there's bin-a-bit-a-bitchin' on the Western Morning News letters page, regarding Kirstie's Homemade Second Home. She is, according to a local man, adding to the affordable housing crisis in the region, without giving anything back to the community. Not so, says Allsopp, who replies on the page listing a whole group of local community bodies that he should approach and ask to find out whether Kirstie's mucking in.
A couple of weeks ago we reported on the pitiful failure that is Government's Mortgage Rescue Scheme... five months in, one person helped. Now, the Times reports that the Bates family - trotted around by the Department for Communities and Local Government in a PR exercise designed to attract attention away from the crumbling economy - has had its own application rejected.
It's up there... see it? Top right... just underneath the very funny faux-dictionary definition box that explains why the Rat and Mouse is the Rat and Mouse. That clever box allows you to search directly for UK sales and rental and even international property from the comfort of your favourite blog's front page. It's powered by Primelocation.com, who list property from more than 4,000 leading estate agencies, carry a mine of useful information, tips and advice across their portal, and who keep the Rat and Mouse going by kindly sponsoring the website. Thanks to Primelocation. Please use the box.
If your firm is interested in advertising on the Rat and Mouse, or if you've creative ideas about how we might work together, drop me a line.
I suppose that's the value of the license fee... the BBC has the resources to uncover proper, top-notch idiots while the rest of us have to make do with hear-say or, at best, D-list idiots. This one - after losing work and consolidating his debts during the early days of the crisis - ended up with a £250,000 mortgage, negative equity and a Champagne headache. Stay tuned for the BBC's Propertywatch programme (May 11-14, BBC 2, 8pm) for more.
Gordon Brown switches designated second home ten days after Blair's resignation, to throw gardener's and cleaner's bills relating to his Scottish house onto the public purse.
Hazel Blears claims for three different properties in a year, claiming home entertainment equipment from Selfridges, claiming mortgage payments then pocketing £45,000 profit on a property and charging the taxpayer so she could stay at an award-winning £211 a night hotel.
The improvers:
Douglas Alexander earns £141, 866, we pay £928 to have his chimney relined.
The piss-takers:
John Prescott charges us hundreds of pounds to fix and then re-fix a toilet seat.
Margaret Beckett attempts to claim £600 for hanging baskets at her constituency home, while living in a grace-and-favour London property.
Harriet Harman's damage limitation exercise on this morning's Today programme (listen again, here) included admitting that "I know it looks bad. We've already agreed we need to make a change". Harman and Brown are desperate to push through changes to the rules so that they're seen to have acted. They want to shift the argument from individual MPs and their personal ethics and onto the system, as if it's only right and natural for MPs to push rules as far as they'll go before warping. We need to make it clear to them that simply changing the rules isn't enough. We want MPs to be held accountable for their personal decision making, their personal ethics. Don't just change the rules, change the MPs.
Go here for the Telegraph's extraordinary catalogue of Cabinet members' greed, deceit and cynicism.
One and a half thousand Bacchus vines planted in Enfield marks the launch of Forty Hall Vineyard, a new vineyard aiming to supply consumers within a ten-mile radius with a wine to define the London terroir. Cheeky. Fragrant. Cockney. Profits will be used to promote sustainable urban agriculture. More here.
Except, I suppose, you spotted the beams. Anyway, I'm not so sure the market's in a de-cluttering, house-staging, bread-baking place right now... it's surely all about price?
The question of which property is a principal residence runs deeper than simply how many thousand pounds can be scooped from the public coffers in so-called "expenses". Jacqui Smith's controversial claim that a room in her sister's flat was her principal residence (allowing her to claim more expenses on her larger family home Redditch) appears to be contradicted by Redditch Council... where she's paying council tax as if it's her main home. We wonder whether she'd thinking ahead... to the Capital Gains Tax sting she may (and should) encounter when she comes to sell her Redditch property?
The Guardian blog admonishes the portals for sense of humour failure, but I'm not so sure this comedy car-crash offers much to laugh at. Stick to selling houses... leave the jokes to the professionals.
The Halifax House Price Index shows a 1.7% fall in April, leaving the price of the average home 17.7% down on the same time, 2008. It leaves the index at 2004 levels. Comparing first quarter averages, London is showing a 20.9% slide, more than the UK average of -17.5%, and the biggest fall on the UK mainland.
Sutton council is to teach children to be street wise, by building a "virtual south London street", complete with shops, cafes, dealers, gangs, paedos... all of the facilities usually associated with south London. Children will be bussed in from as far afield as Kent and Berkshire, where they'll navigate the street - which will have a giant video screen at one end - and then leave with medication for any trauma. The council has been criticised for spending £8m on the scheme, when schools and council homes are dilapidated and there's a big Icelandic hole in the financing, but the Rat and Mouse can see how the Welcome To South London project might have a combined future as a tourist attraction. More here.
Fresh from a price reduction, this skinny Elgin Avenue glass house replaces a former wine vault, and it's just 3m wide at the front. It was designed by Nicholas Boyarsky and Nicola Murphy and was the subject of a Building Design feature in 2007. Guide price, £1.15m. Particulars here.
Letting licenses... everywhere. First, if you're a member of the Association of Residential Letting Agents then, from today, you're also licensed to let. The ARLA scheme demands members sign up to some promises.. including "continuing professional development", whatever that means, and the expected codes of practice and redress schemes. Full details, here. Meanwhile, the Government, short of a few bob right now, will discuss legislation forcing all residential landlords to pay for a £50 annual license. Landlords...
It's up there... see it? Top right... just underneath the very funny faux-dictionary definition box that explains why the Rat and Mouse is the Rat and Mouse. That clever box allows you to search directly for UK sales and rental and even international property from the comfort of your favourite blog's front page. It's powered by Primelocation.com, who list property from more than 4,000 leading estate agencies, carry a mine of useful information, tips and advice across their portal, and who keep the Rat and Mouse going by kindly sponsoring the website. Thanks to Primelocation. Please use the box.
If your firm is interested in advertising on the Rat and Mouse, or if you've creative ideas about how we might work together, drop me a line.
The entire electorate gathered together today to toast the overwhelming success of the Government's Mortgage Rescue Scheme, which was launched last January, after it emerged that the scheme had helped a homeowner. New figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government revealed that the scheme - which was designed to help 6,000 people - had, so far, received 452 applications, one of which was successful.
Estate Agent Today has the latest in the ongoing lettings renewals test case between Foxtons and the Office of Fair Trading... a dispute concerning the right of lettings agents to charge normal commission rates on simple renewals (in which the agency hasn't had to go out and find new tenants). OFT's barrister, Nicholas Green QC:
March's completion figures... a 0.4% fall in the average residential property price in March, leaving the annual figure down 16.2%. Within those figures, though, there's a wide regional spread, from a 1.8% gain in the North East to a 2% fall in the West Midlands. London? A 0.6% rise, leaving prices down 15.4%.
