Citypadz Property News

Cashflow has become king and mortgages a less dominant feature of the housing market, with most sales now financed by equity.

A new report from Savills says that the shift away from mortgages to equity has been a key change in the market.

It says that in 2001, mortgage debt funded 62 per cent of all housing transactions. By 2006, it had fallen to 55 per cent and last year it stood at 46 per cent …Read More

The subject of standards among managing agents of leasehold blocks of flats has been discussed in the Lords.

Baroness Gardner asked whether the Government would be introducing regulations or a code.

Lord Best, who chairs the council of the Property Ombudsman scheme, which listens to complaints against managing agents, asked whether the baroness agreed it would be a good idea if it were made compulsory for all block managing agents to belong to an ombudsman scheme.

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Traditional applicants have vanished from estate agents’ offices, with nine out of ten prospective buyers now booking viewings online only when they want to see a specific property.

Instead of registering with agents when they want to start looking in a particular area, house buyers now wait to see a particular property pop up online, and only then contact the agent.
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Rents for new tenants appeared to drop across the UK, including London, last month – but seasonal variations were entirely responsible.

Referencing company HomeLet said that it was because more students had checked in to rental properties.

The average cost of renting a home in the UK also reduced from September to October by 2.5% to £763 per month, which is still over 4% higher than the same time last year.
 
There were only two out of 11 regions where there was an increase in average rental amounts between October and September – Wales and East Anglia.

While the average age of a first-time buyer in the UK is 29, there is almost a decade’s difference between some areas of the country, according to new research from Halifax.

The youngest first-time buyers are in Selby in North Yorkshire where the average age is 25: nine years younger than one of the areas with the oldest first-time buyers, Harrow in London (34).

Other areas where the average age of a first-time buyer is significantly below the national average are Redcar and Cleveland in the North East, Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, Bolsover in Derbyshire and South Ribble in Lancashire. The average age in each of these areas is only 26.

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Property portal Zoopla is claiming to be in second place behind Rightmove, after the latest data from independent website monitoring firm Nielsen.

It shows that the number of unique visitors to Zoopla grew faster than other UK property portal in August – by 10.6% – placing Zoopla as the second most-visited property website in the UK.
 
However, it looks as though Zoopla and the Digital portals will continue to slug it out for second place. Nielsen puts Zoopla in second place, recognising it as a single portal, but places FindaProperty and Primelocation in third and fourth place respectively, recognising them as two separate portals.

In fact, if you were to add FindaProperty and Primelocation unique visitor traffic together as one, as some other traffic measures do, Digital would be in second place.

The Nielsen figures for August report Rightmove effortlessly ahead of the competition in any case, with 3.37m visitors – a 1.2% drop on July. It places Zoopla in second place with 1.95m visitors, a rise of 10.6% on July. FindaProperty, with 1.75m visitors is third, with a 6.6% rise on July traffic, and Primelocation comes in fourth with 881,000 unique visitors, an 8.8% drop on July.

First things first… do a bit of detective work.

It is always important to check out what competition is out there. See how other landlords are marketing their properties and compare how much they are marketing them for.

Marketing your property

Next you need to market your property. The more methods you use, the more tenants you will attract. There is currently a big demand for rental properties so advertising your property will help you achieve a wider selection of tenants.

Use a reputable agent – they will take the headache out of sifting through the prospective tenants  

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Owner occupation of homes is now at its lowest for 11 years, whilst one in every six homes in England is now a private rental property, new figures from Communities and Local Government have revealed.

The figures show that 17.4 per cent of homes are now within the private rented sector, an increase from 16.4 per cent in 2009 and up 229,000 by number.

Since 2000, the number of properties in the sector, which currently stands at 3.9 million, has risen by 1.8 million, reflecting the shift in housing tenures England is currently experiencing.

Conversely, the number of properties in the owner-occupied sector fell from 14.9 million in 2009 to 14.8 million last year – the lowest since 2000.

The CLG’s figures (look for Table 104)  can be viewed at

http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/housingstatistics/housingstatisticsby/stockincludingvacants

Changes to the EPC regulations were due to come into force on July 1, but the regulations failed to get clearance in time.

Although Parliament is now in recess, it is likely that the regulations will now be laid within the next few weeks, with the aim of bringing them into force on October 1.

The full proposed changes are below.

1. Summary of the changes to the EPB Regulations

The changes to the EPB Regulations can be summarised as follows:

• The changes will extend the current requirements to commission an EPC that apply to residential buildings to all residential and non residential buildings when sold or rented out;
• The requirements for the provision of an EPC with written particulars will be extended to all buildings sold or rented out and the option to attach the asset rating will be removed. The requirement will only extend to the first page of the EPC (the EPC consists of two pages, accompanied by four pages of recommendations); and
• The requirement for the statutory lodgement of air conditioning inspection reports onto the central EPC Register.

The following summary details the main changes that will be made in relation to EPCs. …Read More

A  new national lettings index has been launched with the aim of becoming the essential resource for all in the the buy-to-let industry. Among the data presented for the first time is the proportion of tenants moving from home ownership into rental accommodation, as well as extensive regional information.
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