I came across a very interesting article in The Telegraph today, whilst sat infront of my log-burning stove, with a mug of hot chocolate, topped with marshmallows. Today was a wrap up warm and stay at home day, it's I while since I saw snow in October !
It is like the beginning of a children's story. The Durrell family famously rented an animal-infested house in Corfu, while E Nesbitt's railway children and their mother took a cottage in Yorkshire which had a railway line running along the bottom of the garden. All kinds of families are now turning to renting. They aim to have adventures, achieve their dreams and avoid any feeling of coming down in the world.
Many other families are thinking alike. The rented sector, which for so long has been inhabited by singles and couples in their 20s and 30s, is now seen as a place of sanctuary and freedom. Hits for family-sized houses on the website in August were a staggering 68 per cent higher than in August last year, and stayed high in September. Hits for renting were 51 per cent higher than in the same month in 2007.
One Hampshire land agent looking for a house to buy realised he could rent a five-bedroom Georgian vicarage with a paddock, stable and outbuildings in a village for the same monthly cost as a mortgage on a Victorian terrace in the nearest town. He took a five-year lease on the vicarage.
"It sounds clever and strategic," he says, "but it just suits us at the moment. You have to ask yourself how much more do you own a house if you are mortgaged up to the hilt on it?" But isn't that monthly outlay dead money? "Not at all, because I am getting what I want. What I have bought is the joy of living in this house."
Sam Gibson and his family have just moved to Morpeth in Northumberland. He and his wife Emily, their two lurchers and seven-month-old Alfred, have moved into the wing of a Grade-I listed pile called Capheaton Hall. And they are renting it.
"We are terrifically lucky," says Sam, an estate agent with Strutt & Parker. "We have four bedrooms, live in one of the area's finest houses, look out over the most perfect ha-ha and have been invited to help eat the produce from the kitchen garden." He does want to buy eventually: "I want to make a home for my young family," he says. "I want a place where Alfie can grow up and I can plant a peach tree."
The 25-year repayment mortgage became too expensive for many people by the end of 2007. Savills, the estate agency, says, they cost 76 per cent more than renting. Many people switched to interest-only mortgages instead.
Seems like now is the ideal time to rent a family sized house of your dreams, at least until 2023, if you read my previous post !
Happy hunting.
Mr Jackson.
Tuesday 28 October 2008
Thursday 16 October 2008
Prices bounce back...... in 2023 !
If you read the Guardian, like myself, then they had some gloomy news today, stating the average price of a house in the UK will not return to its 2007 peak until 2023, this according to a leading academic.
If you're a homeowner, you'd better sit down with something stronger than Rington's tea and some comfort food, maybe some Rolo doughnuts, which I found on offer this week - thanks to the credit crunch, it's not all bad you know......
Andrew Clare, professor of asset management at Cass business school in London, said the housing market would get "a lot worse" before it started to pick up.
Using futures contracts based on the Halifax house price index, he has calculated that, in 2010, the average will be 40% lower than the peak of £199,600 in August last year - about £120,000. "Worse still, according to these prices, the Halifax index will not recover its August 2007 level until 2023," he said.
Clare said his survey was "very bad news" for anyone who bought a house last summer and predicted negative equity would be a big feature of "our economic landscape for years to come". However, he also sees greater affordability, with the ratio of average house prices to average earnings declining as property prices fall, assuming that earnings rise at an average nominal rate of 5% a year.
"By 2010 the price-to-earnings ratio would be much closer to a sustainable level - very close to the old-style mortgage multiples that lenders used," he said.
Halifax said last week that the average price of a house fell 13.3% in the year to September - the biggest drop since records were first kept 25 years ago.
However, specialists giving evidence at a Treasury select committee yesterday gave a less gloomy outlook than that painted by Clare. David Miles, professor of finance at Imperial College London, told MPs that house prices would stabilise after a further 5-10% drop. He said a total 20% drop in prices should be the point at which the housing market rejuvenates.
The ripple effect is now starting to hit Scotland and Moray, just look in the estate agents windows and in the local press. There's many more houses being offered at fixed prices and rental prices are steadily increasing.
Word has it that several local estate agents are struggling at present and if the sale market doesn't improve soon, we may well see many more Big Issue vendors on our streets ! Though they have had it very good for the last few years, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
The Moray housing market is very resiliant though, if only purchasers could still get a good mortgage offer. As always, shop around my friends, the current economic slowdown is affecting all businesses, with many being prepared to negotiate or offer better deals, just like my Rolo doughnuts !
All the best,
Mr Jackson
If you're a homeowner, you'd better sit down with something stronger than Rington's tea and some comfort food, maybe some Rolo doughnuts, which I found on offer this week - thanks to the credit crunch, it's not all bad you know......
Andrew Clare, professor of asset management at Cass business school in London, said the housing market would get "a lot worse" before it started to pick up.
Using futures contracts based on the Halifax house price index, he has calculated that, in 2010, the average will be 40% lower than the peak of £199,600 in August last year - about £120,000. "Worse still, according to these prices, the Halifax index will not recover its August 2007 level until 2023," he said.
Clare said his survey was "very bad news" for anyone who bought a house last summer and predicted negative equity would be a big feature of "our economic landscape for years to come". However, he also sees greater affordability, with the ratio of average house prices to average earnings declining as property prices fall, assuming that earnings rise at an average nominal rate of 5% a year.
"By 2010 the price-to-earnings ratio would be much closer to a sustainable level - very close to the old-style mortgage multiples that lenders used," he said.
Halifax said last week that the average price of a house fell 13.3% in the year to September - the biggest drop since records were first kept 25 years ago.
However, specialists giving evidence at a Treasury select committee yesterday gave a less gloomy outlook than that painted by Clare. David Miles, professor of finance at Imperial College London, told MPs that house prices would stabilise after a further 5-10% drop. He said a total 20% drop in prices should be the point at which the housing market rejuvenates.
The ripple effect is now starting to hit Scotland and Moray, just look in the estate agents windows and in the local press. There's many more houses being offered at fixed prices and rental prices are steadily increasing.
Word has it that several local estate agents are struggling at present and if the sale market doesn't improve soon, we may well see many more Big Issue vendors on our streets ! Though they have had it very good for the last few years, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
The Moray housing market is very resiliant though, if only purchasers could still get a good mortgage offer. As always, shop around my friends, the current economic slowdown is affecting all businesses, with many being prepared to negotiate or offer better deals, just like my Rolo doughnuts !
All the best,
Mr Jackson
Wednesday 8 October 2008
Bag Of Cats....
A very strange landlord in New York came up with a rather sick idea of getting rid of his tenants-putting dead cats in one of the building's flats.
Following the sickening move, tenants of the building are suing the landlord. The residents of the apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, have claimed that the stench was so bad that they had to hold their noses when they passed through the communal stairs. "It was so bad, we thought it was a dead body," The Telegraph quoted Daisy Terry, one of the tenants, as saying.
After several weeks, when the smell started to waft around the building, the New York housing inspectors were called in to look into the issue. After investigation, it actually turned out to be a bag of dead, rotting cats lying in a vacant ground floor flat.
With the support of the members of the city council, the rent-stabilised tenants are now suing a property company, Heskel 1, which bought the property last year. The tenants have also alleged that the company even removed the stairs leading to the basement and filled hallways with rubbish after they refused to accept money to move out so the building could be redeveloped.
However, the landlord has refused to comment on the issue. According to Christine Quinn, the New York City Council Speaker, such cases were "happening all over our city and we must ensure wronged tenants have the right to confront their harassers in court.
Happening all over the City ? Thank goodness we live in a much more civilised area, for the time being at least.
That's put me right off my Battenburg this morning. If you have a worse landlord than that, please let me know !
All the best,
Mr Jackson.
Following the sickening move, tenants of the building are suing the landlord. The residents of the apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, have claimed that the stench was so bad that they had to hold their noses when they passed through the communal stairs. "It was so bad, we thought it was a dead body," The Telegraph quoted Daisy Terry, one of the tenants, as saying.
After several weeks, when the smell started to waft around the building, the New York housing inspectors were called in to look into the issue. After investigation, it actually turned out to be a bag of dead, rotting cats lying in a vacant ground floor flat.
With the support of the members of the city council, the rent-stabilised tenants are now suing a property company, Heskel 1, which bought the property last year. The tenants have also alleged that the company even removed the stairs leading to the basement and filled hallways with rubbish after they refused to accept money to move out so the building could be redeveloped.
However, the landlord has refused to comment on the issue. According to Christine Quinn, the New York City Council Speaker, such cases were "happening all over our city and we must ensure wronged tenants have the right to confront their harassers in court.
Happening all over the City ? Thank goodness we live in a much more civilised area, for the time being at least.
That's put me right off my Battenburg this morning. If you have a worse landlord than that, please let me know !
All the best,
Mr Jackson.
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