A search for Estate agents over a 7 year period

Useful info revealed by The Bank of England today. They have discovered that property relevant Google search data can provide an accurate and pretty immediate prediction of where house prices are going.  The key is the collection and analysis of this data over various time periods from a simply massive and relevant sample.

It has been demonstrated that changes in the number of  searches for specific terms directly relates to subsequent changes in the property market place. There’s research from The US where it was found that a modest one percentage point increase in search frequency about “real estate agents” preceded an extra 67,700 house sales in the average US state.

Anyone can access  Google Insights. Type in a relevant property related search term, adjust the filter dates and location and draw your own conclusions from the results.

A useful additional resource to consult along with the usual suspects – The Nationwide, Halifax, The Council of Mortgage Lenders, R.IC.S and The Land registry!

There are about 85 units many of which are reserved or exchanged. The development as a whole should be completed in weeks.

People say (don’t want to sound like Jeremy Clarkson) that the buyer is Sheik Hamad who owns Al Jazeera the Arab media outfit. Perhaps he will create a spur to Al Jazeeras offices off an existing underground walkway to the Mandarin Continental & The French Embassy so he can avoid the traffic. He will have bullet proof windows, SAS trained guards and a panic room too.

Want to see more? Go to the architects site for some interesting facts or perhaps the agents site for a musical and visual experience you may or may not feel justifies the price tag!

For those of you who don’t live in Bristol Paul runs its most active and successful estate agency business. Not only is C.J. Holes office in Southville beating the recession its also clearly more than meeting its vendors and landlords expectations. Its doing this with an impressive line up of seriously motivated and experienced staff working as a successful team under Pauls close influence and guidance. Even after my second light ale in  Buckland St Marys excellent Candlelight Inn his deeply felt commitment to his staff and the real business of estate agency, not just the rewards, was obvious.  He doesn’t believe in offering silly valuations or empty promises just considerable experience and hard work. It clearly does the trick.

If you are in Southville and are looking to sell or rent a property for the best price -he and his team are surely the best place to start for realistic and acheivable results. Tell him I sent you.

Monthly stats can show a variance of 5%. If you wanted good news in July you would have gone with the Halifax who had house prices up .6%. If you were unlucky you would have read the Nationwides gloomy conclusion that had them fall .5% in the same month.  In 2009 these two lenders concluded that prices rose but by wildly different amounts 1.1% (Halifax) and 5.9% (Nationwide).  If lenders are using stats from sales that involve loans, is that going to be accurate?

Hometrack and Rightmove also cough up stats but in the case of Hometrack, strangely I haven’t been able to establish where they get these from. Hometrack reported that the average house price last December [2009] was £156,900 but Rightmove thought it was £221,463. Don’t get me started on the RICS. (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) who apparently get their information from doing surveys of their membership. Very interesting but perhaps not scientific.

The other ‘official’ sources of pricing information are The Land Registry and The Government through their Communities and Local Government arm. The Land Registrys figures seem obvious to use but they lag behind three months.

One problem seems to be that some indices take stats from different stages of the selling process. Some organisations use houses going on the market. Some use completions and theres no agreed benchmark that everyone can rely on.

Perhaps its no surprise thats theres a review on to try and get some light on this area.

I received a mailer through my door recently from a local letting agent looking for new business. This particular a6 leaflets sales pitch was “Choose [xxx agent] and you could be letting your house to a household name” It then showed an impressive collection of the logos of 7 major national companies including Honda, Canon, British Gas, Volvo, Vodafone and even Nato which it clearly labelled as the companies clients.

This is obviously a once in a lifetime opportunity. Don’t expect the postman to ring twice – if you have a property you want to find a tenant for you need to get down here right now and snap their hands off. They won’t be collecting a fee from their client AND a fee from a landlord will they?

According to Knight Frank the London market for £2M plus property has been experiencing disproportionate demand compared to the rest of the UK.  They cite international buyers as mainly responsible for 68% of sales “north’ (Posh agent speak!) of £5M in the last 18 months to June 2010. This may be buyers from countries whose currencies are pegged to the US dollar or Far East buyers taking advantage of a weak pound. Its not entirely clear where they get their statistics from. I doubt that even Knight Frank are responsible or have intimate knowledge of the nationality of every buyer in their stats. However thay may be safe in extrapolating as they are clearly one of the main London players.

Actually the pressure is felt much further down the price scale than that with sealed bidding wars over much cheaper flats in NW3 but I believe that sector is more organically driven with local London money and buyers with a greater desire to occupy and a lesser need to trade.

PURCHASE   (%)    PAYMENT
£250,000   (1%) = £2,500
£250,001   (3%) = £7,500
£500,000   (3%) = £15,000
£500,001   (4%) = £20,000
£1,000,000 (4%) = £40,000
£1,000,001 (5%) = £50,000 (from 6th April 2011)

Sellers can feel no sense of satisfaction either as this causes properties for sale to clump together at around/ just below the break points. This is easily demonstrated – There are about  480 vendors selling [on Globrix] at between £499,000 – £500,000.  Is not one of them convinced their property is worth a penny more than £500,000?  My bet is that the current number of 140 properties for sale at £999,000 – £1m will at least double from April 2011 when the 5% payment applies above £1m.

Labour have the lowest gains in property values since 1997. The Liberal Democrats have seen the highest gains in areas they control of 190% which is about 10% more than either of the other parties!

Interestingly according to Zoopla again the value of the residential parts (3,800 sq ft)  of Gordons London home – 10 Downing Street – estimated now at £4.5M has dropped 0ver £450,000 since Brown slipped in from Number 11.

It will be interesting to see to what extent people will take these facts into account when we all wake up from this nightmare that is the Election campaign on the 7th May!

STIMULATING GROWTH FROM FIRST TIME BUYERS  -  more than 75% of property sales in The UK are sub £250,000 so its good to introduce a temporary stamp duty break for First time buyers up to £250,000. However at the same time why allow banks and other lenders to insist borrowers stump up a quarter (25%) of the purchase price in ready cash? How ‘joined up’ is that?

GROWTH FROM THE MIDDLE  -  What the market needs is activity, particularly in the middle, yet there are loads of property sales and purchases that are being blocked by lenders. These are people who want to move, have a perfect payment record and do not want even need to increase their borrowing. They cannot move because they would not qualify for the same size mortgage again even with the same lender. Some might even want to reduce their borrowing and they are still unable to agree finance. If this huge sector of the market were able to move home more easily surely it would have a massive positive effect on the market.

So get on the phone to your local MP and get your views across. They will all be listening – up to May 6th anyway!

The problem with SDLT schemes is that they seem to rely on opinion being constantly regularly re-drafted to keep ahead of any threat of loopholes being closed off. They are also the intellectual property of the schemes originators,  usually top tax lawyers, who know how to guard their work well. This seems to have spawned a plethora of intermediaries, some of whom seem to have a good scheme and some perhaps not. Could SDLT mitigation work for you?  We are happy to put you in touch with our taxation specialist.