They're the ones who do it Woody Allen-style... couples who live in their own separate properties. Apparently, the number of people doing just that has risen by 40% in the last decade (figures by Halifax Home Insurance). Interestingly, the main driver behind the trend appears to be practical, rather than simply lifestyle. Couples can't find enough space to house their joint possessions. More here.
It's by the Chartered Institute of Housing, and it'll calculate the amount your tenants risk losing due to Local Housing Allowance reforms, plus the risk to you of arrears. But - no - it's not a free app you can bung on your iPhone; it costs £475. Available here.
It's a marginal rise in house prices for September, according to Nationwide, at 0.1%... pretty much under the radar of statistical significance. Much more interesting, the three month average (compared to the previous three month average) shows a weakening, of 0.9%. Annually, prices are 3.1% in the black, compared to 3.9% a month ago.
Lending was up, by three times the figure forecast, and the biggest monthly leap since February. However, approvals - a more useful snapshot of where the market's headed - declined for the fourth month in a row, hitting its lowest point since February. Figures, courtesy of the Bank of England.
News of Paragon's return to the buy-to-let mortgage market has been widely received with celebration and joy... a sign that the buy-to-let business still has legs, that the tight credit market may be easing. Paragon has acquired £200m from Macquarie Bank; and - interestingly - the lender has remained in profit during the years it's been hibernating, as landlords largely continued to keep up payments. More here.
Timothy Hassell is a former senior director, who now runs Draker Lettings, with his partner Christopher Andrew. According to Foxtons, Hassell ran off with their database... a giant collection of property, landlord, tenant and tenancy information, which must have come in handy when setting up a new London lettings agency. Print outs were seized from the Draker office. According to this, Hassell's seeking an out-of-court settlement. Foxtons want £300,000.
Land Registry figures for August show property prices rising 0.3%, leaving the annual rate of inflation at 6.7%. As ever, the pictures regionally very variable, with London showing an 11.4% annual climb, Yorkshire a 1.4% monthly fall.
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.
And don't forget Primelocation's very popular iPad app, which offers just about the most fun it's possible to have searching for a property with your clothes on.
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.
We're likely to be late to post on Monday... but we'll be here eventually, so keep checking back. Have a great weekend.
Live or work in London? Need some help buying a home? (Our favourite bit...) Earn less than £60k a year? (That's where we've arrived in 21st Century London... less than a £60k salary officially means property poverty.) Anyway, the show's tomorrow (website here), at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, and it might provide some food for thought. As always, though, when receiving free legal or financial advice... always seek a second opinion.
A clean and modern, hi-tech eco-build behind a traditional facade on Cathcart Road, leading to a (somewhat odd) landscaped garden by Chelsea Garden Show gold-winner Christopher Bradley-Hole. I know... there are plenty of expensive properties in SW10. But this one's a bit interesting. Particulars here. Guide price: £3.95m.
Back with the National Housing Federation, and a YouGov survey they commissioned that shows that 60% of middle class parents of children aged 20-30 don't believe their offspring will be able to buy a home of their own without their support. Most interesting... the age group that profited so dramatically from rising house prices and engaged fully in the boom ethos appears to have changed its mind. While 33% still wanted house prices to increase, 34% wanted prices to hold steady and 28% wanted them to fall.
They'll need to pull their fingers out, says Grant Shapps. If cuts in housing benefit mean they won't be able to get the rents they were once getting, then they might "need to find another model". A bit rich, coming from a party that sold off half the UK's social housing. If private landlords pull out of renting to tenants claiming benefit, it's the Government that will be seeking "another model". He also - in his speech to the National Housing Federation - talked of the need to find fast, cheap, local ways of settling disputes between tenants and landlords. You can read a transcription of the speech here.
According to figures courtesy of the Tax Man... home sales in August 2010: 85,000. That's up an a year ago, by a whole 6,000 transactions. But before we get all excited and start considering a career in estate agency, it's also down on the same month three years ago by... 77,000. Activity has been falling off again since the beginning of the year. It's difficult to imagine a time when the market will be as frenzied as it was back then.
If the Financial Services Authority succeeds in bringing in rules to stop lenders lending to people who can't repay their debts, house prices will collapse, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. A momentary pause here while we consider that. Okay... we'll continue. But reckless mortgage lending's a thing of the distant, pre-credit crunch past? Yes?
Work began, yesterday, on tearing down Aylesbury Estate in Southwark, a location loaded with symbolism after Tony Blair chose it for his "forgotten people" speech after his 1997 election victory. The site is being developed, with 4,000 new homes, around 50% social housing. Seven and half thousand people were living on the estate in 1997. More here.
Thirty years after Thatcher's era-defining right-to-buy policy, the two sides of the coalition government are said to be fighting it out over the policy's future. The rumours are that Tories are contemplating "reviewing" the policy. The LibDems have made noises about giving local councils the power to choose whether to scrap right-to-buy. The Tweets (from Grant Shapps) are that there are no plans to scrap right-to-buy, and any rumours are simply scurrilous. With social housing down to 50% of what it was thirty years ago, London's biggest affordable homes landlord opting for the cash and the a dramatic shrinking in Local Housing Allowance due next spring, surely it's time for a re-think? More here.
Pensioners and key-workers took to the streets yesterday to protest against the Crown Estate's plans to sell off £250m-worth of affordable homes across the Capital. Word is out that a buyer has been found (no word, yet, about who that might be), and the future's uncertain for tenants of more than 1,400 homes, including nurses, teachers and retired people. The Crown Estate's portfolio is the largest section of affordable housing in London. More here.
Rightmove measures asking prices, using its own large dataset. The five weeks to September 11 show a 1.1% fall, adding up to a three-month fall of 3.4%, and bringing the annual rate of inflation down from 4.3% in August to 2.6%. The recent increase in supply, however, also looks like easing, with 11% fewer properties coming onto the market, than in August. Unsold properties per office remain at a record high of 79.
What Good Are Lower U.K. House Prices if Banks Won’t Lend? asks the Wall Street Journal. The blog entry examines RICS and CML bearishness, plus requirements that banks should set aside greater amounts of capital to deal with bad debts, and the forthcoming VAT rise, and wonders who wants to borrow/who wants to lend?
According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the thirst for property-ownership among the 18-24 age bracket is as desperate as ever, with 88% (a record figure) aspiring to own their own homes in the next ten years. But make that two years, and the figure drops to 42%. The CML blame lending regulations, of course, and the current economic climate. But the more interesting question is which of the two figures is most suprising... the second or the first?
Figures by LSL Property Services (a financial services and estate agency company) suggest residential rents are hitting new highs, as potential buyers either don't (for fear of a falling market) or can't (for lack of credit) buy. After seven months of consecutive rises, rents are still only 2.5% up on the year, but they're rising at an increasing rate (1.4% in August alone) and they're at their highest since August 2008. In the same month... a significant rise in tenant arrears, which (apparently) now accounts for 11.3% of all UK rent, a shocking figure if correct. Remember, all this data will be affected by regional conditions to the same degree as house prices.
The promise had been that 95% of council homes were going to reach the previous Government's Decent Homes Standard by the beginning of the year. And yet Government research, reported by the BBC here, paints a picture in which as many as a quarter of council homes in London are failing to be free of hazards, warm and in a reasonable state of repair. In some boroughs (hello Tower Hamlets), the picture's much, much worse. Very worrying, considering the current Government spending climate.
Hammersmith & Fulham Council and Kensington & Chelsea Council have managed announced a ban on estate agent boards in 23 conservation areas, starting next month, creating the biggest board-free zone in the country. In Kensington & Chelsea, half the borough will be covered by the ban. More here.
Research by the National Landlords Association suggests problems just around the corner. As many as 90% of landlords say they'll reconsider to renting to tenants on housing benefit after the Government introduce promised cuts to local housing allowance. More here.
The Marsh & Parsons agent showed prospective viewers around the nice Treadgold Street property while the owner lay dead on the sofa in the lounge. He assumed she was sleeping, and apparently left the lounge until last in the hope she'd wake up. Which didn't happen. He did notice her unusual "yellow-colour" after the viewing, though, and called an ambulance. More here and here.
Department for Communities and Local Government figures show house prices falling 0.3% in July, bringing annual growth down from 9.9% June-to-June, to 8.4% July-to-July. More here.
So what's Jon Hunt - the founder of Foxtons, who cashed out at the top of the market bagging £350m - up to these days? This. It's a residential development company specialising in providing homes to areas in the south east with the greatest shortages.
A bankrupt business man in Manchester doused himself with petrol and threatened to set himself on fire, after returning to a house that had been repossessed and claiming squatter's rights. It's a very sad story, and doesn't paint lenders, GMAC, in the best of lights. According to the business man himself - as related here - he had made proactive efforts to come to a reasonable arrangement with the lender. The loan was a total of £300,000, he'd found a £250,000 buyer who'd agreed to keep him and his family in as tenants, but the lender threw them out, claiming to be able to find a better price. The lender apparently marketed the property at £192,000.
Following news that Jay-Z is after a share in his favourite football club (Arsenal, of course), the latest speculation is whether a piece of the action would also necessitate a piece of London real estate. According to the Voice, London estate agents should brace themselves for a visit from Jay-Z and Beyonce shortly.
It's called a "mayor's mortgage", and it would involve the Greater London Authority standing guarantor on home loans made to the low paid. It might earn her some votes, but it's a risky business, coming off the back of the American sub-prime experience, and especially at a time when house prices look precarious. Spreading negative equity and bankrupting the GLA won't win her a second term. She's right, of course, that London property is - largely - unaffordable. But that word means something. It means most people can't afford it... Unfair? Yes. Infuriating? Definitely. But lending, without paying attention to traditional measures of affordability, surely can't be the answer. More here.
Don't get too excited, it's the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, so not the most meaningful of reports, but here it is... a sharp one-month worsening in conditions according to surveyors/estate agents, with 32% more reporting falls than gains (compared to 8% last month). That's the biggest slide in confidence since June 2004. On the plus side, the gap between new homes for sale and new buyer interest closed a little. More here.
The market be damned... Foxtons reveals today that it's set to double its high street presence with 20 new branches over the next three years. Interestingly, the plan - according to this - is to use the weak market to grab share (presumably, by getting a foothold in a new neighbourhood by offering its traditional zero-commission deal to its first clients and getting some boards up while the opposition twiddles its thumbs).
"Subdued" is the word of the month in mortgages. Council of Mortgage Lenders data shows the number of loans for house purchases up only very slightly on the month (despite July being, traditionally, a house-buying bonanza). Re-mortgage loans were unchanged on the month, and actually down on July 2009's figures. Loans to first-time buyers were down both on the month and the year, giving them the lowest proportion of the mortgage market at any time since the start of the credit crunch. More here.
Shelter data suggests that - despite a plethora of laws protecting private tenants - as many as a million Brits might have fallen victims to scams involving rentals in the last three years. Yet, caution is advised... the figure is extrapolated from a survey of just over 2,000, and is designed, by Shelter, to raise interest in a national investigation into rogue landlords. I've read through the literature but I'm still confused by how 2% of 2,000 tenants becomes one million. Also, remember these are cases in which disgruntled tenants describe their landlords as dishonest. There doesn't appear to have been any way of checking the substance of these claims. It's tempting to call any landlord who's charging a high rent and who's slow to fix a dripping a tap a "rogue" when it's your hard-earned cash that's being handed over every month, but it would hardly be appropriate in this instance. See the full release here. Read about the most common scams here.
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.
And don't forget Primelocation's very popular iPad app, which offers just about the most fun it's possible to have searching for a property with your clothes on.
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 newspapers are taking a less-than-sympathetic stance on Prince Charles's disastrous investment, in 2007, in Dumfries House in Ayrshire. He is said to have ploughed £20m into a project to save the stately home and its contents... only to see land values devalue his investment dramatically. Only... it wasn't his investment. According to reports, the money came out of his charitable foundation, leaving a host of good causes begging. More here, here and here.
According to lettings agents, being close to one of Boris' bike stations can add as much as 10% to the rental value of a London property, and cancel out the disadvantage of being a longish walk to a Tube station. Ludlow Thompson director Stephen Ludlow even suggests proximity to a docking station is a common enquiry from prospective tenants. More here.
Over-65s, apparently. According to research by Key Retirement Solutions, over-65s are, collectively (of course), £7.94bn richer than they were just three months ago, thanks to gains made by a collective property fund worth £775bn. As you'd expect if you've been reading beyond the headlines regarding the house price indices, the data is subject to wide regional differences. Big gains were made by Scottish pensioners; there were losses in the north of England. More here.
The Bank of England's rate-setting committee has left rates untouched, at a record low 0.5%, for the 18th consecutive month. No-one's surprised... but, with inflation at 3.1% in July (above a 2% target) and the committee charged, first and foremost, with controlling inflation, should they be?
The Information Commissioner's Office has warned that many estate agents and letting agents are failing to register with them... something that they need to do, according to the Data Protection Act, if they are to continue handling personal information. Currently, less than 4,000 estate agents and 1,500 lettings agents are registered. The rest, presumably, are breaking the law. More here.
If someone tells you they saw this coming, they're lying. A second consecutive monthly rise in the HBOS index (0.2% in August, after 0.7% in July) brings the three-month average up 4.6% compared to a year ago. So what does this mean? A recovery in house prices? Forget about it... we're in for a difficult 12 months. The interesting point here is the contrast with the Nationwide index's behaviour in recent months, illustrating the unreliability of different indices using smaller-than-usual levels of data.
Former Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers stood down after becoming best known for providing some of the tastiest headlines of the expenses scandal. In case you've forgotten, he'd claimed £1,645 on expenses for work on his grand, floating duckhouse. The lastest news is... it's been sold to the highest bidder (a business centre in Wolverhampton) for £1,700, and the proceeds have been given to Macmillan Cancer Support. Forgiven? Not by the readers of MSN:
The Daily Mail takes readers on a tour of Kylie Minogue's Drayton Garden's flat, making much of the knockdown asking price (down from £4.5m to £3.95m in a matter of months). At £3.95m, it's competitively priced with the competition, although it's considerably more lavishly furnished (remember those £55 brass tiles?) It's with John D. Wood. Go here for full particulars.
It's called Fabric Property (is that weird? I think that's a bit weird... but it's named after Fabric magazine, which you'll know if you live in a favoured postcode) and it's run by a consortium of London agents, including some big names... Savills, Winkworth, Chesterton, Hamptons, and high-end boutiques Beauchamp Estates, Glentree Estate and a host of others you can see by heading to the site and watching the flash window on the front page. The emphasis here will be luxury property, lifestyle, video particulars.
Never knowingly beaten to a gloomy headline, Capital Economics chose Nationwide Index day to hammer home a bearish house price forecast with the assertion that we're to lose the equivalent of an average salary off the value of our homes between now and the end of next year. That's a 5% fall this year, and a 10% one in 2011... adding up to £23,000 on a property worth £163,500. Any increase in interest rates, combined with a tightening of credit conditions, will be enough - CE's Ed Stansfield argue - to throw us into an even worse house price crash. He points out, quite rightly, that the recent rebound in property prices lacked a firm foundation. More here.
Student homes specialists Urbanest UK are behind the plans, backed by Kings Cross Central, and if the building goes ahead it will top out at 100m, making it the tallest in the Kings Cross area. Students from Central Saint Martins (due to relocate) who don't mind living at altitude will be the target residents. Designs are by Glenn Howells Architects. More here.
August showed a 0.9% fall in house prices, according to the Nationwide index, the second monthly fall in a row (and the only time there've been consecutive falls since February 2009). This leaves annual house price inflation down at 3.9%, a considerable easing off from the 10.5% it showed in April. Most interestingly, it brings the three-month average back to zero. Have house prices peaked, at least for the medium term? We believe so.
Two more days of Streatham as a Foxtons-free zone, and then it's F-Day, Saturday, and the High Street's old Jack Stamps pub will open its doors to the joyous, welcoming public. If it helps any, the first 200 locals to market their homes with Foxtons can enjoy 0% commission. In other words, they'll be able to quickly fill up the front window, encouraging other properties onto the books, which Foxtons staff will try much harder to sell.
In other news, the extraordinarily named Sunny Brar has announced she's giving up her job as a Foxtons estate agent to focus on the 2012 Olympics, in which the country's No. 2 in weightlifting (140lb class) intends to go for gold. We wish her luck.
A "knight" who bought a title online while still a student has been kicked to the curb by Camden Council, after they'd discovered he owned homes in Bromley, Devon and Buckinghamshire, while claiming to be homeless and living - courtesy of the council - in a flat in Primrose Hill. Sir Barry apparently made the mistake of driving Jaguars in silver and gold.
Some people think so. Owned by a super-wealthy industrialist and rented by Michael Jackson for a reported £60,000 a month leading up to his death, the Los Angeles mansion is apparently on the market for a whisker under £19m. Hypnotist Paul McKenna is celebrating a lucrative US book and TV deal.
