Manse & Garret Property Search

As London Property Finders it is our business to know what’s going on in London, and the creation of two new tube stations is certainly big news in the property world. The Chancellor gave his backing to the proposed ‘Northern Line Extension’ at the end of November. This is part of a wider Nine Elms Regeneration project and the government is hoping to tempt developers into contributing towards the scheme, which is estimated to cost between £750 million and £950 million. With an agreed programme in place by 2013, the construction of the line extension is set to begin in 2015. It will involve extending the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line from Kennington further south-west, and creating two new stations: Battersea and Nine Elms.

Taken by EG Focus

Nine Elms is a 200 acre stretch of undeveloped land south of the river opposite Pimlico. Situated between Battersea Park and Vauxhall it is just over 3 miles from Covent Garden. The re-development of the iconic Battersea Power Station and Tideway Wharf into luxury flats is something that has been discussed for at least twenty years, and there have been more recent plans in place for the US embassy to relocate here from Mayfair in 2017. I believe that the Northern Line Extension is the key to ensuring the successful re-development of this area – a sentiment the developers involved share. This is best shown at http://northernlineextension.com/ where a website has been created and consistently updated with positive news stories relating to the scheme.

Knight Frank ear-marked Nine Elms as one of its 2012 “Hot Spots”. They have predicted an 140% increase in property values by 2016, with people paying around £1,800 per sq. foot, compared to  £750 per sq foot which property currently achieves in the area. The new tube links will bring this area within 11 minutes of the West End and the City.  In central London, location and travel-time are more often than not discussed in terms of tube stations and tube journeys and by putting Battersea and Nine Elms on the tube map it makes the area more attractive to young professionals, increases demand, and increases property prices in the area. At Manse & Garret Property Search it is unlikely that we will see many of our clients looking to buy in this area, as end-users.  Some of our investors may be interested purchasing property here as buy-to-let investments, but we certainly won’t be buying for them at £1,800 per sq foot!

Technorati Tags: Buy-to-let, Buyers agents, House Prices, House prices in London, northern line extension, re-development, transport links

Tags: Buy-to-let, Buyers agents, House Prices, House prices in London, northern line extension, re-development, transport links

We are thrilled to announce that we have won “Best Property Finder, London UK” and “Best Property Finder UK” in the Luxury Collection International Property Awards in association with Bloomberg and Google. We had only entered the award for Best Property Finder London, but as a regional winner we were then entered into the competition for the whole of the UK and were delighted to hear that we had won overall! We are continually striving for excellence and invest heavily in staff development and ensuring that our people continue to learn so that we are always at the top of our game.

The Directors have believed for a long time that our truly bespoke approach, finding property off-market if necessary sets us apart from everyone else.  Last year 68% of our Clients fell for properties which we sourced just for them.  These were all properties which were not on the market and which our Clients wouldn’t have found for themselves. In this market, with everyone nervous about whether prices are going to stay strong, “off-market” has become the new buzzword in property because vendors and developers want to try to charge a very high price – sometimes more than double the true worth of a property, and sometimes uninformed overseas investors in particular, will be prepared to pay these highly inflated prices.  And so agents have started ‘offering things discretely to a select few’ as they put it, which usually means, offering things to a few nutters who might be prepared to pay well-over the odds.

We’ve been sourcing property off-market for decades, but we do so by identifying properties which would work perfectly for our Clients and then taking the time to get to know the owners of these truly great properties and persuading them to let us show our Clients and then negotiating a fair price reflective of the market price – not a crazy price, at least from the buyers point of view!

Anyway, I digress.  It is great to hear our Clients say good things about us and lovely to receive some public recognition.  So to all our Clients, thank you, for making our job such a pleasure to do – we hope to work with you again soon!

As property search agents we regularly instruct surveyors on behalf of our clients to carry out full building surveys and valuations – whatever the value of the property in question,  and we were therefore very interested in a story in The Telegraph this week about the increase in litigation from homebuyers against surveyors.

According to some solicitors there has been a 20 per cent increase in the number of people attempting to sue their surveyors. Falling house prices have led home-owners to launch proceedings against surveyors for over valuing their properties in the first place.

For most buyers, a valuation for mortgage purposes is for the bank – not the buyer.  This means that there is no recourse for the buyer if the valuation is incorrect, even though it is the buyer who has to pay for something that is essentially worthless!

Although we are property search agents, our job does not end once we have found the client their perfect property – and we always recommend that our clients pay that little bit extra for a full structural survey and valuation, whether they are buying a pied a terre in the city or a mansion in the countryside. Without a good survey you don’t know what you’re investing your money in, and although obvious warning signs such as subsidence cracks and damp can be readily spotted, more serious structural issues are often not as obvious.

If your dream home should be hiding any problems then you can decide whether to walk away, or re-negotiate the deal to compensate for any work that is recommended by your surveyor. At Manse & Garret Property Search we do everything within our reach to ensure that our client is buying at the right price.

Technorati Tags: House prices in London, London Buyer's Agent, surveyors

Tags: House prices in London, London Buyer's Agent, surveyors