Tag Archives: crisis
Bristol and Cambridge were most searched locations for homes in 2015
Bristol is the most searched city for property hunters in the UK, followed by Cambridge, according to new research from online property portal Rightmove. Margate has seen the highest asking price hikes and Welwyn Garden City is where properties have sold the quickest with March the busiest month of the year in terms of browsing for real estate. There were 110 million visits from home hunters each month to Rightmove in 2015, as demand for property hit an all-time high and supply issues in many parts of the country remained. Whilst the busiest month was March, the busiest day for browsing property was actually later in the year on Monday 10 August when home hunters browsed over 58.6 million pages of property, a common time of year for people to try and find a new home to be settled in before Christmas. Bristol and Cambridge came first and second for potential buyers and renters searching for property in 2015 outside London, with almost 14 million searches in these two places over the year. York was in third place for buying and Manchester came third for rental searches. Commuter towns Milton Keynes and Reading made the top 10 searches for both renting and buying, perhaps as people looked for more affordable options outside of the capital. Some areas fared particularly well in 2015 outside London, with new seller asking prices in a few locations going up by more than 20%. The seaside town of Margate in Kent saw the price of property coming to market go up by 24.2% to £204,631 between January and the end of November, followed closely by Altrincham in Cheshire with a rise of 21.9% to £484,258. The rest of the top five is made up of towns in Kent with Gravesend recording a rise of 20.5%, Ramsgate up 18.6% and Dartford up 17.4%. The average time for a property to sell across England and Wales was 62 days throughout 2015. Properties in Welwyn Garden City sold fastest outside London, spending an average of only 25 days on the site before being marked as sold, with nearby Hertford coming in second place with an average of 26 days. Places in the East of England dominated the top 10 fastest to sell list, as many parts of the region recorded strong growth. As the year ended, the annual new seller asking price increase in the East of England is 9.2%, recording the same rise as the South East. ‘2015 saw demand reach record levels for home hunters both buying and renting, and the ripple effect from London to the South East moved even further out to places like Essex and Hertfordshire, as you can see from how quick properties are selling in these locations,’ said Rightmove’s housing expert Sam Mitchell . ‘Usually January is Rightmove’s busiest month but the New Year rush stayed even longer this year, and we recorded our busiest ever month in March. It’ll be interesting to see… Continue reading
Property tax having a detrimental effect in Australia, says analysis report
Few things have as detrimental an impact as property stamp duty on household finances in Australia, according to the Housing Industry Association, the voice of Australia’s residential building industry. The HIA’s Summer 2015 Stamp Duty Watch report shows that during November 2015, the typical stamp duty bill nationally rose to $19,045 from $17,653 in June, an increase of 7.9%. The cost of stamp duty is equivalent to almost four months’ worth of earnings, with stamp duty causing mortgage repayments to increase by $1,165 per year, or $34,955 over a 30year loan term. ‘The cost of stamp duty has a significant negative multiplier effect causing a downward financial spiral for households. Apart from the immediate effect of being over $19,000 worse off, stamp duty results in mortgage interest payments increasing by about $15,900,’ said HIA senior economist, Shane Garrett. ‘Damage from the tide of stamp duty doesn’t stop there. Home buyers have smaller deposits after stamp duty is paid and must bear larger mortgage debt. As a result, significantly higher LMI charges must then be paid,’ he explained. Garrett pointed out that on a standard home purchase of $527,000, stamp duty can push the LMI premium up by another $7,855. If that’s not bad enough, a further layer of mortgage interest is added on top of the LMI premium if it is capitalised. ‘The end result is that the typical stamp duty bill of $19,045 can snowball up to about $50,000 once LMI and mortgage interest are factored in. This is an unacceptable burden to place on ordinary home buyers,’ he added. Garrett also pointed out that as state governments rely more and more on revenue from stamp duty, they have been blinded to the obvious consequences of these costs have on prospective first home buyers. Indeed, the most recent Productivity Commission report also noted the huge disincentive that stamp duty places on older households wishing to downsize. A breakdown of the figures show that in November 2015, Northern Territory home buyers continued to suffer the highest stamp duty bills at $25,600, followed by Victoria at $24,700 and New South Wales at $23,600. Queensland continued to offer the lowest stamp duty bills by a comfortable margin at $6,300 followed by Tasmania at $9,300. Stamp duty bills are the fourth highest in the ACT at $18,400, with Western Australia in fifth place at $16,300 and South Australia in sixth at $15,400. Continue reading
Private sector housing rent arrears up in UK
Cases of private rented sector tenants in the UK seriously behind on rent are rising once more, up 13.8% between the second and third quarters of 2015, new research shows. Those more than two months behind on rent now number 84,200, the most households since the second quarter of 2013, according to the latest Tenant Arrears tracker report from estate agency chains Your Move and Reeds Rains. In absolute terms this represents a quarterly increase of 10,200 additional households in potentially serious financial difficulties. On an annual basis, this means 13,200 more households are in significant arrears than a year ago, or an annual increase of 18.6% since the third quarter of 2014, when this figure previously stood at 71,000 across the UK. On a historical basis, the latest deterioration in serious tenant arrears remains relatively mild, remaining considerably below the record 116,600 such cases seen in the third quarter of 2012. However the latest figures for the third quarter of 2015 represent the highest levels in more than two years. The report points out that in part, the increase in absolute numbers of serious arrears due to the overall growth in the size of the UK private rented sector. As a proportion of all private tenancies, just 1.6% are in serious arrears of more than two months. This compares to a peak proportion of 2.9% of tenants in the first quarter of 2008. ‘The chance of an individual tenant falling into serious arrears remains very low. In general, renting works for most people. Over the last decade the private rented sector has expanded at an unprecedented pace, providing homes for millions of households at the same time as absorbing the worst financial crisis in living memory,’ said Adrian Gill, director of estate agents Your Move and Reeds Rains . ‘In the current climate, optimism feels increasingly reasonable. Most households are beginning to earn more, the cost of living is stable and the chance of falling into unemployment is diminishing. For the majority of tenants, paying the rent is becoming easier rather than harder,’ he pointed out. ‘But beneath this rising tide there are inevitably some households and individuals who are not yet feeling any new economic buoyancy. As others bid rents higher there will be a minority who are still struggling to keep up. Landlords and tenants have a mutual responsibility to be aware of this small but significant risk,’ he added. In quarter three of 2015 there were a total of 26,712 court orders for the eviction of tenants, on a seasonally adjusted basis. This is 4.3% lower than was seen in the second quarter when seasonally adjusted eviction orders stood at 27,909, and 7.8% fewer evictions than 28,959 a year before in the third quarter of 2014. Breaking 11 previous consecutive quarters of improvement, landlords’ own finances have remained in stable health between the second and third quarter of 2015. In the latest figures there are currently 5,700 cases of buy… Continue reading
