I'm going outside, I may be some time...

(Lossiemouth, pictured above, this afternoon).

Once again the weather in Moray has turned cold & frosty (like when Mrs Jackson found out I've been talking to an 'attractive lady' on the beach at Findhorn - why I mentioned the words attractive and lady I don't know...Won't be doing that again).

However I digress, the weather is particularly poor at present, with snow, rain and strong winds. Not a great time for looking for your next property, or so you would think.

This afternoon, I called in to see David at Moray Property in Lossiemouth, to discuss their expansion plans for the Summer (Hope I haven't said too much David ;-). He tells me there is a noticeable change when the weather is poor, there are less enquiries by phone and less visitors to the office. However their website statistics go up. Which indicate people are stopping at home and viewing on-line.

This in turn leads to your estate agent being quieter than normal, so it is an ideal time to call in and discuss your requirements in detail, they will be much more inclined to spend time with you and go through your property requirements in detail, than they would with a busy office full of potential purchasers.

So, now is the ideal time to visit your agent in person and even snap up a sale bargain, as the poor weather looks set to be with us for a while longer. Don't wait for the sun and the first signs of spring, as you'll have to queue out of the door.

Unfortunately the same can't be said for the ravenous rental market, David tells me they only have 2 rental properties available at present, from a portfolio of 180. So, if you are in the market for a rental property, then you need to get out there - whatever the weather !

Even the staff at Harbour Lights were looking slightly worried as I ate my delicious blueberry custard cake, as the waves crashed over the marina walls this afternoon, perhaps they would feel safer in the estate agents up the hill...

Wrap up warm out there !

Mr Jackson.

Nodding Dogs.....

Following on from my earlier post this month, I've just been reading another great article by Jon Canter, the novelist and scriptwriter, about the very same, in yesterday's Guardian.

He suggests that you pay hundreds of pounds for a survey. Why? No surveyor answers the £164,455 question. (That, according to the Land Registry, is the current average house price in England and Wales.) Without an answer, no one should buy a property, anywhere, ever. The question is: what are the neighbours like? Never mind the state of the property — what's the state of the neighbours? Are they unsafe? Are they cracked? Are they falling apart? Are they dangerously wired?

I ask from bitter experience. We're regularly woken at five in the morning by neighbours hollering from the rooftops, with weirdly Mancunian vowel sounds, like 10 Liam Gallaghers fighting 10 Noels. The police keep telling us – correctly – that there's nothing they can do. These are seagulls. There's no such thing as an anti-seagull behavioural order. Surely our surveyor should have warned us, though. Perhaps he reckoned the nearby presence of the sea was a clue.

Mercifully, the humans living under the seagulls are good neighbours. "Love thy neighbour as thyself": even I, as a Dawkins-worshipping atheist, can see that this is the fundamental commandment of civilisation. Loving them, though: it sounds like a high-risk strategy. We all know what love can turn into.

Christopher Boyce, Gordon Brown and Simon Moore, psychologists at Warwick and Cardiff universities, have just published a study called Money and Happiness: Rank of Income, Not Income, Affects Life Satisfaction. The study, involving 80,000 participants, bears out the "rank income hypothesis" – your happiness is not determined by your absolute income but your income relative to others. "You might buy a new car," says Boyce, "but if your neighbour has just bought the very same car, that new car doesn't seem as good as it once was." So. Neighbours can make you happier. Not by loving you but by earning less than you and having an older car.

Sorry, Boyce, Brown and Moore. As I sit here at No 7, I couldn't tell you, without looking, what make of car is outside No 9. I couldn't tell you its age or current resale value in comparison to our Citroën. I can tell you this, though – it's green. The point is not that I'm a Buddhist who's oblivious of material things and sits here smiling serenely and – Om! – not wanting. I want, all right. It's just that my wanting is not relative to what my neighbours have.

Neighbours are random. They're the people who happen to be living next door when you buy or rent your place. My relative happiness isn't determined by those who are linked to me by walls alone. I'm affected by people I grew up with, by university contemporaries, by friends. I'm affected, in particular, by friends who were poor when I was poor and now, unhappily (for me), are far, far, far richer. (It's that third "far" that does it. I'm OK when they're far, far richer. But far, far, far richer makes me want to weep.) To be made happier or unhappier by another human being, I need to have invested something in them. I need to have invested emotions, over time. Without that investment, there can be no loss or gain, either of my happiness or unhappiness.

There is nothing, of course, to stop me spending so much time with my neighbours that they become friends too, assuming they like me and I like them. Nothing except the basic and unavoidable problem. The problem with neighbours is, they live next door. Once you start loving your neighbours, where's it going to end? You'll end up thinking about them all the time. You will, in that rank Boyce, Brown and Moore way, become dependent on them for your happiness or unhappiness. I don't think of my richer contemporaries all the time. Out of sight, out of mind. But neighbours are never out of sight.

The secret, surely, is neither to love nor hate your neighbours. Be polite, without intruding into their lives, or inviting them to intrude into yours. Yes, I talk to my neighbours – about seagulls, or that night when we accidentally set our chimney on fire – but mostly I nod. Nodding is good. Nodding is low-key. Nodding keeps you from developing a mutually loving relationship; equally, it keeps you from car-envy hell.

Nod thy neighbour as thyself......

Yours noddingly,

Mr Jackson .

Budget & The Million £ Stamp Duty Rise.....

"I've just sold a house for £1.85m to a hard-working family, not millionaires," said Lindsay Cuthill, head of the property agent Savills' South West London division, as he drove round Fulham on Wednesday afternoon. "They've worked hard to get there. We're not dealing with Russian oligarchs."

Selling a house for £1.85m is not uncommon for Mr Cuthill. His average sale touches £2m and some of his clients were rather worried when in Wednesday's Budget, Alistair Darling said stamp duty for properties over £1m is to be raised to 5pc from next April.

"I've had three people on the phone wanting to rush through their exchanges today," said Mr Cuthill. "One for a sale of £1.5m, one for £2.5m and another for £3m."

"They were aiming for the end of the week anyway. But now they want it done today."
Distrustful of the Government's ability to introduce such a measure in a fair manner, sellers wanted to exchange quickly to avoid falling victim to a "government cock-up".

The estate agent was – perhaps not surprisingly – disdainful of the policy, calling it "a relatively easy tax from a PR perspective".

"There aren't too many people out there who are going to have sympathy for a buyer with £1m to spend."

On that basis, if Steve Austin were a house and you were to buy him at today's exchange rate, then he'd cost you the equivalent of an additional City centre flat in Aberdeen !

Somewhere that sympathy may be in short supply is Doncaster, where terraced houses sell for £60,000. (Equivalent to Steve Austin's ear).

Mark Hunter, a partner at Grice & Hunter in the Yorkshire town, is unimpressed by the rise in stamp duty. "I can't see the point. It's what affects the majority that affects the market."

He is more concerned with the fate of first-time buyers, along with the down-sizers and buy-to-let clients using his agency.

Scrapping stamp duty for first-timers buying homes for less than £250,000 is a positive, he said, but warned "it's not a panacea".

The biggest problem for first-time buyers is still finding a deposit as lending remains tight, not stamp duty, he said.

However, it's the first-time buyers scrabbling together a deposit that are more likely to elicit the sympathy – of Labour voters at least – than those with a £1m budget, no matter how hard-working....

I trust the 5% Stamp duty won't be too damning for the majority of my readers !

Until the next time,

Mr Jackson.

Join the Silver Surfers....!

According to the BBC It has been a tough couple of years for people trying to earn a living in the property market.

The slump in home sales that followed the onset of the credit crunch and the recession led to widespread job cuts among house building firms and saw thousands of estate agency branches closing down.

With lenders restricting their funds, and in some cases ceasing lending at all, people like mortgage brokers, solicitors and removal firms have all suffered.

But with the housing market picking up, albeit gently, new types of businesses are hoping to take advantage of some opportunities.

Inevitably these days, the internet has a lot to do with it.

Simon Gerrard is the managing director of Martyn Gerrard, a traditional estate agency chain in North London which has been going for just over 45 years.

Business is good again and he says prices in his neck of the woods, stretching from Kentish Town to Whetstone, are now back to their previous heights of 2007.

This January was the best January in the firm's history, despite the freezing weather, and in the first two months of the year 75 sales were tied up - much more than the 43 in the same two months last year.

But some traditional selling methods have gone for good. Simon has just paid for his firm's last batch of adverts in his local papers.

From now on, his advertising will be restricted to his own firm's website and those of the big property portals.

"It is a sea of change, 20 years ago we spent an absolute fortune on the local press," he says. "In the last two months we have pulled our last bits of advertising out of the local press because it is a luxury." "The local press is not where you look - you look on the internet and that is where we advertise."

Online estate agency is dominated by traditional firms using either their own websites or the property portals, such as Rightmove and Findaproperty, which in turn choose to deal with the traditional estate agents only.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said recently that the transaction costs of buying and selling homes would be cut if more businesses were prepared to set up as pure online estate agents, or were prepared to help individuals sell their homes without an agent at all.

Seems like the guys at Moray Property may be on to something, offering the best of both worlds, with their fixed / capped fees and Internet advertising.

Though there are a few of us who also still look in the local press, but our numbers are getting fewer and fewer - It's mainly the older generation too, time they became Silver Surfers, embraced new technology and secured a new house to boot !

Until the next time,

Mr Jackson.

Love Your Landlord .....?

Here's how to show it... lettings agency Corporate Homes has launched a 2010 Best Landlord competition.

If your landlord has been more than landlord (and - presumably - less than a lover) you can show your appreciation by going here and nominating him/her. The deadline is May 15, after which CH will pick 20 finalists, and the final poll will be thrown open to the public.

(Presumably the reasons for nomination will be published, so if your landlord gave you his/her kidney, best mention it when you fill in the form.)

Hope all of my tenants are reading this.

I can supply you with a pen if neccessary.....

Mr Jackson

Everybody needs good neighbours......

Reading the Telegraph today and it seems that neighbours from hell have led to more than 360,000 Brits moving home in the last year - and can knock £30,000 off the value of a home, a study suggests.

Nearly one in ten have moved because of poor relations with irritating neighbours, and the number of disturbances are on the rise - up a third in the last two years.

And despite the postcode lottery of schooling, rows with those next door are a bigger influence on householders choosing to relocate.

The most frequent complaints fueling the moves include aggressive behaviour (60 per cent), excessive noise (53 per cent) and a messy property or garden (19 per cent).

Other factors involve neighbours allowing their home to fall into disrepair (18 per cent), stealing and even curtain twitching (12 per cent and 11 per cent respectively).

The study, by Halifax Home Insurance, found that one in three neighbours have a dispute of some sort, and house buyers are willing to pay a £5000 premium for a guarantee of a quiet life.

Anti-social neighbours, of the other hand, can knock £30,000 off the price of a house, the survey of 2000 UK adults found.

The cost has not been lost on Brits moving, and four out of five sellers with nuisance neighbours don't inform the estate agents of the problem, despite it being a legal requirement.

A fifth of Brits also report that a neighbour has caused damage to their property costing an average of £312 per incident to fix.

Martyn Foulds, senior claims manager at Halifax Home Insurance said: "Having a good neighbour is one of the most rewarding things a homeowner can experience; not only will they keep an eye on your property when youre away, but they may also become a close friend.

"But people shouldnt put up the for sale at the first sight of problems with a neighbour it may just be a simple misunderstanding."

Best course of action before making any rash judgements is to speak to your neighbours !

Lets get talking out there...

All the best,

Mr Jackson

Neville's Telly Tubby House.....

No, it's not a new gameshow, starring Noel Edmonds and a latex suited delnquent.

This is about the residents of Bolton who are getting het up by Manchester United footballer Gary Neville's plans for a flower shaped eco-home on green belt land. Quotes - here - from a meeting in a Methodist church hall show how the message is in the subtext.

"Why do we have to have this dirty great big house because he has lots of money?"

You don't. You can still keep your little house. He gets to have the great big house. And that's possibly the problem. The use of the word "dirty" is interesting. This, from the architect's website:

Make (The Architects)have submitted a planning application to Bolton Council for a new eco-home which, if approved, will be the first zero-carbon property in the North West of England... The design team has worked closely with Peter Rolton, a key member of the Government’s advisory panel for renewable and sustainable energy, and the proposed scheme has already been identified as an exemplar project within the Government’s ‘Planning Performance Agreements for Renewable and Low Carbon Energy Schemes’ programme.


Gary Neville - Pictured Above.

It just seems a shame to me that while Barratt's gets to squat above the country, dropping these at will, innovative, eco-friendly architecture that tests technology for future use is made so difficult.

Though he is a Manchester United player, so no wonder people will want to complain - Then again, I'm sure the planning will sneak through - probably in the last few seconds of extra time.....

C'mon you blues !

Mr Jackson.

Heads Up - Street View To Go Live !

You heard it here first.....!

The most comprehensive 360 degree map ever made of Britain will go online tomorrow, thanks to a mammoth undertaking by Google. Their Street View tool is being extended from a few select cities to almost every street in the UK - which amounts to 238,000 miles of public road.

The street-level imagery will cover all areas both urban and rural from Penzance in Cornwall to the north of Shetland - Including Moray !

Google believes the service will also be a boost for UK businesses, which can embed its maps into their own sites for free.

Plus Street View is not only limited to the roads. A number of landmarks off the beaten track have been captured thanks to the Google trike. The 18-stone tricycle with a mounted Google camera was ridden around sights such as Stone Henge last summer.
The project, launched in partnership with Visit Britain, also imaged the Millennium Stadium, Angle of the North, Loch Ness, Eden Project and Warwick Castle. A number of National Trust properties are also viewable.

And of course Google maps and street views allow you to explore the cities and streets of countries that you may never see in real life.

See if you can spot your neighbours in Lossie, or Elgin, albeit with blurry faces !

Photogenically yours,

Mr Jackson.

Gamble with Phil....?

Our good friend Phil Spencer advises to sell and rent !

Somewhat bravely - we believe - Phil (looking quite menacing in the above photo) is advising homeowners to sell now, buy again later.

Clinch a sale at today’s prices, but buy after the election, when values might dip and you can get more for your money.

All the logic's in Phil's favour. Wages are about to be squeezed, taxes are about to go up, lending's about to be squeezed, the market's currently bubbling along on little more than blind faith. But he's still brave to say this.

I've seen so many people get their bank balances burned trying this in the past, and I'm sure Phil's seen even more. And as his onscreen partner knows, this kind of thing can come back and haunt you.

Lets hope you don't end up with egg on your face Phil, or worse !

Yours, somewhat unsure,

Mr Jackson

Studentification.....?

As you may have heard the Government are considering making changes to planning law. If they do this, the effect would be that if you want to let out a house or flat which you have previously rented to a couple or a family then you would have to obtain planning permission from the local authority should you want to rent it out to a group of three or more unrelated individuals.

The same could apply to the other way round. As the law stands at the moment, you do not need to obtain planning permission to rent out what was previously a family house/flat as a shared house/flat which is to be lived in by a group e.g. friends, students or young professionals, nurses etc.

As part of the studentification campaign pressure groups are lobbying the Government to make these changes and the Residential Landlords Association, along with the British Property Federation, the National Union of Students, the Local Government Association and other landlord associations are urging the Government not to make any change.

In any case, a change would not be retrospective. If your property was already a shared house/flat you would not need planning permission, unless, of course, you were subsequently then wanting to let it out to a family again, or a couple.

A survey is being undertaken by the RLA, who are surveying landlords about their reactions if they were faced with having to obtain planning consent in this situation.

Planning permission might well be needed each time you wanted to change over the use of the property in this way. I believe that this will take a lot of flexibility away from the private rented sector and will seriously damage the sector. This is why there is a high profile campaign against what is being proposed. At the moment the Government’s decision is still awaited.

Seems like another stealth tax on landlords, for what is basically a paper exercise. However the costs will no doubt be passed on to the tenants who will see an increase in their rental payments.

Visit the RLA site for more details and to add your voice to the campaign to stop the implementation of this hare brained scheme.

Until the next time,

Mr Jackson.

Rental Property ? Be Snappy !

This just in from Tracey Kellett - At BDI Homefinders.

I was out with the pickiest rental client in the world today, seeing a peach of a bachelor pad on the banks of the Thames. He was late of course, him being a very important person and me being a service provider.

He liked it, he wants it. Now I just need to finalise "a few bits". New carpets are needed, obviously. The slippery roof terrace needs attention - it could be dangerous. The stairs are steep, a handrail is essential. "Someone could come a cropper."

There"s not nearly enough storage, will need more. "I have winter & summer wardrobes to accommodate." Obviously we are not going to offer full asking price. Ten per cent discount on rent is our best offer.

Terribly nice agent, wants to help but they have just received two full asking price offers since we viewed and with no conditions. The pickiest rental client in the world discovers that there's no messing about in today's rental market.

Under-supply and over-demand for good quality rentals are making it a landlord's market and very possibly a buy-to-let dream.

Same happening in this neck of the woods Tracey, David at Moray Property tells me that rentals are being snapped up at an alarming rate, "many the same day as they are advertised, thanks to our RSS Feed, which alerts prospective tenants every time a new property is listed".

You heard it here first, best be snappy folks.

Have a good weekend.

Mr J

Aaaghh..... Inside Track Are Back......

Less than two years after it collapsed into administration, the men behind the notorious buy-to-let property club Inside Track are back, targeting UK investors with a new get-rich-quick property scheme, the FT reports.

Promising that members can “make £100,000+ in five minutes”, a nationwide programme of seminars has begun to recruit investors eager to participate in the UK’s next property boom. The new company, IAP Global, was set up by Inside Track founders Jim Moore and Tony McKay when their former business collapsed and has access to a database of 25,000 of Inside Track’s original investors.

Participants are being encouraged to part with fees of more than £40,000 to acquire a portfolio of five UK properties from distressed developers, with IAP Global acting as the middleman.

In a flashback to the boom years, the company promotes high-risk financing methods such as using bridging loans as deposits, in the belief that rising house prices will enable a more conventional refinancing in the future.

The new pitch to investors follows seven consecutive months of rising house prices and a higher potential return from buy-to-let rents than low interest rates on bonds and cash deposits can offer. Moreover, demand for rental property is buoyant.

Investors in IAP Global’s properties are promised a discount to market value of at least £25,000 on each property, described by the company as “instant equity”. However, market evidence obtained on properties featured in their sales presentation suggests such discounts are questionable.

Let's be careful out there folks, remember, if it sounds too good to be true it is....

Until the next time,

Mr Jackson.