It's 2010 house price prediction time. Now, remember, we don't officially call 2009 until the Government releases their own official (completion-based) figures. But just because it's interesting, here's what people were saying this time last year.
The only consensus... house prices were going to plummet in 2009. And yet... Nationwide - this morning - called a gain, for what it's worth.
This year, there's not even that amount of consensus. It looks like this:
Citi ↑5% to 10%
Assetz ↑5%
Zoopla ↑2% to 3%
The Rat and Mouse ↑2% National Association of Estate Agents NO CHANGE
Halifax NO CHANGE
Nationwide NO CHANGE
Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors ↓1% to 2%
Cluttons ↓3%
Savills ↓3%
Market Oracle ↓3.5%
Global Insight ↓5%
Ernst & Young ↓5%
Jones Lang LaSalle ↓7%
Capital Economics ↓10%
Armstrong Davis ↓10% to 15%
Council of Mortgage Lenders NO BETS
So... from a gain of 10% to a fall of 15%. Place your bets.
There's still the question of unknown unknowns in the economy. We've little money or appetite left for future bailouts, so anything approaching a crisis or emergency will surely be enough deliver a crunching knock-out blow to any residential property recovery. Counting that out, all eyes are on the unemployment figures. What we've seen of a property recovery has been thoroughly reliant on a shortage of stock. If unemployed leads to forced sales, the picture will look very different. Next year's also a general election and World Cup year. Don't expect much action in the first half of 2010... it will all happen from late summer onward. The Rat and Mouse was tempted to join Nationwide and Halifax with a NO CHANGE prediction, but we don't like to look boring. So - optimistic about unemployment - we've predicted a small gain, which we think will prove less than significant against general inflation. London - separately - may see something bigger... more like 8%.
What do you think?
That's it from us until 2010. Happy New Year to all our readers, and thanks so much for coming back again and again and making 2009 such a busy year. Thanks to all our advertisers, too... for keeping the blog alive. And remember - if you like what we do - be kind and nominate us here. We could nominate ourselves, but we haven't... and we'd like to think somebody else might.
It was a 0.4% rise in December, the eighth consecutive monthly gain according to the Nationwide index, and - although the Rat and Mouse doesn't like to call it on the year for a few week, until the Government's own figures are published - they're saying it makes 2009 a year of residential property gains (5.9% to be exact), and the Noughties a decade of gains (117%, no less). The index is, however, still 12.2% off its October 2007 peak.
After causing the recession with their reckless, irresponsible borrowing, homeowners are now threatening the recovery with their reckless, irresponsible saving.
You just can't help yourselves, can you? Paying off your debts like a bunch of fiscal delinquents. Don't you know you should be borrowing, spending, borrowing, spending... ?
According to a Halifax survey, they're headed by Kensington's Wycombe Square, with an average property value of £5.4m. In fact, seven of them are in the Kensington & Chelsea borough. But at number two it's Hampstead's Ingram Avenue (average property price: £4.9m). The research used Land Registry data covering the last five years.
Heron Tower (110 Bishopsgate) is apparently now officially taller than Tower 42's 183m. It will eventually reach 246m into the sky, taller even than 1 Canada Square.
Hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and you didn't receive any gifts involving either Jeremy Clarkson or John Barrowman. We're back and blogging, on a limited service, up until New Year.
This isn't London, but it's Brighton, which is kind of London, except saltier.
23 Lewes Crescent is a nice five-bedroom, Grade I-listed Regency townhouse, and the former home, we believe, of Cate Blanchett. Features? A sound-proof music studio (installed, we guess, by Blanchett's buyer Richard Stannard), gated gardens of seven acres (classy) and suede-covered walls (pervy). Guide price: £3.1m. Particulars: here.
The Rat and Mouse will be silent until December 27, when it will return, wearing a tasteless sweater, and provide property news running up until the New Year (and our annual house price predictions post). Until then, we wishhhhhh you a happy Christmas, and thank you for supporting the Rat and Mouse in a year that's seen record traffic (a record for us, not for, say, the BBC or Google) and no end of property market drama. Seriously, have a wonderful holiday. B x
Calling all property bloggers… We want to celebrate your brilliance.
We are announcing the launch of our very first blog awards – and we’re looking for your nominations.
The categories are:
Best blog
Best blog post
Best newcomer (for a blog that started in 2009)
Users’ favourite blog
We're about to get busy nominating... but (although we've been told we can) we don't feel like nominating ourselves. It just doesn't feel right. Which means... we'd really appreciate your support. If you come here often, you enjoy what you find or it's useful to your life in any way, here's a quick and easy and (most importantly) free way to say thank you. Email editorial@primelocation.com with your nominations, and do it right now before you forget. Thanks! Read more here.
The London market's set to blow up in an extravagant excess of top Capital property values, according to London Central Portfolio, a property search and management company. Expect - according to LCP chief Naomi Heaton in conversation with the Standardhere - Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea prices to rebound 80% from recent lows.
A Boris Johnson production, the London Rent Map is an interesting interactive website using colour codes to show average rents for different sized properties in all the London neighbourhoods. I've played with it, and it looks good. Find it here.
The Confederation of British Industry predicts a rise in interest rates early next year, in its quarterly economic forecast. And by the end of the year, expect rates to reach 2%, it says. It points out that 2% is historically still "stimulatory" (does it do anything for you?), and doesn't predict anything like normal interest rates (5% or so) in the foreseeable future.
An interesting Radio 5 show yesterday about what looks like a maintenance charge scandal involving some east London new build apartments close to the Olympic Village. Maintenance charges, paid by direct debit, are escalating wildly with neither notice nor obvious logic; services remain abysmal. One man had to call pest control himself and pay to rid the place of cockroaches, while £200 a month in service charges. Read more here, and scroll to the bottom to download the podcast.
Political correctness gone mad, isn't it? At Christmas, of all times... but hopefully, thanks to the Mail, the powers that be will eventually see sense and get some tax-aided bankers or expense-fiddling MPs and their privately educated kids in there soon, before the thought of those foreigners living in bigger houses than our own completely ruins everybody's holiday.
First off, a big "thank you" to our sponsor, Primelocation.com. Remember, Primelocation.com isn't just about searching properties listed by 4,000 leading estate agents, the website's a mine of useful advice, information and links. An example? Go here to search up-to-date real life completion prices for UK property. Snoop on your neighbours. Do the maths before making an offer. It's useful, it's free... you need to register, but it's quick and easy. If you've feedback, let us know and we'll pass it on with pleasure.
In November, the Rat and Mouse once again broke all previous records with a new traffic high. If you want to know more about advertising opportunities on the Rat and Mouse, drop me a line. Or if you just want to chat with the Rat, we're on Twitter here, or email us tips here.
The KF Prime Central Index is up 2.1% in December, giving a 13.8% lift since March, but still a way off, in fact 13.4% off, their March 2008 high. Interestingly, the three-month average is at its highest (5.5%) since the recovery. Chelsea, Kensington and Knightsbridge show the largest gains.
Okay, this is pretty amazing... a kind of combination of old-fashioned 360 degree tour and, err, old-fashioned streaming video. Combine the two, it's new. Could it be a technology that will appeal to estate agents? Joel at Future of Real Estate Marketing thinks so:
Back in May, 45% of agreed sales were to first-time buyers. In November, that figure had shrunk to just 19%, according to the National Association of Estate Agents. And we've still to see the end of the Stamp Duty holiday. First-time buyers are one end of a chain... without them, fewer chains, fewer sales.
So what - everyone, and not least Channel 4, wants to know - is what Kirstie and Phil were doing on a top BBC talent list, leaked yesterday? According to this, they've almost certainly been poached, and will be joining the BBC roster after their 4homes contract ends in March. We'd welcome a comment from our friends at 4homes...
Advice UK, Shelter and Citzens Advice have criticised lenders for resorting to court too quickly, instead of treating repossession as a last resort. (We wonder whether the - perhaps, temporary - fight back of the property market is perhaps proving too much of a temptation.) The Government's Support for Mortgage Interest scheme is aimed at people who have been made unemployed and - 13 weeks after a claim - starts paying interest on loans up to £200,000. But it operates a standard interest rate of 6.08%... less, say charities, than what many sub-prime lenders charge. More here.
We've written aboutPark Let before... they're the letting agents for car parking spaces. They've released figures of earnings by London's "driveway landlords" during the recession, and it's interesting reading.
Total earnings since April 2008: £1.398m
An average of £857 for each space let
Average monthly income in London £147.94
In Covent Garden and Piccadilly, the average was £296.92, peaking at £383
Traditionally, what happens in the auction houses is seen as an indicator for what's likely to happen to the major house price indices... which might be worrying to somebody who's recently bought, because the auction discount is currently getting bigger, not smaller. In November, the discount - according to Fathom Consulting and Zoopla - is 22%, up from 18% in October. Although it's significantly smaller than it was during the great panic of 2008, it's still way above the long-term average. Go here for a cool graph.
This counts as "news", in my book. The Barbican boasts 69 new apartments, after a conversion of City University business school offices in residential use. Okay... you could argue that these aren't "original"... they might provide living inside a visionary 60s block, but they're not the 60s vision of living. Doesn't seem to be putting off the buyers, apparently, some of whom are said to be trading sideways from inside the Barbican. But check out the prices:
Here they are, the unthinking woman's idea of proper music... Blake. But baritone Stephen Bowman apparently hasn't thrown himself into the rock'n'roll lifestyle so competely he isn't still thinking about a bit of property investment. He's renting out his Notting Hill flat to foreign, short term tenants and - its seems - making a killing.
I don't know where to begin. If you were going to sell a giant communications company the rights to name your family home for 12 months, how much would you ask for? If - like the snows - you'd be happy with, ahem, £250, please get in touch, because I've every confidence you and I could do business. Astonishingly:
According to this, James Taylor - a former associate of Grant Bovey, who managed to escape before the ship sank - is attempting to sell big old Gordon House in Richmond-upon-Thames for a whopping £25m. It's a big house, in a posh area, with a major architectural heritage... but:
Shortly before it was sold to Taylor [at the top of the market], Octagon, the developer which then owned the property, valued it at about £13m.
Today's Rightmove survey of asking prices is in broad agreement with FindaProperty's on Friday. Prices fell 2.2% this month nationally, and by 1.2% in London (led by Hounslow, with a 6.2% fall, and - wait for it - Kensington & Chelsea, where vendors were discounting by 5%... which means almost £100,000 in that neighbourhood). Rightmove warns of weakening prices in 2010.
The Rat and Mouse has teamed up with Discount Letting to bring Rat and Mouse readers a very welcome 25% Christmas discount offer. An online letting agent, Discount Letting launched shortly before we did, back in 2004, and has forged partnerships with Rightmove, Primelocation, FindaProperty, PropertyFinder and Fish4Homes, guaranteeing impressive exposure for a cut-price fee.
And the fee's about to get even more cut-price, with this 25% discount offer for Rat and Mouse readers, meaning you could use Discount Letting to find your tenant for just £44.25. This offer is available until the end of 2009, so take advantage now by either visiting DiscountLetting.co.uk and using offer code 6899yedvr (or phoning 020 8697 0984.
According to a buying agent - quoted here - bankers are ready to plough what's left of their bonuses into London property early in the New Year, before there's any chance of house prices starting to rise significantly. That's despite widespread warning of a dead market next year as everyone obsesses over the election and the World Cup, or even a double dip. What this suggests to the Rat and Mouse is the prospect of even more of a split UK property market... London heading one way... most of the rest of the country the other.
Asking prices have fallen for a second month, according to FindaProperty.com, down 0.4%, following a 0.5% fall last month. Across the year, there's a fall of 0.8%. The numbers are consistent with Rightmove's... and we find ourselves in the odd situation in which the asking prices indices, calculated by the portals, are more pessimistic that the official completion figures. The answer is almost certainly seasonal (sellers pricing to sell in a slow market), and perhaps the difference between asking price and exchange price has been reduced toward the end of the year. We won't know for a while. FindaProperty's London-specific figures show 0.6% fall on the month, but that's in the context of a rise of 7.1% annually.
Three hundred squatters have been evicted, today, from a block of ex-council flats in Poplar they've been living in, partying in, having noisy sex - apparently - on the roof of... since last autumn.
Tower Hamlets Council claim to have visited them - without partying or having sex on the roof - several times to make sure the squatters knew they were going to have to arrange alternative accommodation.
According to the Office for National Statistics - which would, I guess, know - while 12.8% of women between the ages of 25 and 29 are living at home with their parents (a figure which already surprises me for being so high), the figure for men is a giant 24.5%. Astonishing.
Expensive houses have apparently got 10-12% more expensive since March, with a lack of supply the main driver. The Buying Solution also report that private rented accommodation is way down... firming up rents for landlords. More here.
The fifth consecutive house price rise shows the average property up 1.4% in November, leaving the index up 4.2% on the year... higher, I'd suggest, than most of us considered back in January. According to the accompanying literature, we can look to a shortage of property for supporting prices in 2009. Expect - they say - to see that change in the new year, when a new tide of sellers come onto the market. There's even talk of a double dip.
Robert Jordan - ex-chief of the above and chairman of Jordan's lettings agency has published his first crime novel. It's called Time's Up For By To Let, and it features two murders, a fraud and an attempted blackmail. We want to know... where did he get his material? More here. Buy it from Amazon here.
It's a £4,000 pound fine, courtesy of Highbury Magistrates' Court, after Foxtons apparently failed to tell a potential residential buyer that a Hackney property was designated work/live. The buyer only found out at a late stage, and was forced to pull out of the sale after spending £600. More here.
That 66 inch-wide house on Goldhawk Road is back on the market, after four years. It was once home to photographer Juergen Teller and a senior Winkworths agent (at different times), and it's certainly unique... five storeys, a small garden, terrace, and some say the skinniest in the country. It's with Faron Sutaria, with a guide price of £549,950 (particulars here).
Rumours are circulating that the Beckhams are on the verge of some London house-hunting. David B. is tied to LA Galaxy until 2012, but the idea is that a return to the UK will follow, and the rumours surround he hiring of an interior design firm, suggesting purchase plans may be imminent. Interesting.
It's Fitch, with the warning that poor employment prospects and a continuation of tough lending conditions could see house prices suffering once again in the coming years, by as much as a third off their 2007 peak. More here.
And this time, they're extracting maximum metaphorical victory by picking former Home Secretary David Blunkett's one-time grace-and-favour apartment at 62 South Eaton Place. It's been lying empty since Blunkett left three years ago... alarmed, CCTV-monitored, bullet-proof glazed. Somebody apparently left the window open. (David!!!) More here.
All the chatter, today, is about this... reports of Google cozying up to UK estate agents with a view to launching property search in the UK. Could it happen? It's happened in Australia, so yes. Should Rightmove, Primelocation et al panic? No. Google knows the search game better than anybody else, sure, but property search is a very specialised business, subtly culturally different from country to country (and particularly culturally "different" here in the UK). For it to work, it needs the support of the larger estate agents, and it's hard to imagine UK agents - having waited out an agonizing slump and ready to capitalize on what might turn out to be a recovery - pulling their listings off tried-and-tested high-traffic portals to get behind newcomers-in-cargo-pants. That's certainly not what's happened in Australia.
It was more than a year ago when the story first leaked out of Barry McKay's spat with Savills. They'd sold his Sunningdale home for £2.9m... something, you'd think, a client would be pleased about. But they'd sold it to the wrong person. The story's back in the news after Savills have settled out of court with McKay, apologising for hiding the identity of the buyer (who had "history" with McKay and wasn't on his suitable buyer list) and not revealing the fact that the buyer was close to getting planning permission to demolish and rebuild on the plot... raising the perceived value of the property to something closer to £10m. More here.
Rents are likely to go up, is the message from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Remember the rise of the accidental landlord... the frustrated vendors left high and dry by a dead property market and forced to let their homes? Now - apparently - they've all rushed to sell while the market's revived. The net effect... that surplus of privately rented property has dried up into something like a shortage, and so rents are likely to go up in 2010.
First it was the wife of a multi-millionaire property tycoon, now it's former ICI chairman Charles Miller Smith's ex-wife, Debjani, with a court order to vacate the premises or risk forcible eviction.
We mentioned Foxtons' late accounts on Monday... now the story is Charcol, also more than a month late and following two near-death experiences in which directors had to pump millions of pounds into the company.
Adam Posen of the Bank of England's MPC has suggested an extra tax - a bubble tax - aimed at reigning in a future runaway property price index. A little bit here added to Stamp Duty, perhaps a little Capital Gains Tax added to first homes there (even - wait for this - retrospectively to existing homes, so as to avoid weighting the market against new purchasers)... were the thrust of his conference speech yesterday. It certainly makes a change from the collective lie that the MPC either can or (technically) should control house prices with interest rates... but screwing with millions of homeowners' downsizing/retirement plans because some suits do/don't/do/don't believe in a free market? Come on... More here.
Like the idea of a mutually-owned mortgage lender big enough to rival Nationwide? There's chatter about The Yorkshire (second largest in the UK) and The Cheslea (the fifth) merging into a super-mutual with two million, seven hundred thousand members. The Chelsea needs the deal the most, after getting into hot water with two failed Icelandic banks. Watch this space.
Surely that's it, before we all bed down for a quiet Christmas/New Year? Nationwide reports the seventh consecutive rise in house prices, up 0.5% in November, and leaving the annual house price movement in the black, up 2.7%. Unsurprisingly (why? seasonal reasons, and the ultimate unsustainability of this autumns house price fight back) the three-month to three-month gain is slowing (from 3.5% in October to 2.8% in November).
Yesterday, property search engine Globrix parted company with New International, buying back its 50% stake after being partners for almost two years, and leaving the company entirely in founders Dan Lee and Ian Parry's hands. The engine will continue to power property search for the Times. Hats off to fellow property blogger Renthusiast who kind of saw this coming back in August... although he went one step further, and suggested Zoopla might be Globrix's next buyers. We'll wait and see.
