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Area: Letting
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You can always count on Bradford & Bingley for some extraordinary news. The latest... they've moved into the rent-collecting racket... picking up the cash directly from tenants, in order to combat arrears in its buy-to-let mortgage business. So if you're late on your rent, and there's a couple of guys outside in bowler hats...
[via PropertyWeek.com]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Everybody's doing it... including one of our favourite agents, The Modern House. They're branching into rentals, starting with this flat in a former 1930s electricals factory and this art deco home in Kent.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, property, real estate, real estate agents |
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Back in February, we reported on a test case between the Office of Fair Trading and Foxtons, concerning the legality of letting agents' renewal fees... either money for old rope or fair fees for finding an ideal tenant, depending on whether you're landlord or agency. In London they're fairly standard. I've recently paid some. There was a time when you could negotiate a discount... but it's getting harder. The case is currently in limbo, which would make you think that , as things stand, landlords are legally obliged to pay the fee they agreed in the contract, until/unless informed otherwise by the High Court. Not according to a judge at Edmonton County Court, who appears to be refusing to enforce the law until it's proved reasonable. Isn't that the law, backwards?
Technorati Tags: estate agents, Foxton's, Foxtons, property, real estate, real estate agents |
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Even in these uncertain times, you can be sure of one thing... somebody, somewhere, will be talking about some kind of boom in the property market:
According to its latest report renting is 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than having a mortgage, but rents are rising by an estimated 20 per cent. Many organistions, including the British Property Federation, now fear that a "new crisis in soaring rents" could cause yet more problems for the have-nots.
The Telegraph goes in search of The Let Set... the let-happy landlords and landladies letting their own homes to rent another. It's the only way to move, apparently. Except in a lot of cases... it really is the only way to move.
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They can according to a report by Reading University's Professor Michael Ball, for (and here's where we're required to control our skepticism) the Association of Residential Letting Agents.
[via PropertyWeek.com]
Are London rents soaring or diving? [July 14, 2008]
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Depending on who you believe, rents are either being driven up by thousands of would-be buyers putting purchase plans on hold while they sit out the turbulence; or driven down by thousands of would-be vendors, unable or unwilling to sell homes in the current climate, and so flooding the rental market with properties. Hmm. Here's the latest chatter, courtesy of the Gumtree ads database... London rents soaring by 8% a year, the strongest demand in a decade.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Grant Bovey runs Imagine Homes, a company that built itself up on the buy-to-let boom, buying properties off-plan, shoving tenants in them and selling them on to landlords. The Rat and Mouse has had a few comments and emails in recent weeks wondering how it's doing. We didn't know. We asked around. We heard a few rumours. But nothing we could absolutely trust. Now, here's PropertyWeek, with news that Bovey and HBOS - a relationship considerably complicated by a £37.5m equity injection in September last year - are "realigning". The piece is pretty vague about the details of what that means, although both parties are quick to reassure that there's been no falling out... they're still very much in love. There is, however, this:
To combat the crunch, Bovey’s arm of the business plans to launch a service whereby it will guarantee to a vendor that it will pay a buyer’s mortgage for five years as long as they stump up 20% equity.
Guarantee to a vendor? Is anyone else having trouble understanding this? While I go away and try to puzzle it out, you have a great weekend. And remember, things really could be worse.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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As you're probably aware, traffic costs, and right here is where the Rat and Mouse continues paying. Which is why we're encouraging advertisers who feel they might have something to gain from seeing their brand served up to homeowners, renters, landlords, movers, media shakers on around 4,000 pages a day. As part of the deal, you'll get a heartfelt thank you each and every week, which is why, tonight, we're saying thanks to...
... LandlordNanny, an innovative, hi-tech, but simple-to-use, drag-and-drop online organiser for everything a landlord needs to remember, whether managing a single property or a giant portfolio. As well as providing a useful directory of recommended letting-sector professionals (accountants, mortgage providers, HIPs providers etc), they're a registered letting agent, which means that customers get to advertise properties on the large property portals, including Primelocation.com and Propertyfinder.com. Use of the basic service is free. Upgrade to a premium account (£99.95, but £49.95 during the current introductory offer) and you get access to legal documents, automated invoicing, web-based accounting software and more. In other words, the kind of things that would cost a great deal more than £99.95 if you handed them over to a lettings agent.
A toot on our own trumpet [June 9, 2008]
Why advertise with the Rat and Mouse?
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Everybody has an opinion. In the Times, buy-to-let landlords are canny creatures, sitting on a few well-chosen investments, with well-paid day-jobs and plenty of equity to see them out of this with all their limbs still intact. They might be a little alarmed by the stagnating market, but they've rising rents to comfort them, up 11.7% on the year. In fact, according to the Times, landlords are buying. How different the story is over at FindaNewHome.com, where rents are "on the slide" and "very few" landlords "are considering expanding their portfolios". The piece quotes Association of Residential Letting Agents figures, to show demand high, voids low, but weighted average rents falling. Back over at the Times, things were getting so good for landlords, they can't let out their flats fast enough. Read about Michaella Waldren, who found it so hard to find an available rental, she almost found herself homeless.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate agents |
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Would the landlords – over-mortgaged into negative equity – start dumping properties on the market en masse, precipitating the crash of all crashes while they squealed like pigs drowning in a rough sea of schadenfreude? Plenty of tenants, sections of the media, and simply greed-repulsed bystanders have been lining up to wave at them on their way down. But, as yet, there’s little sign of a storm. Or is there?
Our publisher, and buy-to-let, in his guest column at Citywire.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate, theRatandMouse |
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According to Katie Razzall, a rise in defaulting buy-to-let landlords is being followed by a rise in evicted tenants. It's obvious, really... although clearly not too obvious too get in the way of the schadenfreude outbursts from the usual suspects.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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As a symbol of an era now passed, Inside Track does pretty well. A property investment company and seminar school that promised property riches and a live on easy street, it taught buy-to-let landlording and off-plan property flipping to a generation of get-rich-quick clients who knew only a rising market. To be fair, some of its early customers might have done very well. But those days are over. As is Inside Track, which went into administration this morning. And according to this, today brings a bit of a double whammy for Inside Track boss Jim Moore:
In 2004, his marriage to Kim broke up. The couple have since been arguing over a settlement. Today, a court will announce that the former Mrs Moore has been awarded £15m.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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There's an interesting piece over at Bloomberg. It doesn't tell us anything startlingly new: people got greedy and over-extended themselves, now they're in the shit, the inner-city apartment builders who relied on them are in the shit, and the lenders and surveyors and various other facilitators who walked the tightrope between stupid optimism and fraud might turn out to be in the shit, too, soon if people like Richard Lee get their way. Lee leveraged £150,000 up to £5.3m of property in - it appears - all the worst places. All his property's now owned by the bank, after losing 40% in value.
Lee and 85 other investors plan to sue the developers, lenders, appraisers and solicitors involved in their property transactions. Lee's attorney, Hammad Ahmad of Max Gold Partnership in Hull, England, said the lawsuit will probably be filed in about two months.
Read it and weep/laugh (delete, depending on your personal view) here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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There's an interesting piece in today's Telegraph about a clause in buy-to-let mortgages by Bradford & Bingley and Birmingham Midshires, which demands a consistently maximum 85% loan-to-value rate on all loans (checked - via a new valuation - every time a landlord remortgages). The unhappy result during a period of falling prices is that landlords could find themselves being asked to produce cash "top-ups" where a property's value has fallen drastically enough to no longer meet security requirements. Yes, it's a cowardly clause. Yes, lots of landlords have agreed to it. The Telegraph fears it could be the final straw that forces landlords to dump properties back on the market. More here.
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I’ve shown properties at 6am and helped other clients by collecting them from their offices at midnight and settling them into their new homes.
Blimey. He's over here, telling the Times's Career & Jobs supplement what it takes to succeed in the high-end London lettings business.
One of the great things about this job is that I’m not stuck in the office. I spend most of the day out and about, whether that’s getting new keys cut, organising a gas safety certificate, meeting clients or doing something deeply unglamorous – but obviously important – such as unclogging a lavatory. I’ll do whatever it takes to facilitate things for my clients.
Jeez, if that's one of the great things...
Technorati Tags: estate agents, Foxton's, Foxtons, London, property, real estate, real estate agents |
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It's not a place I generally frequent, but ToryDiary at ConservativeHome is worth a glance this morning, regarding a Freedom of Information request about cleaning costs at Admiralty House. The story is that it cost £3,320 to clean the place after John Prescott had occupied it. What the hell had he been doing in there? Did it involve Rizlas and alcopops? Was he made to forfeit his deposit? More here.
Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate |
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... by refusing loans? New figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors show buy-to-let mortgages shrinking, the availability of new rental properties slowing, demand and yields growing. Gross yields in the last quarter of 2007 rose at their fastest in two years. And it's possibly due (partly) to this that the big btl fire sale hasn't happened... with the percentage of landlords selling their properties after a tenancy ends dropping to 4.6% from 6.5%. More here.
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According to this, young professionals - disinclined to buy when we might be sitting at the peak of a house price roller coaster - are leading an unprecedented run on London rental property. Agents are seeing as much as a 25% rise in interest in lettings, compared with this time last year, with new occupants paying as much as 20% more, and renewals coming in 5% to 10% higher.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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It's a test case. The complaint is that the Foxtons letting contract with landlords stipulates that it can continue to take commission from a landlord after the first term has ended if a tenant renews, and that it can take commission for the full term even if a landlord decides to end an agreement and sell halfway through a tenancy. It seems to me that Foxtons is taking the heat here for a practise that is not uncommon. One "high-profile" complainant, quoted in the Telegraph, is Blue Peter's Konnie Huq, landlady on two flats in west London:
She said on Tuesday that the OFT's decision to take Foxtons to the High Court was "a victory for landlords for everywhere" [sic].
The expected cheering in the streets didn't follow.
Technorati Tags: estate agents, Foxton's, Foxtons, London, property, real estate, real estate agents |
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2007 saw btl mortgages grow by almost a quarter, to 1,038,000. The growth, however, really reflects the first six months of the year, before landlords began to go blue and sweat. Here, This Is Money catches Birmingham Midshires in a not-the-whole-truth moment claiming that landlords made an average return of 16% in 2007, more than twice what they could have made by tracking the Footsie. But...
... the report excludes the costs of letting fees and mortgage interest costs, both of which would substantially eat into investors' returns.
More interesting are Council of Mortgage Lenders figures showing that arrears in the btl sector are less of a problem than in the general mortgage market.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Reports of the return of sell-to-rent began to appear toward the end of 2007, and over the weekend they made front page property news in the Observer. According to Rightmove research, the practice - selling, hopefully, at the top, renting for a while while prices drop, and then either buying back in further up the ladder or taking a profit - is picking up pace. The Rat and Mouse can only applaud bubble-sitters' courage. Few financial decisions are as risky, or real-world calculations as tricky... taking in the cost of storage, rents (which can go up and down), the costs of selling and buying, the value of time, inconvenience and risk, all multiplied by however long it might take for prices to start to drop and then assuming it's possible to buy in just before everybody else does. The chances of getting all this right are low, and the Rat and Mouse has seen shrewd people brought down by this tactic. Exciting, though. Best of luck.
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Reports of the return of sell-to-rent began to appear toward the end of 2007, and over the weekend they made front page property news in the Observer. According to Rightmove Findaproperty (apologies, see comments below) research, the practice - selling, hopefully, at the top, renting for a while while prices drop, and then either buying back in further up the ladder or taking a profit - is picking up pace. The Rat and Mouse can only applaud bubble-sitters' courage. Few financial decisions are as risky, or real-world calculations as tricky... taking in the cost of storage, rents (which can go up and down), the costs of selling and buying, the value of time, inconvenience and risk, all multiplied by however long it might take for prices to start to drop and then assuming it's possible to buy in just before everybody else does. The chances of getting all this right are low, and the Rat and Mouse has seen shrewd people brought down by this tactic. Exciting, though. Best of luck.
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Buy-to-let's not dead, according to GMTV in association with homebuying and facelift experts BuyAssociation. It's a radio show, but you can download the MP3 by pressing this.
Foxton's podcast dalek [July 13, 2007]
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The Telegraph takes a peak inside Chiswick's Oddfellows Hall... a Victorian building, built by the masons, and featuring four entrances and four addresses. It's been used as a wedding venue and an artist's studio, before the current owner - an estate agent/property developer - snapped it up for £385,000 in 2002 (I know, I know) and gave it a radically modern re-fit. Now it's all plasma screen in the bathroom ceiling, under-floor heating and cinema rooms. What's it doing in the Telegraph? It's for rent... £3,900 a month, from Featherstone Leigh. I can't find Japanese water feature nor wet room of it on the FL website, but luckily you can see more pictures here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who sent me the results of an interesting Facebook survey of a thousand London tenants by the Deposit Protection Service.... an independent service which aims to make the negotiation over and return of deposits quicker and easier. Apparently, 36% claimed to have never had their deposits returned, and another 37% had to wait more than a month to see their money. Which is a problem when they need upwards of £750 in order to secure their new place. So where are they getting the cash? According to the survey, 33% turn to their parents. It looks as if the Deposit Protection Scheme - on its own - isn't enough.
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Against an oncoming torrent of negative data, and a growing awareness that twitchy landlords may well have the house price crash button under their fingertips, beleaguered buy-to-let mortgage specialist Paragon digs in its heels and, undaunted by my mixed metaphor, tells the world the buy-to-let sector has never had it so good. Apparently, returns (the data includes house sales) are up 15.5% on the year, rents are up 10.2% and one in four landlords are looking to buy. Fighting talk.
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... there's some great news for landlords. According to Association of Residential Letting Agents Data, tenant levels are at a five year high, driven by high(er) interest rates, a softening in the sales market and immigration. In the south-east, 57% describe seeing demand outstripping supply.
And (younger) landlords will be pleased to read that the UK population is predicted to double by 2081. These new Government figures combine longevity, fertility and immigration projections to paint a rosy picture for owners of flats in south-west London. More here.
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... it's "a rich man's game". That's according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, who point out the need to put down increased deposits and higher interest rates. The average deposit now stands at £65,000, up by a multiple of more than five since 2002.
[via Daily Mail]
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 Props to CityWire for this very interesting report from the auctions. Repossessions appeared to be order of the day - but aren't they always? People over-stretch themselves even in a bull market. What's more shocking is how little was selling... even at a substantial discount on 2005 prices. CityWire's Richard Lander makes the assumption these are buy-to-lets, an entirely sensible assumption given that so many appear to be new-build apartments of one or two bedrooms. He goes on to interpret this as a sign of the buy-to-let market imploding. The Rat and Mouse might interpret the experience slightly differently. New builds - especially in 2005 - were in many cases hilariously overpriced. If the auction was a sign of any kind of chicken coming home to roost, it's as likely to be purchasers of so-called off-plan newbuild bargains as buy-to-let landlords per se wearing the feathers.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Here's an interesting piece on Reuters, predicting a buy-to-let-induced disaster. If Northern Rock's the pin, it says, buy-to-let's the bubble. The story offers plenty of common sense, comparing earnings to interest payments on buy-to-let and offering the scenario that capital growth doesn't continue to offset any difference. The story's told with the that undercurrent of triumphalism that pops up in the press occasionally... as if it has never occurred to the writer that everyone - evil coyote landlords, honest families alike - will suffer either directly or indirectly from a serious prolapse in the housing market. What's crucial to know is the proportion of buy-to-let property that was bought-to-let long enough ago to absorb the RICS's (much quoted this morning) estimates of a (4-to-1) 10% crash in the London market or a (much more likely) year of zero growth, and how many landlords are on 100% mortgages. I don't know. Do you?
RICS offers 9-to-1 on house price crash... any takers? [September 18, 2007]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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En masse, UK landlords are cashing in on the booming markets for holiday homes. Basically, they are bailing out of the UK and hitting the foreign markets as quickly as they can.
In a report based on in-house research, Tim Warrington, of buy-to-let property portal Landlord.co.uk, warns that 14,000 landlords registered with the website are currently in the process of selling... some in order to finance properties abroad, others to take profits. A proportion - he claims - have failed to account for capital gains tax, an astonishing admission amateurishness in the sector.
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According to figures by the Association of Rental Letting Agents the average London weekly rent now stands at £525... and it appears the current uncertainty about house prices is actually lending landlords a helping hand. As long as rents continue to rise (and - of course - prices fail to crash) buy-to-letters are, so the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors say, quids-in, with rents rising at their fastest ever recorded rate, tenants clamouring for property and rents themselves at an all-time high.
[via BBC]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Monevator.com is an interesting new personal finance blog with a healthy distrust of the finance industry and an emphasis on personal responsibility. Here, you'll find an examination of the relative costs of buying versus renting in the W6 neighbourhood. It's a good read, and the end result suggests there's little value in buying. However, variables that are harder to quantify and calculate include the freedom to turn a house into home exactly the way you want, and - of course - the market. Certainly, it's fair to say residential properties boom days are likely to be (ought to be) over for the immediate future. But mortgages last longer than the immediate future... and although house price crashes and negative equity have been realities, it's difficult to find a full mortgage term in which properties haven't been a sound investment.
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It's the data we've all been waiting for... buy-to-let mortgage broker The Money Centre's Landlords' Chuckle Index, measuring the chuckle level of a nation's landlords. The headlines? Seventy-three per cent of UK landlords are reporting a high or very high level of chuckleness, compared to 71% last time. That means landlords are 2% happier.
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The auction catalogue included half-a-dozen flats barely two years old at Henry Laver Court, part of a Barratt development in the heart of Colchester, Britain's oldest town and a popular commuter zone for City workers. The flats sold, with incentives, for between £224,995 and £249,995 last year. Their reserve price at the auction last week was £140,000; five sold for £145,000, the other for £155,000. Local estate agents have similar flats in the development on the market for £180,000.
The Telegraph has an interesting story about novice buy-to-let landlords getting their fingers burnt by on new-builds - falling for tempting "Stamp Duty-paid" and "guaranteed-rental-income-for-two-years" offers on off-plan apartments. The Rat and Mouse has written before about the dangers of buying new-builds off-plan - and covered instances of flippers in a flap. Don't believe everything the developer tells you (obviously). New-builds are notoriously hard to value. And the evidence was all around when Paul Farrow, of the Telegraph, visited an auction in Covent Garden.
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Two very interesting snippets, by Graham Norwood, writing in the Sunday Times. There is an Olympic Effect, but it's not what some people were hoping for. Estate agents are apparently blaming The Games for a drop-off in interest in east London. And - despite all the buy-to-let hateration - we need landlords as much as first-time buyers need properties. According to Hometrack, renters need another 600,000 landlords by 2021.
Technorati Tags: London, Olympics, property, real estate |
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In the Sunday Times, Rosie Millard introduces us to Paul Ainsworth-Lord... a young man (38) with a posh name and 39 houses worth £5m in a small town in Lancashire... plus a local newspaper shop which he uses to sniff out available properties before they reach estate agents. He even once wrote to an entire village, asking if he could buy their homes and rent them back to them. Ouch.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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 So property price increases in Prime Central London might have taken a hit, but the same can't be said for rental growth which, according to Knight Frank, reached its highest point in eight years... 12.2% June-to-June. If you're a landlord, how did you do in the postcode lottery? Here are the winning numbers... SW1, SW3, NW1, SW10, W8, and the bonus postcode is W14. This month's jackpot isn't as high as you might expect. Although house prices in these postcodes have slipped slightly in the last quarter, they've still, historically, outstripped rental growth, meaning that in a lot of cases yields aren't actually that impressive. If you own the property, though, and you bought it in time... who cares?
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Almost regardless of social class, home ownership has become the ultimate national objective.
So, rich or poor, black or white, property unites us all. Right? No, that's not exactly what the New Statesman's Edmund Conway is driving at. He's writing about the homes-shortage, and how it's affecting every sector of society. It's an interesting article, pointing out how it was relatively rare for Brits to own their homes until the post-WW2 homes for heroes drive... when tax incentives for homeownership got us into the mess we're in right now. Conway points out how recent governments have quietly shifted the incentives back toward the landlords, resulting in a growing and tangible level of resentment from reluctant tenants. Read more, here.
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According to this in the Times, many of London's council flat and housing association tenants are pocketing a fortune by illegally subletting their flats to the gullible at market rates. The writer herself was caught up in a sublet fiasco, when a housing association official turned up at her Crouch End apartment.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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According to research by Alliance & Leicester Mortgages, 56% of landlords hold onto some of their tenants' deposit after they move out. The top reasons? Property damage (26%), missed payments (25%), cleaning costs (22%). Of course, there's a compulsory Tenant Deposit Scheme in operation now to ensure that everything's fair. Except 63% of landlords in the south east and eastern England claim to have never heard of it.
Let's just revisit those figures before signing off... one in four tenants fall behind on their rent. Am I the only person surprised by this?
[via Money Extra]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Here's Madaleine, sorted - thanks to a number of buy-to-lets which, she says, have released her from working 12 hour days and ended her retirement worries. She's remortgaged her own home, picked up a few other buy-to-let mortgages along the way, and speaks very highly of The Money Centre, who appear to have advised her to change deals pretty regularly. Hmm. In fact, The Money Centre get so much coverage, I was looking for the word "advertorial" along the top of the copy. I couldn't find it. No mention from Madaleine of how well-placed she is to cover her multiple mortgages if interest rates reach 6% or more.
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... courtesy of buy-to-let mortgage brokers The Money Centre:
1. DO set aside money for the unexpected - such as a void period in rent or a boiler breaking down.
2. DO keep an open mind about what and where to buy. Talk to as many experienced landlords as you can and learn from their mistakes and successes.
3. DO think carefully before buying a property with maintenance issues. Money you save buying it may be lost by it being empty while you’re renovating or improving the property.
4. DON’T indulge your own taste in design and style of the interior or exterior of the property, as it’ll restrict its appeal. Keep it neutral and safe.
5. DO be cautious about buying properties off-plan. You need to stick to a specific timeframe in order to maximise your return and developers may not guarantee a finish date.
6. DO beware of companies offering cheap conveyancing. If a few pounds saved on conveyancing means a slow service you may lose the property.
7. DON’T skimp by finishing your buy-to-let property with second-hand furnishings, fixtures and fittings. If they don’t meet health and safety regulations you could find yourself in trouble.
8. DO be aware of the specialist insurance you need. Standard domestic insurance policies do not cover many of the eventualities that landlords face.
9. DO think carefully before leaving the management of your property to relatives or friends. Buy-to-let properties need experienced management to maintain tenant occupancy and maximise returns.
10. DON’T abuse the relationship you have with your tenants. Give plenty of notice before you visit and make sure maintenance problems are addressed quickly. Tenants are an essential part of your business plan and the relationship needs to be managed in a professional way.
Some links:
Avoid new-builds
Be aware of the green tape
Landlords bullish on returns
National overview
And that little matter of interest rates
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Lee Grandin, of Landlord Mortgages, tells Lorna Bourke, of Citywire, why he believes landlords might be on the point of raising rents by as much as 20%:
According to Lee Grandin, managing director of Landlord Mortgages, the largest buy-to-let broker in the UK, many property investors who have been on two- and three-year fixed rates will be coming back to the market to remortgage.
‘This move is likely to force them to increase the rent they charge as the base rate has increased from 4% to 5.25% over this time period,’ Grandin says.
He believes landlords will pass on the increased mortgage interest costs to tenants and rents could increase by as much as 20% over the coming year. ‘The market is buoyant and in some areas there is real competition among consumers for good rental accommodation. This trend is likely to mean that landlords can pass on the increased cost of financing to their tenants,’ he says.
The estate agents, however, tend to disagree. They point out - very sensibly - that it's during times like these that landlords fear voids, and might actually end up preferring renewals or competing with each other to attracts tenants.
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Yesterday, I was contacted by an animator with a link to one of the most beautiful and intelligent and involving short animations I've ever seen. Go here for a sorry tale of tenant-landlord relations. And you might want to explore the rest of the site - because Jerry's a genius.
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According to Hamptons' Lesley Cairns, the effect of extortionate London house prices on would-be first-time buyers has seeped so far through into rents that Londoners are now in danger of being priced out of the rental market too:
"For example, a recent applicant initially seeking a property in South Kensington for £550 per week has ended up taking a property for £1,000 per week - almost double their original budget."
[via Hot Property]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Guy de Havillande - the man who buys-to-let on a £100m scale through his company de Havillande Holdings - is, according to the Sunday Telegraph, having problems with his mortgage repayments. De Havillande owns luxury property in some of London's most expensive neighbourhoods... and has owned some very sweet locations for a number of years, so it's hard to work out how he could be in any kind of trouble. Yet his lenders are blabbing to the press with an eagerness the Rat and Mouse finds surprising (aren't there rules about privacy that stops this kind of thing?):
Derbyshire Building Society told The Sunday Telegraph: "Obviously we are looking at the matter at the moment - it's with our lawyers."
Skipton Building Society said: "We are in discussions with De Havillande about his properties."
A source at one building society said: "We have a couple of million of his £100m portfolio. Until Christmas he [De Havillande] had been a very regular payer, then payments just stopped all of a sudden."
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Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who points us in the direction of this, and suggests a neologism:
I thought we might be able to copyright the terms Rent to Grow and RTG before the big agents like Foxtons latch onto the trend?
RTG... I like it. Can't copyright something like this... but we can encourage its use and then repeatedly remind people where it came from.
Bad taste TV - Honey, I &%$ed up the landlord [July 6, 2006]
Merton's Mary-Jane farmers to get smoked out [March 16, 2006]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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What is it with these guys? When they launched, as Opromark, a couple of years ago, it coincided with RICS figures suggesting the market was toppling over into the abyss. Since then, Opromark has become The Property Investment Market. The idea remains the same... you can invest as little as £1 in shares in a range of managed buy-to-let properties, exposing yourself [not as dirty as it sounds] to capital appreciation [perhaps not as likely as it sounds] and a little income. TPIM was in the news on Saturday with the announcement that it's expecting approval as a regulated alternative trading system... which will apparently throw it open to foreign investors, too. Just in time for this.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Hot on the heels of yesterday's comments by Hampton's comes Cluttons with a slightly different view of the market. Yes, London's seeing record level rental value growth. But no - it's not about demand... it's about landlord expectations. The basic numbers are: rents up 13.8% in the 12 months to March 2007, the first time in 20 years that number's crept into the double figures. Supply is a little low - but then, according to Clutton's - so is demand.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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According to Hamptons International, there's such demand for rentals in London that one-bedroom flats are being let within hours, there's bidding among potential tenants, and rents have increased across the capital by 18%. The drivers? A glut of first-time buyers unable to get on the ladder and corporate tenants being relocated to London.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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The swelling ranks of struggling, failing first-time buyers could be among the swelling ranks of buy-to-let landlords profiting from the swelling ranks of struggling, failing first-time buyers, according to research by Mortgage Trust. More than a quarter of new investers with a single buy-to-let property are aged between 26 and 35. That's 16% of all buy-to-let landlords with up to three properties.
[via CityWire]
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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It's 10 Park Street - pool, five bedrooms, an adjoining two-bedroom mews house and, oh yeah, use of the Rolls Royce Phantom thrown in. A Russian oligarch is apparently due to move in soon, but in the meantime, landlord Paul Davies doesn't think he's asking too much:
"We're close to a number of hotels and the top suites there are more much smaller than this and they sell for about £5,000 to £6,000 a day."
[via ITV News]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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There's a nice little tussle over at the BBC website between the Centre for Economic and Business Research's Jonathan Said and Chartered Financial Planner Jonathan Davis, who's described as "a spokesman for www.HousePriceCrash.co.uk". Said falls back on the old supply-and-demand argument (also, see comments here). Davis cites the 900,000 buy-to-let mortgages as evidence that demand is over-inflated and could very quickly transform into supply. Are landlords bailing? Not yet.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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According to a report by the Centre For Future Studies, commissioned by Alliance & Leicester, a combination of a growing traditional rental market and an increasing social acceptability will see buy-to-let grow by 40% over the next ten years. There's also be an increase (from 21%) in the number of landlords making the equivalent of the national wage from their holdings. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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According to this in the Guardian, Gumtree is claiming that it's seen a 38% rise in ads placed by homeowners looking to rent out a room. Of course, that could be due to growth at Gumtree (and it would be interesting to know how those figures stack up with other advertising on the site), but the Guardian puts it down to stretched finances and increasing interest rates, and quotes research by the website supporting their view.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Figures from the Association of Residential Lettings Agents show how London landlords favour older properties that might need work, whereas outside of the capital, new-builds are the preferred route for buy-to-lets.
[via Real Estate TV]
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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The FT reports on a new RICS survey showing (or at least, suggesting... RICS surveys are anecdotal in nature) tenant demand rising at its fastest in nine years. The theory is that household income's increasing enough for tenants to start to demand larger homes, but not enough to bridge the affordability gap between renting and buying. As an explanation, I'm not sure I buy that. Anyway, more here.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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New Council Of Mortgage Lenders figures reveal a 48% increase in volume (and a 57% increase in value) in buy-to-let mortgages during 2006. That's 330,000 loans, worth £38.4 billion. The CML points to further growth, too, citing rising rents and falling void periods. More here.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Not all of them, judging by the illustrations, but we feel a little sympathy... it must feel expensive at the moment. She's featured in a slightly breathless New York Times piece that marvels at London property prices, and compares Ms Eklund's £3,208 monthly rent (for a two-bedroom flat in Kensington's Observatory Gardens) to the slightly lower figure she'd be paying for a Manhattan equivalent with obsequious doorman. Also, we're apparently "pickier", counting every last scratch on the wall and broken glass in the inventory.
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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In a Sun money editorial that manages to honk of advertorial Tom Harvey writes that innovative estate agency The Step is offering to pay the 15% deposit on buy-to-let purchases. How do they do it? Well, much of their property is bought off-plan and at considerable discount (a proportion of which, I guess, is passed on as the deposit). We wonder whether buyers are tied into any particular lender or deal?
Technorati Tags: property, real estate |
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Somebody's done some complex statistical research and come to the conclusion that 2007 will the year when home-renting becomes the preferred option. Apparently:
“There used to be a stigma attached to renting your home. People would see you as a second class citizen who couldn’t afford to buy or didn’t have the ambition to progress in life."
You speak for yourself, mate. I've never thought that. Anyway, rising prices, greater job mobility and improved regulation will mean, apparently, that from now on, it's cooler to rent. And who performed the research? Oh. Belvoir Lettings.
Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate |
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Apparently, that's the thinking behind the new property investors who are buying starter homes and leaving them empty rather than risking wear, tear and damage by allowing tenants to actually, well, live in them.
Research by the magazine Inside Housing found that up to 50 per cent of new flats in Leeds were being left empty, 40 per cent in Salford and 10 to 15 per cent in East London. The trend extends across most English cities, with 24 per cent of new homes being left empty in Manchester, 16 per cent in Nottingham and a large proportion in Newcastle and Liverpool.
If these - as the Telegraph article claims - are buy-to-let properties... I'd like to know how the owners are funding the mortgages.
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Hello Mr and Mrs Wilson, ex-maths teachers and Ashford, Kent's uber-landlords, with 700 houses, and a new one purchased every week. They were featured in Saturday's Guardian, in a piece that had to quote estate agents anonymously (they were fearful of annoying the powerful couple). The Wilsons buy blocks of property in new developments off-plan, and then rent them out, making life extremely difficult for first-time buyers. I wonder why, when it's the same buyers doing this it's hard to swallow. And yet - from the perspective the ftb - it doesn't matter whether it's one landlord or twenty, the effect is the same. Possibly because the Wilsons are approaching billionaire status. Anyway, read the piece here.
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Research by Birmingham Midshires suggests that although being priced out of a purchase isn't the only reason why a renter rents, it remains the primary one. Nationally, 67% rent because they can't afford to buy. In London, the figure's 73%. Which suggests that home-owning is still seen as the most successful outcome. And yet 26% of UK residents are renting their homes.
[via Easier]
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It's Zurich's landlord insurance claims Top err Nine (spot the corporation that needs a lesson in PR... top ten, it's always ten. What? You don't have a tenth? So? Just make it up. At that end of the list, it could be anything... killer bugs, inflammable bananas... take your pick):
[via The Move Channel]
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