Property experts are now warning that the UK is now on the brink of the worst housing slump since the 1970s and the country is entering a potentially long-term recession. According to one major lender, The Nationwide, house prices have fallen for nine months in succession.
In the 1970s and 1990s house prices also fell sharply and these two periods were regarded as the major corrections in rising markets since world war two. The current period we are in is being predicted to eclipse these, with food and oil prices soaring in conjunction with inflation. The Bank of England has indicated that the number of new home loans issued has fallen to an all time low since 1993, when they started to record this data. One of the main engines that drive house prices, first time buyers, are struggling to get loans without large deposits, even though in many areas house prices have already dropped.
With credit lending having being reined in and house prices dropping, a catalogue of other fundamentals are likely to have an impact on our lives for the unforeseeable future. Unemployment is one of these fundamentals. Imagine the scenario of an average family having borrowed to the hilt to afford a modest house, stricken by unemployment and not being able to meet the repayments on their mortgage. Most lenders will begin legal repossession procedures after just three months missed payments.
With builder's businesses drying up due to a lack of house sales, staff are being made redundant and some companies have gone bankrupt and stopped trading. Other companies' share prices have dropped due to a lack of confidence with investors, causing pension funds and investments to plummet. Consumers have stopped spending as much, causing even more businesses to go out of business. It's not hard to see how one aspect of our economy has had a knock on effect on other areas like a domino effect.
The list of fundamentals stacked against our economy at the time of writing is massive and beyond the scope of this article. So what can we do to survive this economic storm? As with a normal storm the general advice is to batten down the hatches and sit it out and I think this advice is generally sound for homeowners thinking of selling. If you have to sell in this climate due to circumstances beyond your control then expect to receive offers well below what you thought your home was worth say six months ago.
One way to get a better price for your home is to sell it privately through an online property portal. An average estate agency will charge 4% on a house sale so for a house sold for £180000 their fees will be £7200 plus VAT. That's a total of £8460! A property portal generally charge a one off fee to add details and images of your property to the website and you manage the rest. Once you find a buyer, inform your solicitor and proceed as normal.
www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk is an online portal, or online estate agent, who charge a one off subscription fee to join the website and upload images and details of your property You can market your own property here and sell it privately, without paying any commission.
Monday, 4 August 2008
A guide to selling property online.
With the popularity and widespread use of the Internet more and more people are turning to the World Wide Web to find themselves a new home. On the other side of the coin, sellers eager to avoid high commission rates charged by estate agents are also beginning to cut out the middlemen and advertise their properties online through websites.
So what are the pros and cons of selling online?
Pros
Well for starters there is the saving on commission to estate agents as previously mentioned. On a £250000 property charging 2% that amounts to £5000 plus the VAT of £875.
Convenience. In this hectic world that we live in it is much easier to register online, take a few snaps of the house or property on a digital camera or mobile phone and simply upload them to a website. The alternative to this is to arrange an appointment with an estate agent who will try to tie you into the longest sole selling agreement at the highest commission rates that he or she can, and then post the details in their shop window and onto a website like rightmove.co.uk
Cons
It is a well known fact, that like other skills and jobs, there are good estate agents and bad ones. A good proactive estate agent may get a sale much quicker than someone advertising solely on the Internet.
Security. I think this is an issue because someone advertising on the Internet is potentially exposing themselves to criminals. A good feature of some property websites is that when registering you can choose which personal details are displayed on the website. If, for example, you do not want your phone number, email address, or home address displayed you can simply select that these details are left out. Once you have registered at a website an account is created for you from where you can add a property and images. You can also receive messages from potential buyers through the site without using your email, just by simply entering your login details.
As regards to arranging viewings at your property common sense must play a large part. Try and make sure a neighbour is informed prior to the viewing and let them know when the potential buyer as vacated the property. Don't leave out valuables or advertise expensive items. Remember a criminal will be after valuables that are easily portable. It is unlikely they will want to take a TV or sideboard with them. Also ask for id prior to the viewing and ask them to prove their id before you allow them into the property with a passport or driving license. Again, inform a neighbour of the person's id.
Concluding, why not utilize both methods - arrange to sell your property through an estate agent and also upload your property to a website where you can do your own marketing. Uploading your property to a website like this will not effect your agreement with your estate agent because you are advertising your property for a private sale and you can get the best of both worlds.
For more information on the benefits of selling property privately try visiting www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk, a popular website where you can upload and market your own property cheaply
So what are the pros and cons of selling online?
Pros
Well for starters there is the saving on commission to estate agents as previously mentioned. On a £250000 property charging 2% that amounts to £5000 plus the VAT of £875.
Convenience. In this hectic world that we live in it is much easier to register online, take a few snaps of the house or property on a digital camera or mobile phone and simply upload them to a website. The alternative to this is to arrange an appointment with an estate agent who will try to tie you into the longest sole selling agreement at the highest commission rates that he or she can, and then post the details in their shop window and onto a website like rightmove.co.uk
Cons
It is a well known fact, that like other skills and jobs, there are good estate agents and bad ones. A good proactive estate agent may get a sale much quicker than someone advertising solely on the Internet.
Security. I think this is an issue because someone advertising on the Internet is potentially exposing themselves to criminals. A good feature of some property websites is that when registering you can choose which personal details are displayed on the website. If, for example, you do not want your phone number, email address, or home address displayed you can simply select that these details are left out. Once you have registered at a website an account is created for you from where you can add a property and images. You can also receive messages from potential buyers through the site without using your email, just by simply entering your login details.
As regards to arranging viewings at your property common sense must play a large part. Try and make sure a neighbour is informed prior to the viewing and let them know when the potential buyer as vacated the property. Don't leave out valuables or advertise expensive items. Remember a criminal will be after valuables that are easily portable. It is unlikely they will want to take a TV or sideboard with them. Also ask for id prior to the viewing and ask them to prove their id before you allow them into the property with a passport or driving license. Again, inform a neighbour of the person's id.
Concluding, why not utilize both methods - arrange to sell your property through an estate agent and also upload your property to a website where you can do your own marketing. Uploading your property to a website like this will not effect your agreement with your estate agent because you are advertising your property for a private sale and you can get the best of both worlds.
For more information on the benefits of selling property privately try visiting www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk, a popular website where you can upload and market your own property cheaply
Are new build apartments a good investment?
Take a walk through most city centres or riverside areas such as the Thames and you will see numerous tower cranes, most of them being used in the construction of one, two and three bedroom apartments. It begs the question: Are the developers building too many of this type of housing, or is there still a strong demand. In some areas of the country there is simply an oversupply and some proposed developments have been mothballed completely.
Places such as Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester and Ipswich, which have been intensively developed, have now been recognized as only having a modest demand. Prices for these properties largely depend on supply and demand and in areas of oversupply prices are plummeting. Both aspiring and experienced landlords have purchased many apartments as buy to let investments and in areas of oversupply there may be dozens of properties for every potential tenant. This has caused the value of these properties to fall but the mortgage payments remain the same. Rents in areas of over supply have to be reduced to attract tenants and they often do not cover the monthly mortgage repayments meaning that they become an even less attractive prospect to would be investors. Some property investor gurus have been predicting a crash in apartment prices for a few years now so will their predictions come true in 2008?
The question may be answered by simply looking at supply and demand for property in general in the UK. The government estimates that approximately 230,000 new homes are required to be built every year to cope with our growing population, but only 160,000 are actually being built leaving a shortfall over 20 years of over a million homes. People are living longer due to healthier lifestyles and there are a growing number of single people due to our modern lifestyles and values. People are less likely to stay in a difficult relationship these days and are much more likely to opt for a single life for a while. Add to the equation, a shortage of work skills and the requirement for overseas workers to set up residence in the UK and in the long term it seems that there will be a very strong demand for affordable housing.
There seems to be a hiccup in the property market at present, which is due to the lending businesses i.e. banks and building societies who, we are told, facing difficulties in liquidity and are toughening up their lending criteria. In America several banks have gone bankrupt and in the UK Northern Rock has recently been nationalized by the British government. Some lenders are not passing on interest rate cuts to tracker mortgages following cuts to the bank of England base rate due, which they say is due to the current liquidity crisis.
This all makes for interesting times ahead. The general consensus seems to be that in the short term property prices may fall or at least not gain much in 2008 but in the long term supply and demand will cause prices to continue rising.
To save estate agent fees you can sell property privately at www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk for a small fee.
Places such as Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester and Ipswich, which have been intensively developed, have now been recognized as only having a modest demand. Prices for these properties largely depend on supply and demand and in areas of oversupply prices are plummeting. Both aspiring and experienced landlords have purchased many apartments as buy to let investments and in areas of oversupply there may be dozens of properties for every potential tenant. This has caused the value of these properties to fall but the mortgage payments remain the same. Rents in areas of over supply have to be reduced to attract tenants and they often do not cover the monthly mortgage repayments meaning that they become an even less attractive prospect to would be investors. Some property investor gurus have been predicting a crash in apartment prices for a few years now so will their predictions come true in 2008?
The question may be answered by simply looking at supply and demand for property in general in the UK. The government estimates that approximately 230,000 new homes are required to be built every year to cope with our growing population, but only 160,000 are actually being built leaving a shortfall over 20 years of over a million homes. People are living longer due to healthier lifestyles and there are a growing number of single people due to our modern lifestyles and values. People are less likely to stay in a difficult relationship these days and are much more likely to opt for a single life for a while. Add to the equation, a shortage of work skills and the requirement for overseas workers to set up residence in the UK and in the long term it seems that there will be a very strong demand for affordable housing.
There seems to be a hiccup in the property market at present, which is due to the lending businesses i.e. banks and building societies who, we are told, facing difficulties in liquidity and are toughening up their lending criteria. In America several banks have gone bankrupt and in the UK Northern Rock has recently been nationalized by the British government. Some lenders are not passing on interest rate cuts to tracker mortgages following cuts to the bank of England base rate due, which they say is due to the current liquidity crisis.
This all makes for interesting times ahead. The general consensus seems to be that in the short term property prices may fall or at least not gain much in 2008 but in the long term supply and demand will cause prices to continue rising.
To save estate agent fees you can sell property privately at www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk for a small fee.
Investing in property or real estate
Historically real estate, or property as we call it here in the UK, has been one of the best performing investment mediums, so has the bubble burst now or can we expect prices to continue in an upwards direction? The credit squeeze has had a knock on effect on the market on the whole, with investors finding it harder to acquire the funds needed to reinvest and as a consequence prices for property have started to fall a little in some areas and in other areas a lot.
When prices fall there becomes a buying opportunity for those able to raise the finance but how can we make sure that we are buying the right properties at the right price? A good proven method for investing in property is to visit the property twice – once in the daytime and once in the evening or on a dull day. Viewing a property in the sunshine can sometimes be misleading as you will be viewing the property in it’s best light so take a second visit on a duller day will help you to get a more balanced view. An evening visit may also bring to light any problems with noisy neighbours, as this is the time when noise is most likely to occur. Take a good walk around the area as well and ask yourself the question, “Would I like to live here?” If the answer is no then why would anyone else like to either? Look out for developing areas with nice cafes, boutiques and an upbeat feel to the area. Think about parking facilities as well. Although the governments may not like it, the car is still very much an essential means of transport for most people, with supermarkets on the fringe of towns and cities, school runs, and as general means of transport. Car parking will be a major consideration for most people looking to rent a property.
Another point to consider is how the long the property has been on the market for. For a property that has been on the market for over six months ask yourself why. Is the vendor asking too much for it or is there a reason why it’s not being sold. Perhaps there is a problem with parking or noisy neighbours. If you think the price is too high don’t be afraid of putting in a lower offer. Have a look at other properties in the area that have recently sold and find out what price they sold for. You can do this by looking on the internet. There are several websites where you can type in a postcode and the price of properties sold in the last few years will be displayed. Just do a search on google for “Property prices,” and add the name of your country. This should bring up some websites where you can find out how much properties in the area sold for and once you have this information you are in a much better negotiating position.
Investing in properties in holiday destinations need a little more homework. Ask yourself some questions. Is this destination going to be popular in 5 – 10 years? Does the destination have a nearby airport or will it have one in the near future. Is this a place where I would like to come on holiday? Is it a developing area? Do you see four and five star hotels being built nearby?
You can look for property online or sell my property privately at http://www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk , a popular website where sellers can advertise their properties cheaply with no commission rates. Buyers can browse properties and contact the vendors for free.
When prices fall there becomes a buying opportunity for those able to raise the finance but how can we make sure that we are buying the right properties at the right price? A good proven method for investing in property is to visit the property twice – once in the daytime and once in the evening or on a dull day. Viewing a property in the sunshine can sometimes be misleading as you will be viewing the property in it’s best light so take a second visit on a duller day will help you to get a more balanced view. An evening visit may also bring to light any problems with noisy neighbours, as this is the time when noise is most likely to occur. Take a good walk around the area as well and ask yourself the question, “Would I like to live here?” If the answer is no then why would anyone else like to either? Look out for developing areas with nice cafes, boutiques and an upbeat feel to the area. Think about parking facilities as well. Although the governments may not like it, the car is still very much an essential means of transport for most people, with supermarkets on the fringe of towns and cities, school runs, and as general means of transport. Car parking will be a major consideration for most people looking to rent a property.
Another point to consider is how the long the property has been on the market for. For a property that has been on the market for over six months ask yourself why. Is the vendor asking too much for it or is there a reason why it’s not being sold. Perhaps there is a problem with parking or noisy neighbours. If you think the price is too high don’t be afraid of putting in a lower offer. Have a look at other properties in the area that have recently sold and find out what price they sold for. You can do this by looking on the internet. There are several websites where you can type in a postcode and the price of properties sold in the last few years will be displayed. Just do a search on google for “Property prices,” and add the name of your country. This should bring up some websites where you can find out how much properties in the area sold for and once you have this information you are in a much better negotiating position.
Investing in properties in holiday destinations need a little more homework. Ask yourself some questions. Is this destination going to be popular in 5 – 10 years? Does the destination have a nearby airport or will it have one in the near future. Is this a place where I would like to come on holiday? Is it a developing area? Do you see four and five star hotels being built nearby?
You can look for property online or sell my property privately at http://www.sellmypropertyonline.co.uk , a popular website where sellers can advertise their properties cheaply with no commission rates. Buyers can browse properties and contact the vendors for free.
A guide to selling your property
Your property is an asset that you need to capitalise on when it comes to selling it. It may seem obvious, but presentation of your property is of paramount importance when showing it to potential buyers. Not only is presentation important when physically showing buyers around, but also when displaying your property in estate agents windows or on the internet. Try to take photos of your property on a sunny day, when your property will be shown in a good light. As any good photographer will tell you, evenings or early mornings on a sunny day is a good time to take a photo of your property as the sun is lower in the sky and the light is more flattering.
The interior of the property may be modernised and made to look more inviting by spending a relatively small amount of money. For example a new bathroom suite costs less than a thousand pounds, but can make the difference between a sale at the asking price, or an offer which may be significantly below the cost of installing the bathroom suite in the first place. In effect the cost of installing the new bathroom suite is adding value and desirability. It is important to whet the appetite of the buyer and create the feeling of desire by good presentation. A good example of this is when you were younger and just had to have something ie an ipod, doll or car. This is the feeling that we aim to provoke in the potential buyers – a feeling of “I really have to have that house no matter what”.
Another key area for selling a property is of course the kitchen, which is often referred to as the heart of a home. Again simply by ditching an old tatty kitchen and updating it to a more modern contemporary design can add a lot of value and desirability to a property. This need not necessarily cost the earth. A good and cheap way to modernise a kitchen, or bathroom for that matter, is to simply change the taps, wastes and fittings ie towel rails, cupboard handles, soap dishes etc. These can often be bought at DIY stores during sales and promotions quite cheaply. Try to match the styles of taps and handles between kitchen and bathrooms so that they create a more harmonious feeling. For example if you install contemporary modern taps in the kitchen and old-fashioned Georgian taps in the bathroom this can have the subtle effect of fragmentation. We want to create a feeling of unity and harmony in the property.
Another good idea to increase the feeling of harmony is to replace all the carpets in the property with a neutral colour of carpet such as beige or alternatively use laminate. This will tie together all the rooms in the property giving a modern and contemporary feel.
Smell is another element that we need to put to the top of our list when presenting our property. Imagine going to view a fantastic property that ticks all our boxes, except that there is the smell of dog odour or other strong unpleasant odour. It really is off-putting, so make sure there is either a neutral smell by opening doors and windows prior to a viewing or use some mild air freshener. Scented candles are good for this, but don’t go overboard with the aerosol type air fresheners as they can be a little overpowering and can give the impression that you are trying to cover up a smell.
When showing people around your property try and show them the best features last. For example if you have an indoor swimming pool with a wonderful view over the neighbouring country side then show them this last. We want our viewers to leave the property with the best possible feature of our property firmly embedded in their memories.
You can market your property yourself at SellMyPropertyOnline.co.uk. A useful website where you can sell property privately. Advertise your property or real estate now and avoid paying estate agent's expensive commission rates.
The interior of the property may be modernised and made to look more inviting by spending a relatively small amount of money. For example a new bathroom suite costs less than a thousand pounds, but can make the difference between a sale at the asking price, or an offer which may be significantly below the cost of installing the bathroom suite in the first place. In effect the cost of installing the new bathroom suite is adding value and desirability. It is important to whet the appetite of the buyer and create the feeling of desire by good presentation. A good example of this is when you were younger and just had to have something ie an ipod, doll or car. This is the feeling that we aim to provoke in the potential buyers – a feeling of “I really have to have that house no matter what”.
Another key area for selling a property is of course the kitchen, which is often referred to as the heart of a home. Again simply by ditching an old tatty kitchen and updating it to a more modern contemporary design can add a lot of value and desirability to a property. This need not necessarily cost the earth. A good and cheap way to modernise a kitchen, or bathroom for that matter, is to simply change the taps, wastes and fittings ie towel rails, cupboard handles, soap dishes etc. These can often be bought at DIY stores during sales and promotions quite cheaply. Try to match the styles of taps and handles between kitchen and bathrooms so that they create a more harmonious feeling. For example if you install contemporary modern taps in the kitchen and old-fashioned Georgian taps in the bathroom this can have the subtle effect of fragmentation. We want to create a feeling of unity and harmony in the property.
Another good idea to increase the feeling of harmony is to replace all the carpets in the property with a neutral colour of carpet such as beige or alternatively use laminate. This will tie together all the rooms in the property giving a modern and contemporary feel.
Smell is another element that we need to put to the top of our list when presenting our property. Imagine going to view a fantastic property that ticks all our boxes, except that there is the smell of dog odour or other strong unpleasant odour. It really is off-putting, so make sure there is either a neutral smell by opening doors and windows prior to a viewing or use some mild air freshener. Scented candles are good for this, but don’t go overboard with the aerosol type air fresheners as they can be a little overpowering and can give the impression that you are trying to cover up a smell.
When showing people around your property try and show them the best features last. For example if you have an indoor swimming pool with a wonderful view over the neighbouring country side then show them this last. We want our viewers to leave the property with the best possible feature of our property firmly embedded in their memories.
You can market your property yourself at SellMyPropertyOnline.co.uk. A useful website where you can sell property privately. Advertise your property or real estate now and avoid paying estate agent's expensive commission rates.
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