House Prices Rising £200 a Day

This article by Sarah Westcott of the Express on October 28th, 2013 reveals how house prices have gone up by an average of 0.5% this month.

 
House prices have risen for the ninth month in a row [GETTY]
 

Homes across England and Wales are worth 3.1 per cent more than a year ago, says property analyst Hometrack.

In the past four weeks alone, the value of the average property has soared by £6,923, more than £200 a day.

A typical three-bedroom semi is now worth £252,418.

There is still such a shortage of supply – with buyers flooding the market thanks to the Government’s Help To Buy scheme – that sellers are almost always getting their asking price.

The proportion of the asking price achieved was 95.2 per cent in October, up from 94.7 per cent in September.

This is just half a percentage point off the record 95.7 per cent at the height of the property boom in 2007.

As the resurgence continues, Halifax has also revealed that a record seven out of 10 Britons think house prices will continue to go up over the next year.

The biggest increases are in London, up 0.8 per cent month-on-month with sellers typically achieving 97.2 per cent of their asking price.

 
The value of an average propery in the past four weeks has risen by £6,923 [GETTY]

Across the country, prices were up everywhere except the North-east.

The increases were 0.1 per cent in the East Midlands and the North-west, 0.2 per cent in Wales, Yorkshire and Humberside, 0.3 per cent in East Anglia and the West Midlands, 0.4 per cent in the South-west and 0.7 per cent in the South-east.

Help To Buy, which allows buyers to secure a mortgage with a five per cent deposit, is partly driving the boom.

The other factor is the shortage of properties for sale. This month new sales listings have dropped by 1.6 per cent, while buyers registering with estate agents were up by 2.0 per cent.

Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said there is a “chronic lack of supply”.

He added: “Growth in new sales being agreed is running at four to five per cent per month and this is continually eroding the stock of homes for sale. In contrast, levels of demand have grown. Improving confidence amongst buyers has been fuelled by low mortgage rates and positive news on a recovering housing market.”

The Halifax survey reveals that fewer than half (41 per cent) think it will be good to sell their property in the coming year, compared to 57 per cent who think it will be a good time to buy.

This indicates a continuing shortage of properties, forcing prices up.

 
The recent Help To Buy scheme is partially to blame for the increase in prices [GETTY]

Meanwhile, another report reveals parents are paying tens – and sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds – over the odds to live near the country’s top state schools.

The average price of a home in the postal districts of England’s top 30 state secondary schools is £295,972, £31,500 more than those in neighbouring areas, Lloyds Bank found.

In London, parents desperate to get their children enrolled at Henrietta Barnett school in Barnet, north London, pay £400,000 more for homes up to £863,340 inside the catchment area, compared to £460,740 outside.

In Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, parents pay more than £600,000 – double the cost of average local homes – for children to be eligible for a place at Tiffin School for boys and Tiffin Girls’ School.

Nitesh Patel, of Lloyds, said demand had led prices to rocket “out of reach for many buyers on average earnings”.

Article Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/property/439603/House-prices-rising-200-a-day

London Property Market Goes from Strength to Strength

This article by David Shuker of Prudential on October 23th, 2013 shows figures that property market in London is riding in the crest of a wave at the moment.

The London property market is currently riding the crest of a wave, with prices having risen dramatically in some boroughs over the last few weeks.

In Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster, for instance, asking prices have climbed by 12% in just one month.

What's more, prices in these boroughs have jumped by as much as 30% over the past year.

Miles Shipside of Rightmove remarked: "Some agents currently report a buying frenzy in parts of prime inner London, with available stock so low that their shelves are now bare.

"Unsurprisingly, many of this month's best performers are boroughs in inner London."

Earlier this month, the EY Item Club, one of the country's leading economic forecasters, said that there is minimal risk of another bubble developing in the UK housing market.

The body speculated that government schemes would lead to a 3.5% boost in houses prices this year and 6.6% in 2014.

Article Source: http://www.pru.co.uk/guides_tools/articles/801652378-London-property-/

MPC Member Plays Down Fear of Increase in Interest Rates

According to Ben Broadbent interest can rise continuously before homeowners may have difficulty paying their mortgages as revealed on this article by Delphine Strauss of FT Economy on October 21st, 2013.

 

Interest rates could rise significantly before UK homeowners found it difficult to meet mortgage repayments, Ben Broadbent, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, said on Sunday.

An upswing in the UK housing market has sparked fears that the government’s Help to Buy scheme – a combination of equity loans and guarantees for higher-risk mortgages – will help to inflate prices and burden people with debt they might later struggle to repay. 

However, the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee said last month that the housing market’s recovery did not pose a risk to financial stability, with activity still below its historical average and debt servicing costs low. 

“Although interest rates will at some point start to rise, you’ve got to remember quite how low a level we are starting from,” said Mr Broadbent in an interview on Sky News.
Although he said the BoE would not raise rates until the recovery was “on a secure footing”, he added: “I think there is a fair amount they could go up before borrowers got into great difficulties.”

Other MPC members take a similar view. Paul Tucker, the BoE’s outgoing deputy governor, told the Financial Times last week that the BoE did not need to address “every boom or boomlet”. His successor, Sir Jon Cunliffe, told a parliamentary committee: “From where I am now, it doesn’t look like we are in a bubble.” 

However, a survey published on Monday by Rightmove, the property website, underlines the divergence between a resurgent London property market and the more muted recovery seen in other parts of the country.

Asking prices in October were on average 13.8 per cent higher in Greater London than a year earlier, after fluctuating over the summer, Rightmove said, against an average national increase of 3.8 per cent.

The survey mirrors data published last week by the Office for National Statistics showing that house prices in London rose 8.7 per cent in the year to August, compared with a national rise of 3.8 per cent.

Article Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0d0c7148-3996-11e3-a3a4-00144feab7de.html#axzz2iJz6eRHW

London Wealthy Leave for Country Life as Prices Rise

This article by Patrick Gower of Bloomberg on October 14th, 2013 reveals how wealthy left London to be living in a country life when house prices rise.

It took more than a year for Mark Hudson to find his six-bedroom home in the English countryside. Within weeks of moving in, he got a bid that topped the 1.75 million pounds ($2.8 million) the property cost.

“Somebody called offering a significantly higher sum,” said Hudson, a 55-year-old manager at a publishing company, who in August swapped his home in Clapham, a London district favored by young bankers and lawyers, for Dorset, the farm-dotted county 125 miles (202 kilometers) southwest of London that was the setting for Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. “It looks like we caught it just at the right time,” he said.

Country homes are coming back into fashion, after lagging behind urban locations such as London’s West End since the 2007 financial crisis when banks cut off mortgages. Prices for manor houses, farmhouses and cottages valued at more than 750,000 pounds climbed at the fastest rate in more than three years in the third quarter, Knight Frank LLP said in a report today, as Prime Minister David Cameron makes reviving the housing market central to his efforts to pull the economy out of recession.

“It’s U.K. economic growth and broader housing-market confidence,” said Liam Bailey, global head of residential research at the London-based property broker.

The government last week introduced the second phase of its Help to Buy program, which offers mortgage guarantees that allow purchases with down payments as low as 5 percent. The first phase, which began in April, provided interest-free loans for buyers of newly built homes. The program has contributed to the strongest housing market since the financial crisis, even as two thirds of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg described it as “bad” policy.

Bigger Appetite 

“Help to Buy has obviously been a catalyst that has encouraged people,” Bailey said by phone. “It’s stimulated appetite to get into the market and that’s not only the lower-end first-time buyers -- it’s right through into the prime sector.”

In July, homebuyers took out 3,900 loans of 500,000 pounds or more, the most since September 2007, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. There’s also more willingness to lend at higher loan-to-value ratios, according to Henry Knight, managing director at mortgage broker Springtide Capital Ltd.
 
Two years ago, Barclays Plc (BARC)’s Woolwich unit, Nationwide Building Society and Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY)’s Halifax “stopped agreeing mortgages for more than about 1 million pounds, but now they’ve moved up to 2 million pounds and some have gone to 3 million,” Knight said by phone. “There are just more lenders playing in that market now.”

Prime Country 

Knight Frank’s prime country-house index, based on data from the firm’s U.K. branches, shows that prices rose 0.8 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months. Gains were led by Virginia Water, Berkhamsted and Cobham, just outside London. Prices climbed 0.4 percent on an annual basis.

The measure includes manor houses, defined by Knight Frank as a large property standing in extensive grounds; farmhouses, which typically have six bedrooms and several acres of land including garden, paddock and barns; and cottages, which normally have four bedrooms and about an acre of land.

While demand for properties within commuting distance of London was strongest, prime country homes in every region of England climbed for the first time in two-and-a-half years during the quarter, according to a reported published by Savills Plc (SVS) last week.

“This is your last chance to buy before stock goes down and prices really start to rise,” Yolande Barnes, director of residential research at the London-based broker, said by phone.

Queen’s Castle 

Current offerings of theirs include Park Place, an eight-bedroom period house on the edge of Windsor Great Park with cottages and stables on about 15 acres. The property, about an hour’s walk from Queen Elizabeth II’s Windsor Castle and close to English private school Eton College, is priced at 20 million pounds.

Savills, along with Hamptons International, is also selling Bayfields Farm, a country house in Hampshire, about 30 miles from Highclere Castle, where TV show “Downton Abbey” is filmed, for 2 million pounds.

The value of U.K. luxury homes had plunged in the wake of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the ensuing credit freeze and recession. Average prices of homes in London’s most expensive neighborhoods fell 25 percent in 2008, while those in the countryside fell 20 percent, Knight Frank’s Bailey said.

Mortgages of more than 500,000 pounds to home buyers dropped by almost 50 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

Affluent Foreigners 

London’s property market began to recover in 2009, in part because of affluent foreigners seeking a haven from turmoil in the Middle East and the wider European debt crisis.

These buyers, attracted by mansions a short walk from Harrods and Buckingham Palace, helped push the price of luxury homes in central London up 23 percent since their last peak in Autumn 2007. Prices of prime country homes remain down 20 percent, according to Knight Frank.

Now the recovery is spreading beyond London. The number of homes sold in the U.K. reached the most in nearly four years in July, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. That helped push the value of prime country homes up for the third consecutive quarter, Knight Frank said. House prices in affluent areas about an hour from London climbed 1.6 percent during the three months, while those in the remainder of the south of England climbed 1.2 percent, according to Savills.

Homebuilders Rise 

U.K.’s homebuilders have been among the biggest beneficiaries of revived housing demand, with an index of the companies gaining 47 percent this year, compared with the 10 percent advance for the FTSE 100 Index. Persimmon Plc (PSN), the largest U.K. builder by market value, rose the most in almost two months on Oct. 9 after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said the stock may increase by 70 percent within six months.

Homebuilders are increasing productivity to satisfy new demand, which may be a mixed blessing for country estates.

“Prices are moving up against a background of four years of low supply in the country-house market,” Bailey said. “If this positive sentiment pulls in more supply, that will hang a question mark over the sustainability of this growth.”

For Hudson, waiting to sell his London home proved fortunate as prices rose in the capital, while he said they fell last year where he was looking.

“You’d see a house listed and a few months later it would still be on the market and the price had dropped,” Hudson said. “When we finally bought it was more of a lifestyle choice, we were never sure it was going to be a good investment.”

After selling the home in Clapham for 1.3 million pounds, with an extra 475,000 pounds he could afford the six-bedroom country house with a cottage, swimming pool and eight acres of land.

“I had a feeling the time was right and London’s housing market was coming to a peak,” he said. “Maybe I was wrong on that point, because in fact that peak seems to go on getting higher and higher.”

Article Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-13/london-wealthy-leave-for-country-life-as-prices-rise.html

UK's RBS Denies Residential Property Sale Report

This article by 4-traders on October 9th, 2013 reveals a newspaper report that Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland denied in selling property portfolio.

(Reuters) - Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday denied a newspaper report it was planning to sell a portfolio of more than 1,300 UK residential properties owned by its property arm, and was considering floating them on the stock exchange. 

The Guardian newspaper said the properties were worth around 200 million pounds and owned by RBS through a subsidiary called West Register, which held assets valued at more than 3 billion pounds, mostly in the UK and Germany. 

"There are no plans to sell off a portfolio of properties or to float it on the stock exchange," a spokesman for state-backed RBS told Reuters.

The Guardian said the move would be seen as the creation of a mini "bad bank" and the offshoot would almost certainly form part of the potential bad bank that Chancellor George Osborne was considering hiving off from the rest of RBS.

Reuters reported in September that RBS could create an internal bad bank to house its problem loans, even if the government decided not to enforce its breakup.

(Reporting by Tasim Zahid in Bangalore; editing by David Evans)

Article Source: http://www.4-traders.com/news/UKs-RBS-denies-residential-property-sale-report--17338062/

House Prices Up 6.2% in a Year as Demand Strengthens

This article by Michelle McGagh of citywire money on October 3rd, 2013 reveals the continued and steady rise upwards of house prices according to the figures from Halifax.

More sellers might be putting their houses on the market but the continued disparity between supply and demand means that house prices have increased another 2% in the past three months.

Halifax's house price index shows a 6.2% increase in UK property prices in the past year, pushing the average price of a home to £170,733.

Prices in September were up 0.3% on the previous month, the eight successive monthly price rise, although prices are still 14% off their 2007 peak.

The demand for property has been fuelled by the government’s Funding for Lending scheme and the successful implementation of the first part of the Help to Buy scheme.

Supply has lagged behind, meaning prices have ticked upwards, but it now looks like more homes are coming on to the market. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors the number of people putting their property up for sale increased successively in the seven months to August.

The number of new homes being built has also increased and in the first six months of 2013 new building starts were 22% higher than the same period last year.

Martin Ellis, Halifax housing economist, said: ‘House demand has risen more quickly than supply in recent months, putting upward pressure on prices. Demand has increased against a background of low interest rates and higher consumer confidence underpinned by signs that the economy has begun a sustainable recovery.’

He added that ‘supply is beginning to respond to the pick up in demand’ which should help to ‘constrain prices’.

‘The recent strengthening in house prices is increasing the amount of equity that many homeowners have in their home, enabling more to put their property on the market for sale.’

The figures come days after the prime minister announced the government was fast-tracking the second part of its Help to Buy scheme. The first part sees the government offer a five-year interest–free loan up to 20% of a new build property’s price if a buyer has a 5% deposit.

In the second part the government will guarantee 15% of the mortgage taken out on any property up to a total property price of £600,000. Again the buyer must have a 5% deposit.

The second part was not supposed to come into force until January but will now be up and running next week. Critics, including business secretary Vince Cable, have said the mortgage guarantees are not needed and will further fuel house price rises.

Article Source: http://www.citywire.co.uk/money/house-prices-up-6-2-in-a-year-as-demand-strengthens/a707015?ref=citywire-money-latest-news-list

House Prices Rise Again Fuelling Fears of a 'Bubble'

Another house prices increase in addition to low mortgage interest rates could be mean economic crisis for the country according to this article by Eileen Kersey of Digital Journal on September 16th, 2013.

London - When the economic crisis hit in 2008 it had direct links to the housing market. The UK has experienced inflated house prices in the past and the "bubble" subsequently bursting. Could the introduction of a Government scheme to help buy homes be bad news? 

 

People buy homes for many reasons -- to get a step on the housing ladder, investment, to get a family home or as there is little alternative available. 

 

News that house prices in parts of the UK are rapidly increasing, added to low mortgage interest rates, may be a winner for householders but it could be bad economic news for the country. 

 

The UK is suffering a housing shortage. The ill-thought out "bedroom tax" was allegedly created to ease this shortage, but to date has failed. Householders faced with a reduction in benefit or moving to a smaller property faced "Catch 22" -- there were no properties available. 

 

The coalition government's Help To Buy Scheme offers a lifeline to would be homeowners. On the surface it sounds a good scheme but there are some possible pitfalls. One for the British economy is that it could create a "housing bubble" which sooner or later will burst. If that happens any short term monetary gains you may have made will soon be wiped out. 

 

Deputy Prime Minister, and leader of the Liberal Democrat party, Nick Clegg insits that the UK is not facing another "housing bubble". The Lib Dems are holding their annual conference and Monday the Irish Examiner reports: 

 

 Nick Clegg, Britain’s deputy prime minister, has said that the UK is nowhere near a house-price bubble and the Bank of England has tools to prevent it, amid growing concerns that government support for home-buying is stoking another boom. If there’s another bubble, the Bank of England and the government “have means by which we can anticipate that and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Mr Clegg told the BBC. 

 

 An increase in the value of your home is good news if you are a home-owner. House prices in the UK have stagnated, with some decreasing in value, since 2008. 

 

A false house price increase, stoked by a boom in the housing industry though, is bad news. In the past it meant that banks had expensive mortgages on properties that had reduced in value. 

 

This shortfall hit the banking industry in Spain and that economy has yet to recover.

 

The UK and US can pinpoint there financial woes to the banking sector, and housing industry. 

 

Getting a mortgage in the UK has been difficult since 2008 but this weekend Santander announced that it was offering a raft of new deals to open up the mortgage market. 

 

More good news but what about a possible housing bubble? Monday the Guardian reports: 

 

A leading estate agent has tripled its forecast for house price rises in 2013, stoking fears of a destabilising house price bubble. 

Online estate agent Rightmove has raised its 2013 house price forecast for the third time this year to more than double the rate of inflation. The chain expects the average property price to increase by 6% this year, up from the 4% it predicted just two months ago. At the start of the year it predicted prices would rise by 2%

On Wednesday the Bank of England's financial policy committee will meet to discuss the possibility of a property bubble, and what remedial measures can be taken. 

 

Calls for that committee to cap annual house price growth in the UK at 5% a year illustrate concerns about a housing bubble which could quickly form and rapidly burst. According to the Independent: 

 

 Britain’s leading chartered surveyors have made an unprecedented call for the Bank of England to put a cap on annual house price inflation in order to avoid a “dangerous” debt bubble. 

 

Surely, however, this will hit confidence in the UK housing market and deter those who buy property as an investment? 

 

With a north south divide in the UK house prices are already a hotch-potch across the country.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/358436#ixzz2f7dQ2Rsn

New Loan Scheme Aims to Bring Empty Homes Back Into Use

This engaging article by The Independent on September 2nd, 2013 reveals a new loan scheme that intends to assist the country's housing shortage by giving affordable loans to owners of empty properties.

A new scheme hopes to help solve the country’s housing shortage by handing cheap loans to owners of Britain’s 710,000 empty properties.

The cash – up to £15,000 per property – will be offered to help with renovations through a new Government-backed £3m National Homes Empty Loan Fund, which has been set up following last year’s Great British Property Scandal campaign by architect George Clarke.

It will be administered by green lender the Ecology building society in conjunction with the Empty Homes charity and 39 local authorities.

David Ireland, chief executive of Empty Homes, said: “Many homes are empty because it is difficult for owners to raise the money needed to bring them back up to a habitable standard. The scheme will kick-start efforts to tackle this.”

The loans will be charged at a fixed 5 per cent and are available to those who own a property that has been empty for six months or more.

Ecology chief Paul Ellis said: “At a time when there is increasing demand for homes but an acute lack of supply, it makes sense to bring new life to existing but neglected properties.”

Article Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/property/new-loan-scheme-aims-to-bring-empty-homes-back-into-use-8794322.html

Is Shared Ownership a Real Housing Solution?

With the ongoing nation's housing crisis it has been carried out that shared ownership plan is the solution according to this article on August 31st, 2013 by Patrick Collinson of TheGuardian.

A Shelter report has concluded that a robust and organised shared ownership scheme is a key part of solving the nation's housing crisis.

The shared ownership flat in London's Docklands seemed like salvation for Mark and his partner, who had spent years trying to find a home in striking distance of where they work in the capital. It was pricey, at £437,000, so they could only afford a 25% share, but with the rent set at a reasonable level it was just about affordable.

Yet just a few months later it turned into a nightmare for the first-time buyers, with the service charge hiked up by 73% to an unmanageable £380 a month, or £4,560 a year.

The service charge, plus the mortgage payment and rent, make the property no longer viable for Mark who feels conned by the housing association that sold the flat. At the time of the purchase, the association provided him with an "estimate" of the service charge, even though, he claims, it later admitted it knew this was not an accurate reflection of the costs, and that it would be raised in a matter of weeks.

If the true charge had been disclosed Mark would not have proceeded with the purchase, and in any case would have failed the affordability test.

Mark's tale is just one among many about this hybrid form of property buying for the desperate. One former head of the National Association of Estate Agents likened shared ownership to "sending lambs to the slaughter".

The concept of "staircasing", where a young buyer takes on a 25% share then buys further portions on the way to full ownership, is largely illusory.

A Cambridge University report found that of the estimated 145,000 shared ownership properties already sold in England, only 27,908 have been staircased up to 100% ownership since 2001.

Many shared ownership apartments are overpriced new-builds flogged by housing associations using dubious techniques whereby the buyer is almost guaranteed instant negative equity. So-called "affordable" homes sell for as much as £640,000 (a two-bed in Tower Hamlets, east London) with combined monthly costs adding up to as much as £2,000. To qualify buyers need incomes of up to £80,000 a year.

Legal fees to staircase can be high, service charges are steep and selling up is difficult when you are restricted to just a small pool of potential buyers. Much of the public subsidy that goes into shared ownership ends up in the pockets of developers and landowners, which are able to charge an inflated price.

Yet housing charity Shelter, after a long investigation into the property market focusing on the 1.8 million low-to middle-income "forgotten families" trapped in renting this week concluded that the solution to the UK's housing problem is … shared ownership.

To be fair to Shelter, its inquiry makes no bones about the current shoddy state of the shared ownership market. It has developed in a piecemeal way, with multiple schemes launched by successive governments, none having a material impact on the market.

Shelter's vision is for a major, mainstream shared ownership market supported by the government to the tune of £12bn in order to provide 600,000 decent homes for priced-out families throughout their lives.

Shelter reckons the minimum share of ownership should be as low as 12%. That effectively turns the purchase into a controlled rent home from a social landlord with a bit chipped in by the "buyer". But maybe that is no bad thing. The main attraction of shared ownership is that unlike the private rented sector it gives full security to the occupiers, as they can't be evicted with just a couple of months' notice.

Shelter acknowledges that shared ownership is not the entire answer – we need to address the chronic undersupply of new homes in other ways as well. The government's Help to Buy scheme won't help, either. Shelter estimates that when the second part of the scheme goes live in 2014, three in four families will still be unable to raise enough money to buy an average three-bedroom home in their area.

It is good that Shelter has put shared ownership under the spotlight, as it is a sector that urgently needs reform. But it's sad that the best we can offer today's younger generations is a quarter share of what the baby boomers saw as their birthright.

Article Source: http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2013/aug/31/shared-ownership-housing-solution

Record Numbers Plan to Fund Retirement by Selling Property

According to this article by Patrick Collinson on August 13th, 2013 of The Guardian nearly five million homeowners say they will sell or rent their main property, as annuity rates slump to new low.

Record numbers of people are planning to sell their main home to fund their retirement, according to research published on Tuesday, which comes amid claims that pensioners will have to live to 90 to make annuities "good value".

The research, by Baring Asset Management, found that 13% of people (nearly 5 million) say they are planning to rent or sell property to fund their retirement, up from 11% last year.

But there were big regional variations, with people in the south west four times more likely to have property to sell their primary residence in retirement compared to people in Scotland and the West Midlands.

Faith in property as an investment for retirement mirrors the decline in confidence about annuities. An annuity is the annual income that savers buy from their pension pot, but rates have collapsed over the past decade, and moved to new lows as quantitative easing and Funding for Lending has depressed interest rates.

Ros Altmann, a former pensions adviser to Tony Blair, told the Daily Mail that annuities are now "the biggest gamble" of pensioners' lives, and that they will have to live to 82 to get their money back, and 90 before they become "good value".

She said: "Buying an annuity is considered the 'safe' thing to do when reaching retirement. This is misguided. The 'safety' only refers to the fact that the amount of income will be set for the rest of your life.

"But the capital itself is at risk. Most people will receive a very poor return on their money – and many will not get their money returned to them at all."

Many people have turned to buy-to-let as an alternative to traditional pension plans, as the investment does not have to be turned into an annuity – and have enjoyed much better returns than equities or bonds.

The Office for National Statistics reported on Tuesday that house prices rose 0.4% month-on-month in June, as they had done in May, which pushed the annual rate of increase up to 3.1% from 2.9%. This is being inflated by strong price rises in London (up 8.1% year-on-year in June).

The figures come hard on the heels of a report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which indicated that Help to Buy and other schemes are fuelling a rapid recovery in prices.

Economist Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight said: "It is looking ever more likely that house prices will see marked increases over the rest of 2013 and during 2014, with the result that we have raised our house price forecasts. We now expect house prices to rise by at least 3% over the rest of 2013 and to then increase by 7% in 2014."

Article Source:  http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/13/record-numbers-retirement-selling-property

How Slashing Stamp Duty will Help Young Homebuyers

This article was published on August 8, 2013 on Home & Property. According to Naomi Heaton slashing stamp duty is the best way to get young Londoners into their first home.

As Scottish ministers finally do away with stamp duty and a consultation begins in Wales to do the same thing, it is high time the Tories also kept to their election promise and made changes to Britain's most-hated tax.

A crisis looms as the average price of property in England and Wales rapidly approaches the £250,000 mark — the point when stamp duty triples from one per cent to three per cent of the purchase price. This increase could see 80,000 people a year falling into this higher tax bracket, facing a huge £7,500 tax bill, rather than a somewhat more affordable £2,500.

It is ironic that it was a Scotsman who first introduced the crippling £250,000 stamp duty tax threshold. Before Gordon Brown took the job as chancellor, stamp duty was set at a flat rate of one per cent for all properties sold over £60,000. In 1997, however, Brown introduced the notion of stepped stamp duty tax bands, bringing in a new threshold of 1.5 per cent at £250,001. He then raised the charge by half of one per cent every year until 2000, when it reached three per cent. It has stuck at that level ever since.

In the apparent interest of "fair taxation" — but more as a desperate attempt to plug the public finance deficit — recent years have brought additional thresholds at £500,000, £1 million and £2 million. No move, though, has been made to raise the level at which the three per cent tax hit kicks in, despite average house prices rising over threefold from £72,900 to £239,296 since 1997.

Stamp duty was a tax introduced to generate revenue from the wealthiest of buyers. According to Nationwide, a house worth £250,000 in 1997 would be equivalent to £716,000 today. One could say it was the "mansion tax" of the Nineties but what equated to riches then is no longer the case in 2013.

Having dragged more and more ordinary buyers into its grips, stamp duty will soon be an "everyman" tax: just another way for the Treasury to dip into our pockets.

Now first-time buyers are being frozen out
Across the country, 26 per cent of buyers now pay more than £250,000 for their property and in London it is 62 per cent. For people who have already paid income tax, stumping up another £5,000 of stamp duty for their family home is not only a double whammy but equivalent to another 10 per cent on top of their deposit.

Transactions have dropped 32 per cent since 1997 and the fall-out, should the band not be reassessed, could be even more devastating. Not surprisingly, potential buyers are reluctant to pay three per cent stamp duty on properties above £250,000. Not only is this a barrier to trading up but owners of properties above £250,000 are then unable to sell, or only at a reduced price, which means they cannot trade up either. This freezes the market and prevents first-time buyers from getting a look-in.
 
As "stamp duty Doomsday" beckons, and with average prices within a hair's breadth of £250,000, the present Chancellor must move quickly to reassess the tax banding. While the Government's much-trumpeted Help to Buy stimulus package has begun to unlock the market, this can only be good news if the one per cent stamp duty trigger is also raised.

Re-evaluating the threshold will give buyers a much-needed boost, allowing home owners to trade up and first-time buyers to begin climbing the ladder. Even the Treasury can make some money. For every purchase that does not happen because of the £250,000 barrier, the Government earns three per cent of nothing. For every property sale that would go through, due to a kinder stamp duty regime, the Government would earn one per cent of something: a win-win situation which would make a real difference.

A government keen to trumpet "fair taxation" should question how this tax can possibly bring fairness to a nation of aspiring homeowners, and take heed of the TaxPayers' Alliance Stamp Out Stamp Duty campaign.

Naomi Heaton is chief executive of London Central Portfolio, residential experts and fund managers (londoncentralportfolio.com).

Article Source: http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property_news/news/stampdutycrisishigherrates.html 

Who Lives in a House like this? Some Vendors will go to Great Lengths to sell their Property

This very interesting and informative article by The Independent on July 30, 2013 simply suggests homeowners the dos and donts in selling their houses to potential buyers.

What’s the best way to sell your house to a potential buyer? Put a pot of coffee on to brew before they arrive or make sure there are fresh flowers in every room when your estate agent comes around to take some pictures for its online listing? Well, one enterprising vendor in east London has given their bedroom a boudoir feel by leaving a racy fuchsia negligee, complete with bottle of red and two glasses on the bed for the estate agent’s snapper to capture.

Dodgy estate-agent pictures are a bit of an internet meme right now and there’s even a blog called Terrible Real Estate Agent Photographs on Tumblr. But this saucy shoot – which is gleefully doing the rounds on Twitter – for up-market estate agent Foxtons, takes the concept of “dressing” a room for sale to a whole new level.

Sadly it isn’t the worst example of property pornification, though. “The worst case of this sort of property ‘dressing’ I’ve seen is a set of sexy silk underwear draped seductively over a mink bedspread in a £20m mansion near One Hyde Park in Knightsbridge. All it needed were burly Russian bodyguards to complete the picture,” says Tracy Kellet, director of BDI Homefinders buying agents. “And perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s usually a male developer or interior designer that thinks it’s a good idea to sex up a property.”

Kellet isn’t the only property insider to have come across an unlikely scene. “I once saw a set of photographs with a man asleep in the second bedroom,” says Jo Eccles, the managing director of Sourcing Property, a search-and-relocation company. “And on a viewing once I saw an owner go a step beyond fresh flowers and set out a full jug of Pimms complete with ice, chopped mint and freshly chopped strawberries.”

So does all of this help sell your house? “In the end all it does is detract from your home, so potential buyers spend more time thinking how odd you are, rather than imagining themselves living in your home,” warns Eccles.

Article Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/property/who-lives-in-a-house-like-this-some-vendors-will-go-to-great-lengths-to-sell-their-property-8680507.html