November 2006
Plastic Surgery for your House!
With the housing market becoming more and more competitive, the buck stops with the seller to make the house more alluring to viewers. This used to be easily accomplished with fresh flowers and the smell of bread baking in the oven.

However, these days viewers expect more and companies are springing up to offer previously unheard of services. Some will go so far as to rip out carpets, bathrooms and replace all the furniture to offer a "more complete feel" to the house. This can cost you as must as 1% - 2% of the asking price, but then again, if it can also raise your property value by a substancial amount, can you really complain?

Other companies offer a less thorough service and will focus on "dressing" a home, using a lick of paint, smart accessories and a bit of polish!

Lead from timesonline.co.uk

September 2006
Log On to Private House Sales Online
Large numbers of property sellers are abandoning the traditional services provided by estate agents and marketing their homes directly to house hunters via a growing number of private websites.

Sellers have become increasingly frustrated with inflated estate agents’ fees, especially when much of the initial marketing of properties is done through online portals. But vendors now have the choice of using one of around 130 websites that market properties privately to buyers, potentially saving them agency costs of up to 3% of the property price.

August 2006
Digging Deep
Homeowners are increasingly opting to expand underground acording to a recent Government survey.

Moving house now means digging deep in your pocket to pay the stamp duty bill. The tax payable on a £750,000 property is £30,000 because the tax is charged at the rate of 4% on the whole purchase price. No wonder families are preferring to stay put and spend the money on creating extra space and adding value, often with basement rooms. Speculation that the Chancellor will use stamp duty to raise extra revenue is spurring the trend for going underground: the creation of a new 5% tier of stamp duty on £1 million-plus homes would net the Exchequer £125,000 on the sale of a £2.5 million home.

July 2006
London's House Prices Rise at Fastest Rate in Six Years
House prices in London are rising at their fastest pace for six years, and the gap between property values in the capital and the rest of the country is now the largest ever recorded, a new report says today.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said the "mini-boom" in London and the south-east had widened the north/south property price divide. Its survey for June is the latest in a string of upbeat housing market reports. RICS said 28% more surveyors had reported a rise in house prices than a fall, compared with 21% in May.

One member firm based in Chelsea, Carter Jonas, reported that prices at the top end of the market "have never been more buoyant", with multimillion-pound homes selling for 10% to 15% above the asking price.

Richard Cotton at Cluttons, serving the Hyde Park area, said: "Purchasers seem to be desperate and sometimes are paying staggering prices."
June 2006
Extract from an article in The Guardian

Worrying London Figures
By 2036, London will need 800,000 new homes. If low-height (two-storey) homes are the preferred solution to this problem, this will require space equivalent to 69 Hyde Parks, that is 24,150 acres. The necessary acreage for medium height would be 21 Hyde Parks (7,350 acres). High rises could be fitted into 11⁄2 Hyde Parks, although this would still gobble up much of London’s green space.

A ll the more troubling is the suspicion that government population increase estimates for all regions may be understated. Further doubt over the reliability of these sums was raised this week by the House of Commons housing, planning, local government and the regions select committee report.

The select committee also posed questions about PPS 3 — the revised Planning Policy Statement. The Government claims that these guidelines will “deliver new homes at the right time in the right place”. The select committee thinks they could produce “urban sprawl”. It may be too early to predict how PPS will affect your area. But the select committee maintains that existing policy (which encourages high-density building) is aiding and abetting developers to put up flats when families want houses. As a result, says the property website Propertyfinder, two-bedroom flats are lying empty and unsold and their prices are falling.

A reader from Hertfordshire told the reporter that in his area, developers will buy a house, then the property next door, and replace two homes with 24 flats — for which locals have no great enthusiasm, either as architecture or places to live. This sums up what is going wrong with the planning process and why we cannot afford not to care.

from the TimesOnline.co.uk

May 2006
Surges and words of caution
Recently released figures, covering the first three months of 2006, have confirmed a somewhat unexpectedly strong start to the year for the residential property market.

Even London, which many had seen as peaked and often overvalued, saw property prices move ahead strongly for selected areas in the first quarter. However the Financial Times house price index now see's the capitals residential market as 'stalled'. Not so in swathes of the UK, such as North England and parts of Wales where property has continued month on month to enjoy price rises.

Enter weighty words of caution from no less a figure than Mervyn King, Bank of England governor. His recent warning on the gradual rise in house prices since Autumn 2005 was “the level of house prices still seems remarkably high relative to average earnings or average incomes or anything else you could look at”.

February 2006
First Time Buyers
The number of first-time buyers in the UK reached its lowest level for 25 years in 2005 as rising house prices meant a continued struggle to afford a home, the Halifax said today.

An estimated 320,000 buyers stepped on to the housing ladder in 2005, the lowest annual total since 1980. The number was down 10% on the previous year and 40% lower than in 2002, when 532,000 people became homeowners.

And the lender said 85% of towns in the UK were now unaffordable for first-timers, who need an average of five years' saving to raise a deposit.

February 2006
Pensioners' Properties Top £1 Trillion!
Property owned by pensioners has topped the £1 trillion mark after values rose by nearly £50 billion in 2005, a retirement housing group says.

The average retired homeowner has seen the price of their home rise by £3,360 during the past three months, up to £174,495, Economic Lifestyle said.

Of the UK's 6.3m pensioners, those in London saw the biggest property value rise - £16,005 on average.

But the group warned that the property market would slow in 2006.

February 2006
Halifax Reports a Fall in House Prices
House prices suffered a setback in the new year, recording their first month-on-month fall since May last year, according to a report released today (9th february 2006).

Figures from the Halifax, Britain’s largest mortgage lender, said that the average house price in January fell 0.4% from December, wrong-footing economists who had expected a 0.5% increase.

The report came ahead of the Bank of England’s decision on interest rates today. The Bank is expected to keep rates on hold at 4.5%.

The Halifax said the average house price now stands at £170,833 compared with £171,362 in December. The figures mean house prices have risen 5.1% over the past year, below predictions of a 5.5% gain.

However, despite the slip in property prices, economists painted a largely robust picture of the market.

January 2006
Soros predicts American recession
George Soros, the multi-billionaire investor who retains the reputation of being able to move the markets single-handed, today warned that the US Federal Reserve might overshoot in its attempt to tighten monetary policy, deflating housing prices and tipping the world's biggest economy into recession in 2007.

A collapse in American house prices could be associated with a dollar decline, scuppering the Fed’s attempt to engineer a "soft-landing" for the economy, Mr Soros told an audience at the Singapore Institute of International affairs.

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January 2006
Brits Investing in Eastern Europe
The trend for British investors to buy holiday homes in Eastern Europe is growing, with roughly 34% of second homes located in places such as Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and more.

Investors are working to beat rising labour and material costs in non-capitalist countries soon set to join the EU, after which the costs associated with owning a house, the tax implications and the cost of build, to name a few, will be regulated.

Romania was recently named as the top country to invest in property, with the highest forecasted yield over the next 5 years.