Tag Archives: real-estate
Almost a third of families move house to get kids into a good school
Nearly a third of parents have moved house in England to be in the catchment area for a good school, new research shows. Also 10% are willing to pay in excess of £50,000 for a property in a desirable school catchment area and 24% would consider renting an extra property in the catchment, according to research from price comparison firm Confused.com. It also shows that 18% admit that they started thinking about what school to send their child to before they were even born. The study suggests that inflated house prices in good state school catchment areas actually mean it may be cheaper for parents to send their children to local private schools. Compared to the average house price in England of £275,721, the typical price of a house close to Lowbrook Academy, Maidenhead, one of England’s best state schools, is £481,023. According to calculations, it would be cheaper for families to educate a child at a local private school than to borrow the money needed to move into the Lowbrook Academy catchment area. Many parents are even willing to ‘cheat the system’ to secure places at the most sought after schools in the country. Some 9% admit to having given a false address within the catchment area of a good school to ensure their child got a place there, while 24% would consider renting an additional property in the catchment area for a good school to help secure a place for their child. Other tactics that parents admit to adopting to help get their child into their school of choice include feigning religious observance to get into a well performing local school (7%) or falsely claiming that a sibling already attends a local school to increase their child’s chances of acceptance (4%). Some parents also admit that they would be willing to pay for extra tuition to try and nab a place at a well performing school (16%), while others admit that they would send their child to a nursery simply because it had links to a good primary school (27%). The race to secure a place at a good state school means that some parents are now making decisions on where they will live before their children are even of school age. Some 18% admit that they started thinking about what school to send their child to before they were even born, with a further 12% going as far as putting their unborn child’s name down on a school waiting list. The findings come amid mounting concerns over rising primary school populations leading to a shortage of school places for children. Recent figures from the Department of Education show that six primary schools have classes with just one teacher to 70 children, while nearly 100 have classes with at least 50 pupils. Analysis suggests that at the current rate, the number of pupils in large classes will reach almost half a million by 2020. ‘Although household finances remain stretched, it is significant to see from our research that a number… Continue reading
England now needs 260,000 new homes a year!
In the 10 years since a major housing review report warned that at least 210,000 new homes a year needed to be built in England, an average of just 115,000 have actually been built. According to the author of the original report, Kate Barker, it means that the country is now one million homes short of what was needed to adequately house its population and prevent a worsening affordability crisis. Her latest report for the Home Builders Federation says that to put this into perspective, this shortfall is now equivalent to the number of homes in Birmingham and the surrounding areas. And reducing the long term trend and gradually pricing households back into the market will now require 260,000 private housing starts per year, some three times the number completed last year and a figure achieved in only four years since World War II. Even achieving the least ambitious of Barker’s three objectives, to slow down the rate at which households are priced out of the market, would require more than 200,000 private starts per year, a figure last achieved in 1973. ‘The Barker Review was a seminal report for housing and starkly illustrated the scale of the emerging crisis. Since then successive governments have failed to pay heed and develop policies to deliver the homes the country needs,’ said Stewart Beaseley, executive chairman of the HBF. ‘Whilst the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme is finally starting to drive demand and significantly increase supply, we start from a very low base and the shortfall is huge,’ he told the organisation’s Policy Conference. ‘As we approach a general election, we now need to see all parties committing to policies that lead to a sustained increase in house building. We have to build our way out of the crisis. Building the homes the country needs will provide the decent homes people deserve and create hundreds of thousands of jobs,’ he added. Barker told the conference that the continued shortfall in housing supply matters most to those who lose out in the battle for dwelling space. She explained that even 10 Milton Keynes would only deliver 30,000 home a year, nowewhere near what is needed. ‘At the moment the cost is falling heavily on many families in the private rented sector. It is vital to raise the rate of new supply but also to develop coherent policies to address the consequences of the supply shortfall,’ she added. Continue reading
Distressed sales fall in the US as transaction increase overall, latest index shows
US home sales increased by 8% year on year in February and 3.8% month on month, according to the latest data from CoreLogic. Sales rose to a non-seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 4.09 million and the monthly rise was the highest sales pace for the month of February since 2007. Improvement in February home sales were led by newly constructed homes which increased by 23%, followed by re-sales which increased by 18%, the data also shows. Distressed sales, which include real estate owned (REO) and short sales, were on the decline, continuing the trend in the shift towards healthy home sales. Distressed sales accounted for 15.6% of total sales in February, a strong improvement from the same time a year ago when they made up 22.8% of total sales. REO sales were down 16% year on year, making up 11.4% of total sales while short sales were down 44% year on year, at just 4.3% of total sales in February. At its peak, the distressed sales share totalled 32.7% of all sales in January 2009, with REO sales making up 28.2% if that share. The firms says that the more recent shift away from REO sales is a driver of improving home prices, as REOs typically sell at a larger discount compared to healthy sales than do short sales. ‘There will always be some amount of distress in the housing market, so one would never expect a 0% distressed sales share, but the pre-crisis share of distressed sales was traditionally about 2%,’ the report explained. Michigan had the largest share of distressed sales of any state at 30.5% in February, followed by Illinois at 26.6%, Nevada at 26%, Florida at 24.8% and Georgia at 23.5%. California saw a 17.8% point drop in the distressed sales share, the largest of any state. Of the largest 25 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs), Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights had the largest share of distressed sales at 29.5% followed by Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall at 27.9%, Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise at 27.2%, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, at 27% and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater at 25.5%. Sacramento-Roseville-Arden-Arcade had the largest drop in its distressed share, falling by 21.7% from 41.6% in February 2013 to 19.9% in February 2014. Continue reading
