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Entries in March 2011
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The Nationwide house price index rose 0.5% in March. This leaves house prices up 0.1% on the year, and the three-month on three-month up 0.6%. It's a vision of market activity that sits oddly alongside both sentiment and other measures, so don't get too excited.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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It's going to be called Silvertree: a 24-storey tower by Richard Hywel Evans, on the Docklands waterfront with views over Royal Docks, and incorporating ground source and biomass energy and solar panels to both create power and heat water, and achieving Code for Sustainable Homes level 4. Expect 161 one, two and three-bedroom apartments when the tower's finished sometime in late 2012. Work starts in the summer.
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More in this Category - Design
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Over at the Property Portfolio Software blog... seven ways to make sure you're not paying any more tax than you need to. From the obvious (claim your expenses) to the cannier (time repair expenses for low interest rate years). Read them here.
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An interesting piece here about ratings agency Moody's concern that more "lender forebearance" in the face of borrowers in arrears could substantially damage the banking system.
FSA figures show that for every UK mortgage borrower in arrears, two are subject to some kind forebearance process to help them avoid defaulting on their debt.
Isn't everybody nice? But...
"Banks choosing the forebearance option may be delaying the inevitable recognition of higher losses owing to foreclosures," said the ratings agency in its report.
Interestingly, much of Moody's concern is based on a belief that house prices are to continue falling, thus diminishing the security held against these loans.
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An interesting read, over here, taking the Clegg and co. to task over talk of revisiting the mansion tax. Ineffective, vindictive, expensive, needlessly complex... apart from that, a stroke of genius.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate
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Think again. The former Wonderbra model is apparently locked in a dispute with her Chelsea neighbours over plans to gut and rebuild her five-storey property. She's apparently had planning permission for extensive ground floor work and a giant basement, but she's pushing for a complete interior rebuild. The plans were previously rejected because of the disruption to the road, but she's an appeal scheduled for mid-May. Her neighbours - according to this - have clubbed together to hire a QC to represent them, and delivered a petition with 80 signatures. She appears undaunted. If the work does go ahead, let's hope she's planning on selling, because I doubt she'll be in a position to pop next door for a cup of sugar.
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More in this Category - Linkage
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It was a fall of 0.8% in February, leaving the annual change -1.7%. In London, however, things looked different, with house prices still 3.2% above where they were in February 2010. The biggest losers were in the north east, where house prices are down 7.1% on a year ago, a slightly chilling sign of what might be to come once social sector job losses start to kick in. More here. Download the actual report here.
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Vince Cable hinted as much in an interview on BBC 5 Live.
There is a very strong argument ... that you need to have a proper base for taxing property and I'm sure that's one of the things we're going to have to look at.
The context is as a "replacement" for the 50p tax rate, which Cable insists was always going to be temporary, and which apparently hasn't generated the revenue expected, as some businesses have changed the way they pay high earner in order to avoid the rate. More here.
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Underneath that holly there's apparently a three-bedroom house. It's on the market, priced at £120,000. More here.
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More in this Category - Linkage
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Another interesting feature of yesterday's Budget - not necessarily for homeowners but certainly for the property industry - were planned changes to the way investment in multiple properties is taxed. Just a few weeks ago, our publisher, writing for Citywire, called on measures to encourage institutional investment in residential lets, as a way of bolstering and improving the quality of the ever-more-important private rented sector. The Chancellor appears to have been on the same page. Plans in the Budget include a system of rating Stamp Duty at the average, rather than the total, property value on purchases of more than a single property. (So ten £200,000 flats will be charged at 1% instead of 5%.) There's to be a consultation, too, on clarifying Real Estate Investment Trust rules as they apply to residential properties, to encourage important tax breaks to institutional investors. The result? Your pension fund may soon be your landlord.
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- Firstbuy scheme, as discussed earlier, but with some more details. The 10% payments will be loans charged at a low interest rate. The scheme will last for one year only.
- The Support for Mortgage Interest Scheme (which contributes towards interest payments in the case of homeowners on benefits) will be extended an extra year to January 2013.
- Non-dom taxpayers will pay more, from £30,000 for those here for seven years to £50,000 for those here 12 years. Some estate agents might argue that this could affect the super-prime market.
- From 2012, people who leave 10% or more of their estate to charity will get a 10% reduction in their inheritance tax bill.
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Since when did the Budget get leaked like this as a matter of course? I'm sure I don't remember the budgets of my youth arriving in dribs-and-drabs before lunch. Anyway, the BBC suggested this morning that Osbourne will announce a package to help first-time buyers. It's a £250m package, aimed at contributing 10% of the cost of a newly-built home, on the basis that the developer (grateful for a kick-start to the sector) matches it, and the buyer puts up 5%. The plan is to help 10,000 first-time buyers. Problems? We all know what a movable feast the valuation of a new-build can be, and how developers are experienced at factoring any incentive into the price of a property.
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Business Insider features a depressing slideshow: 27 Depressing Facts About The Housing Crash That Never Seems To End. Go here to learn how nearly a quarter of American homes were in negative equity by the end of last year and some analysts believe the Florida market still has 11% to fall.
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According to Rightmove, UK vendors raised property asking prices by 0.8% in March, although - oddly, considering recent high-profile claims of a top-end London market in overdrive - London prices fell 1.5%, with Kensington & Chelsea leading the slump with prices falling 5%. More here.
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The Independent reports on the £25m nine-bedroom Chelsea mansion that Roman Abramovich has apparently bought as a kind of temporary home while his proper gaff is being done up. The article also questions the wisdom of buying a Cheyne Walk property so close to Lindsey House, whose garden will be opened to the public in September's Open House event. The suggestion is that there'll be as many football fans as garden enthusiasts.
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We'd like to take this opportunity to thank House Hop for their support. House Hop is an online private sales website that reaches more than three million house hunters a month... wait for this... for free. It funds itself through the sale of third-party services, and delivers a proportion of profits to charity. What's more, it's a listing service, not an estate agency, so in theory it should be possible to use House Hop and your high street agent, without risking paying fees to your agent after achieving a private sale. So what have you got to lose?
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Profits are up at the high-end estate agency by a more than healthy 88%, thanks to overseas (largely Chinese) buyers and a prime London market that doesn't seem to have been affected the general market slump. More here.
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Not necessarily, according to research by Halifax. There have been Stamp Duty thresholds at £250,000 and £500,000 since July 1997, and yet house prices have risen an extraordinary 140% in that time. If the duty thresholds had risen in line with prices, they'd be set at £600,000 and £1.2m. The result... the average Stamp Duty bill is up 88% in a decade. The average Londoner pays 19% of their annual salary in Stamp Duty on a house purchase. The counter-argument? Imagine what house price inflation might have looked like if the Stamp Duty thresholds had been more fluid.
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More in this Category - Linkage
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It sounds very risky... a plan for local councils to help first-time buyers onto the market by lending them the majority of their deposits, up to 25% of the property value. A day after a set of very nasty unemployment figures, it doesn't seem like a massive stretch of the imagination to expect house prices continuing to fall. So what if they do, and properties are repossessed? The taxpayers will take the beating. Incredibly, the plan's to be tested in Blackpool, Warrington, Northumberland, Newcastle-under-Lyme and East Lothian... areas likely to suffer early from Government cuts, rising unemployment and a higher risk of repossession. More here.
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If you've attempted to post a comment in the last couple of weeks and been disappointed... genuinely very sorry. The evil spammers make sifting the real from the fake - even with a spam filter - an onerous job, and occasionally life gets in the way and I get a bit behind. I do want people commenting, and I do value your comments and opinions. Please comment away... I promise to make a better job of publishing them. And we're expecting a new and better spam filter system shortly.
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Apparently they're on the increase. Aviva wants you to watch out for walls and ceilings lined with polythene, garden pump sprays inside the property, massive condensation, the stink of weed seeping through the walls. Something to go on, then. More here.
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There's not much good news about at the moment, so let's enjoy this. Remember the battle to save the former Strand Union Workhouse? The news is that it's been won, and the building's received a Grade II listing. More here.
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Complaints against estate agents have apparently risen to their highest levels since records began 20 years ago. Property Ombudsman Christopher Hamer has described the phenomenon as "baffling". Certainly, one would have thought that with transaction levels so low vendors would have every opportunity to pick the agent they want and match that with the deal they want. Is this about frustration with the market, or a real lowering of standards amongst agents?
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DCLG figures show house prices falling 1.4% in January, leaving the annual figure still in the black, but only just at 0.5%. That annual rate has been dropping for eight consecutive months now. The three month average - which the boffins prefer - shows a 0.4% drop in the three months to January compared to the same period last year.
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It's North Kensington, at the top of Portobello Road, and it's about to undergo a somewhat controversial redevelopment, starting, according to this, very shortly. Enthusiasts point to 1,000 homes, a new London square; critics say existing families living on the estate will be moved out of the borough against their will.
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Latest news from Savills is that they've sold 14 homes worth £10m or more in London so far in 2011, making it a record breaking year (beating the same period in 2007 by 12%). Nor is it just about foreign money looking for a safe harbour... there's British bonus money involved too, with the Stamp Duty raise deadline adding a little urgency. More here.
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Actually, not technically a squatter (respectable squatters will insist you know), but more like a burglar. Francis Caroll moved into a Weymouth couple's house while they were on holiday, slept on their beds, ate their food, even dressed in their clothes (I'm assuming the man's clothes, although the Daily Mail isn't clear on that). Finally, it was his fingerprints on a sauce bottle that proved his undoing.
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It's Kanye West, no less, and the rumour that he might be about to enrol at Central Saint Martins as a fashion student. More here.
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More in this Category - Linkage
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The number of new mortgages fell by 29% in January, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. The figure was also 12% down on the same period 2010. Everyone's used to poor lending figures, but the scale of the decline, from a low base, has surprised many. The CML blame... well, just about everything... from spending cuts to uncertainty about the market to bad weather. The figures don't bode well for house prices.
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Old Battersea House is a Grade II-lsted manor house in SW11, dates back to the 17th Century and was bought and painstakingly restored to its former glory (plus a few jacuzzis and saunas) by Malcolm Forbes (yeah, that Forbes) in the early 70s. Real Estalker lists Thatcher, the Reagans, Warren Buffet and Elizabeth Taylor, plus various Royals, as guests. Now, however, it seems the Forbes family no longer needs it, and the property's listed with Savills, guide price £12m.
If these walls could talk... Kylie edition [September 3, 2010]
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Speaking at the Chartered Institute of Housing South East annual conference Oliver Kamm damned the 90s monetary policy that turned the property market into a cash machine, predicted a 25% to 30% collapse in house prices once interest rates started rising and - sit down for this - called on the Government to add Capital Gains Tax to all homes, not just second homes. More here.
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Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz, UK-based property tycoons, were arrested during a number of dawn raids yesterday by the Serious Fraud Office, investigating the collapse of the doomed Kaupthing Icelandic bank. They've apparently since been released, but are held in the UK. Robert Tchenguiz is thought to be a former shareholder in the bank, as well as a shareholder and board member of a company that, in turn, was the bank's biggest debtor. More here.
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No change. Base rates stay at record 0.5% low for a record two years. We await the minutes with bated breath... how long can this continue?
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According to Legal & General Investment Management economist Tim Drayson so many borrowers are currently on SVR or tracker mortgages an interest rate rise today would hit the pockets of 90% of UK homeowners. More here. Most people expect the MPC to keep bass rates exactly where they are, at 0.5%.
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Remember, we recently revealed how Colonel Gaddafi's controversial son Saif was looking for tenants for his Hampstead Garden Suburb mansion? The property - now part of the family's frozen assets - has apparently been invaded by activists, demanding the proceeds are returned to the Libyan people. They're flying a banner reading "Out of Libya/Out of London". We just hope nobody's paid their deposit.
Your new landlord - Mr Gaddafi [February 22, 2011]
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Just so you know...
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According to the Telegraph, they're partnering up with BT to equip all listings with details of a property's fastest possible DSL speed, following research that suggests the growing importance of a good, robust, speedy broadband connection among house-hunters. Of course, property's for the long haul, and broadband speeds are improving all the time (fibre-optic is apparently being rolled out at 80,000 homes a week), so choosing one home over another for its connection might not be wise.
Oddly, the Telegraph piece opens with "Rightmove is teaming up with BT", but also features a Rightmove spokesperson quoted thus: "we are not currently in any form of partnership with BT" and "BT declined to comment". Watch this space, obviously... but our guess is this may turn out more like a BT sponsorship box ("BT could provide broadband to this property at....").
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A terrible tale in the Daily Mail featuring foreign squatters, a family home in Archway, a six-week struggle to get them out (during which the squatters received legal aid) and a trashed property. It's ugly.
One of the rooms was knee-deep in rubbish while a member of the gang had daubed 'God is squatting with us' on a door inside the five-bedroom property.
Does that mean God just got evicted?
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The Halifax index shows house prices 0.9% down on the month, 0.4% down on the quarter and 2.8% in the red across 12 months. What does it all mean? Prices are falling again, but not the way they were falling two and half years ago. February's 0.9% drop has to be balanced against January's 0.8% gain (there's nothing magical about a month as a way of measuring time and a market). Interesting, the accompanying bumph mentions tight supply supporting prices ("The decline in properties coming onto the market continues"), which is in direct contrast to yesterday's Hometrack assertions. Download the Halifax report as a PDF by clicking here.
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Search for Foxtons on Twitter and you might notice the hundreds, if not thousands, of exclamation mark-peppered headlines accompanied by a series of links to press releases that are being tweeted by people right across the world. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to suggest that there's at least one post a minute, and there has been for several days. What's going on? Either there's been a simultaneous outpouring of international (particularly Indonesian) love and enthusiasm for London's much-admired estate agency, or Foxtons have become unwitting victims of some Twitter spammer, who's using a global network of accounts to express his/her sick obsession with the agency. Someone really ought to tell them.
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Although house prices fell just 0.2% in February, according to Hometrack, it left the annual change at -2.7%, the biggest year-on-year fall since November 2009. More interesting, though, and a big surprise if the data sample turns out to be leading the crunchers in the right direction, is a pick up in activity... a 7.5% increase in property available, a 14.7% increase in buyers registering and a 25.4% increase in sales agreed. More here.
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1 - Start catering for longer tenancies.
2 - Pay Housing Benefit directly to landlords.
3 - Make it easier to evict.
4 - Formalise regulation of landlords.
5 - Encourage institutional investment.
Our publisher takes a closer look at the private rented sector and asks whether it's fit-for-purpose in his guest column for Citywire.
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... is the question being asked over at Mumsnet about this four-bedroom house in Chulmleigh, Devon. Among the comments:
not a chance would i live there!!!
Definitely gave me a chill when I looked through the pics.
brr, very creepy. it's just the kind of house i'd expect to see yvette fielding screeching around in ghost hunters
Interestingly, it used to be a police station. I wonder if the owners know it's giving mums the creeps?
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Quick-off-the-mark, Nationwide report a rise of 0.3% in their house price index between January and February, leaving the February 2010 to February 2011 figure down just 0.1%. It's a market - according to the commentary - "treading water", waiting, effectively, for clarification from the wider economy/labour market. Interestingly, on the whole chicken-and-egg subject of whether the economy follows house prices or house prices follow the economy, Nationwide's Robert Gardner appears to have taken a stand: "Given that the recovery hit a soft patch at the turn of the year and looks set to remain sluggish in the year ahead, the property market is likely to follow suit, with relatively low transaction levels and prices moving sideways or modestly lower through 2011." A few years ago, it seems, there was more debate.
Also intereest, Nationwide admits it's "revised" some of its index figures published between October 2010 and January 2011, although only by a small amount... enough, however, to have created some confusion. According to the survey, prices rose between January and February by 0.3%, however the average prices of a property fell, from £161,211 to £161,183. See below:
Download the repot as a pdf by clicking this.
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