Musings of a London Property Buyers Agent

A couple of weeks ago the government launched a new report entitled ‘Building Britain’s Future’ which many political pundits described as pre-election manifesto, but from a property perspective, the key fact of note was the pledge to build an additional 20,000 homes creating an additional 45,000 jobs.  Fabulous.

However according to The Times newspaper, it turns out that the govenment hasn’t actually got any money to fulfil this and other pledges made in the report, so local government funding has been severely cut, meaning that local housing initiatives will be moth-balled, for now at least. 

As has been widely reported, the majority of privately funded housing developments have also been put on ice this year so reports estimate that 2009 will see the fewest new homes for over a decade.  Given the lack of supply on the market and soaring demand which we would expect to continue,  the shortage of quality homes will be exacerbated next year.

We know from anecdotal evidence that land prices which soared inn the noughties, have dropped considerably.  Most sites bought in 2007 were sold for silly money, pre-planning.  Now many of those sites can be bought with planning permission at 60% of the price paid in 2007.  Which is great news for cash-rich developers.  The good news for wannabe homeowners is that these prices are pulling in the punters and the trade in development sites has rallied once again.  Which means in 2010, the numbers of houses built should improve.

As for the impact on existing home-owners: there is still a real shortage in homes for sale versus keen buyers, which is acute in some areas and in certain sectors of the market so it’s not all doom and gloom.  But if you have interest from Clients of Manse and Garret Property Buying Agents, we will be telling you (and all the other vendors we talk to) quite the opposite!

Technorati Tags: Buyers agents, London Property Buyers Agents, property buyers agents, UK Property Buyers Agents

Tags: Buyers agents, London Property Buyers Agents, property buyers agents, UK Property Buyers Agents

Musings of a company of London Property Buyers Agents

It seems the proliferation of property portals is starting to aggravate certain estate agents, or rather the shameless uploading of properties without permission is causing friction.  It used to be that Estate Agents would pay for the privilege of having their details on sites such as Prime Location, Rightmove, Find a Property, Propertyfinder.com et al.  Technological advances have meant that now more and more automated property portals are starting up, frequently ‘scraping’ information from agents sites without their permission.  

Some agents have challenged these sites, on the grounds of copyright infringement.  An article has appeared in Estate Agent Today about Michael Brain who is the Chairman of Hannells Estate Agents in Chellaston, Derby.  Brain took legal action against the Tesco property portal when it scraped Hannells property details from the fish4homes website, without Hannells permission.  The legal challenge was successful, so Hannells and many other estate agents removed their details from the site, to the detriment of the Tesco property portal.

Now he is about to challenge another portal, home.co.uk on the same grounds, which begs the question – what is best for the property-buying public? 

As London Property Buyers Agents, I know from first-hand experience that it is very time consuming having to check lots of niche sites as we do it on a daily basis for sites with private sales because it can occasionally lead us to a property gem.  Relying on the main sites is not an option for us as with the exception of Globrix, all require agents to register with them and pay substantial fees, which usually means private sales and small agents properties are excluded.  In our capacity as London Property Buyers Agents, we speak to all relevant estate agents very regularly and a minimal amount of searching is done on the internet.  There will be properties which agents are marketing discretely and they also tip us off about properties they have valued which are yet to come to market. 

However for the ordinary home buyer, the property portals are the least time-consuming way to research an area and register with multiple agents.

Globrix could in theory revolutionise finding properties on the net because it is free to agents and accepts private sales but agents need to agree for it to take their properties and not all agents have done so.  Our gripe would be that automated services such as Globrix are often out of date, but as a tool for people to find properties, it is certainly a good starting place.

The small property portals argue that they bring additional home-buyers to the market and agents should be grateful for any free additional marketing, but arguably buyers they bring would come from one of the main sites if the little ones didn’t exist.  Of course if you use Property Buyers Agents, you don’t need to worry about checking anything, as your Property Buyers Agents will do it for you and alot more besides.  For everyone else, expect this argument to run and run.

Technorati Tags: London Property Buyers Agents, property buyers agents, Property Portals

Tags: London Property Buyers Agents, property buyers agents, Property Portals

Musings of a London Property Buyers Agent

Miles Shipside, the Commerical Director of property portal Rightmove has called the bottom of the market as last winter on the basis that property prices dropped by 2% a month in the second half of last year, whereas house prices have been increasing by 1% a month this Spring and Summer.  But that is precisely why the argument over seasonally adjusted vs non-seasonally adjusted house price indices runs and runs.  The Spring and early Summer markets are always busy – or at least busier in any kind of reasonable market – 2008 being the exception to the rule.

That is why all the main house price indices issue seasonally adjusted and sometimes non-seasonally adjusted house prices: to take into account the traditional Spring/Summer surge.  I will be incredulous if house prices don’t dip again slightly this Winter.  Canny sellers will put prices up just now because there has been confidence in the market for at least 2 months – driven predominantly by lots of buyers chasing a small number of properties.  The shortage in stock boosts the chances of several people wanting the same property, which is the best way to achieve a good price these days.

According to Rightmove, they are seeing an average of 21,364 new sellers a week at the moment, only 61% of the usual number.  According to the Land Registry the first few months of this year saw an average of 31,000 property transactions a month.  This is a huge drop from 120,000 in 2007 and the historic norm of around 86,000 a month and we know from anecdotal evidence that there are alot of keen buyers out there.

Shipside might well be right, as we have already said a number of times this year – there were some good bargains this spring in our view.  But at the end of the day, there are always bargains around, even in 2007 when prices were at their peak.  It’s just a matter of tracking them down!  If you don’t have the time, contacts or know-how – consider using effective property buyers agents – like us for example!

Technorati Tags: London House Prices, London Property Buyers Agents, property buyers agents, property search agents, relocation agents

Tags: London House Prices, London Property Buyers Agents, property buyers agents, property search agents, relocation agents