Archive for the ‘Estate Agency’ Category
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Housing Minister, Keith Brown has announced extra funding for the LIFT Scheme. This is a government sponsored scheme designed to help first time buyers to buy houses inScotland. The scheme is intended to target in particular, those on low or moderate incomes and to assist them buy their first house. Effectively, the government provides an interest free deposit to house purchasers wishing to buy in the lower cost sector of the market – often called the “starter home” sector. In return for the interest free deposit the Scottish Government effectively takes an equity share in the property. A further £4.65 million housing is being made available to help the Open Market Shared Equity, part of the overall Lift scheme. This is that part of the LIFT scheme which allows purchases of second hand properties as opposed to “new builds”.
Figures suggest that the new money available could help around 250 first time house buyers into the market.
David Borrowman, Managing Partner of Caesar and Howie, welcomed the announcement but suggests a sense of proportion be retained by all in considering the effect on the market.
David comments “Caesar and Howie favour the Lift scheme – we have introduced it to many of our clients and they have found it useful to them in getting a start on the housing ladder. So it is good news if more money is going into LIFT – this is really a good scheme for young house buyers. There are two things, however, which would make this scheme much more effective. The restriction in giving these funds to tenants renting in the private sector should be removed. Plenty of private tenants are desperate to buy and with private rents going up, this group may be needs more help than those tenants of social landlords – yet these tenants are given priority under the scheme. Also the amounts of money going in are pretty limited. The Scottish Government are right to look at ways of helping first time buyers. When a first time buyer buys a property the seller usually buys a new property as well. That means you could give the market a much needed fillip with this LIFT scheme. But in all honesty at this funding level it is a bit like firing a couple of airgun pellets when you really need a barrage of artillery to get a result. When the City ofEdinburgh District Council(of all institutions) can find £150 million to fund social house building this government investment of under £5m in LIFT looks feeble. So I would say to Mr Brown – you are on the right track – but much more money please if you want to get the market buzzing again.
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Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
House selling in Scotland has just become a little bit less painful for sellers using the Central Solicitors Property Centre. The CSPC has just launched a new “no sale no fee product” which will allow sellers to market their house with normal marketing costs being taken on credit up front, not out of the sellers pocket, and not being paid by the seller at all if the property does not sell within a nine month period.
The product is actually a clever combination of a credit facility and an insurance – which pays out the normal up front costs of marketing if the property does not sell within the nine months. On the other hand, if the property does sell within that period these costs would be paid out of the sale proceeds. The seller would only be left paying for the service which costs £70 for up to £1000 of credit and £110 for up to £1250 worth of credit. The policy would also pay the up front costs if a property had to be taken off the market for issues like serious illness or redundancy.
David Borrowman, Managing Partner of Caesar and Howie, welcomes this development. “Many, would be sellers, are put off by the high costs of marketing a property now – particularly the cost of the Home Report. We think the government should abandon Home Reports and the market will then improve. But until that happens this new product at least will make it easier for people to test the market for sale of their house.”
Property Consultant John Renton, also welcomes the no sale no fee development. “This will definitely be attractive to some house sellers in Scotland. But it is important to be aware that conditions apply to the deal. The seller must market at a price not in excess of the Home Report valuation, and must actively market the property throughout the nine month period. In addition the house seller must accept reasonable marketing advice and reasonable offers. But I think these conditions are relatively fair and if people wishing to sell their house in Scotland are realistic in the prices they seek this product will definitely help.”
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Friday, May 21st, 2010
“An Englishman’s home is his castle” – or so it is said. Sadly, these castles have been a little more difficult and expensive to sell these last few years because of the late Labour Government’s imposition of the compulsory Home Information Pack into the house sales process.
Fortunately, commonsense has broken out in England and one of the first acts of the new Tory Liberal coalition is to dump the hated packs.- to the great relief of property professionals, buyers and sellers alike. Of course this decision applies only in England in Wales and we Scots have to suffer on with our Home Reports.
In Scotland Home Reports were inflicted upon the unsuspecting public with a zeal which overtook logic, reason and evidence. Politicians chose to ignore sensible advice from about 95% of all property professionals who argued firmly against Home Reports. Excepted from this group of course were surveyors who realised they stood to make a killing from these reports and that is what they have been doing these last 18 months or so.
However, most of the rest of us, particularly house buyers and house sellers in Scotland have been suffering because of this ill thought out legislation. The cost of selling has gone up, Home Reports are hated by most sellers because of their cost, distrusted by most buyers because the sellers produce them, and are frequently also not accepted by many lenders. The legislation has caused multiple surveys to return when that problem had long been solved by the unanimous adoption of the practice of offering “subject to survey”. Worst of all in this difficult sales market some houses simply do not sell quickly and sellers decide to stay put. The Home Reports in these cases have simply been a total waste of money and may even have never been read by anybody. Concluding contracts has become slow and uncertain and the valuations in the reports themselves are often wildly out of date by the time a contract is concluded.
In short our house selling system is more expensive and less certain than it ever was in the old system. Then the buyer instructed one survey from a surveyor approved by his or her lender at the time a deal was about to be done. The old Scottish system was quick easy and relatively cheap – and well understood by all – in fact simply better all round for buyers, sellers and lenders. But this system has been wrecked by Home Reports.
Is it too much too hope for that commonsense will break out in Scotland too? Are any politicians or consumer groups honest enough to admit they got this one wrong? Might some brave politicians unite in the spirit of the “new politics” and consign this damaging legislation to the bin?
David Borrowman
Managing Parter, Caesar and Howie
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Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
Alastair Darling announced a change in stamp duty charged on house purchases in his last pre-election budget. The changes are not actually a cut but a change in the rates – removing stamp duty for first time buyers buying up to £250,000 but increasing the rates for purchases over £1m.
In practice for Scotland, however, this is effectively a cut for most if not all first time buyers. But will this change stimulate a pretty subdued market?
Property professionals seem mostly to feel the change may help somewhat.
“In the property market the last two years have been full of mostly bad news – so anything positive is a bit of a help. Certainly a big cost will be removed for many first time buyers – and that can only be good” says Sandy Macfarlane, mortgage broker at Caesar and Howie. “But I’d like to see the Scottish government letting us know how much money they are going to make available under the Lift scheme this year. That did help a lot of my clients last year and I hope it will do so again this year. On balance if Lift monies come available again from April – with the stamp duty cut now also in place – there should be more activity seen in the first time buyer sector.”
This view is confirmed by Sebastian Kedziora – who works with Caesar and Howie’s many Polish clients buying houses in Scotland and indeed in the UK. “A large number of would be Polish buyers didn’t get the loans they wanted under Lift last year – because of the rationing of funds. If new tranches of money become available under Lift this year I predict many more Poles will be buying houses in Scotland.”
See www.liftmortgage.co.uk
See www.kupdom.co.uk
Tags: Stamp Duty
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Monday, January 25th, 2010
At the start of each year it is fashionable for commentators to predict the trend they expect to see in the housing market. Already some agents seem to be suggesting a significant improvement in the market. Of course it depends on what basis you judge a market. Much of the property press seem to be obsessed by the price of residential housing and that if people have to spend more to buy a house in Scotland in 2010 than in 2009 then this is the market “improving”.
At Caesar and Howie we do not really subscribe to that view. First and foremost houses are for families to live in not simply investments. We feel the number of successful transactions in the market is a much better indication of the health of the market rather than increasing prices. Consequently, whilst it does seem that the house price falls of the last two years are over – we do not think that the market is showing much sign of returning to good health. Good health for us is many buyers and sellers doing deals and in truth volumes remain very slim compared with the highs of 2007. Register House has not yet published final figures but sales in 2009 will probably come in around 67,000 or so compared with 155,000 in 2007.
The cost of Home Reports has clearly chased many sellers away from the market with listings for sale down all over the country since this policy was introduced by the Scottish Government.
We cannot see the sentiment of sellers changing much this year, and whilst there is still a strong desire to own property in Scotland, mortgage deals are still generally dependent on good deposits being available – and not all buyers can manage that.
So we believe the market will remain subdued in 2010. This means sellers have to be realistic on price, and to be patient, to achieve sales in 2010. Selling your house first before purchasing is the safest course to take – even being prepared to move into temporary accommodation between dates of entry. But buyers who had sold and had. “money in the bank” so to speak were able to press for a good deal buying houses in 2009 and we believe it will be the same this year.
We may be coming out of recession but many still fear for their jobs. We think until it is absolutely clear that the economy has turned round and individuals and families become more confident the number of house transactions is likely to stay modest. We doubt if house prices will increase across the board – although there may be the odd “city centre” hot spot. That does not mean that individuals cannot trade successfully in the market. But careful thinking, good professional advice and prudent decision making will be the order of the day to make this market work for you.
Tags: housing market
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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
According to the Scottish Executive and Consumer groups Home Reports were intended to revolutionise the Scottish house market for the better. Ignoring the results of its own failed trial, the Executive pushed ahead against reasoned opposition and sensible requests for delay, and made the commissioning of a Home Report compulsory on domestic property sales from 1st December 2008. The results have been spectacular.
- GSPC is the premier house selling organisation in the West. Their listings dropped by 80% in the month after the introduction of Home Reports. They have remained resolutely at about 50% of 2008 levels ever since.
- ESPC is the premier house selling organisation in the East. Their registrations dropped by 80% immediately after the introduction of Home Reports and are cumulatively down about 52% in 2009 compared with 2008.
- Solicitor Property Centres and Estate Agencies across the country have recorded similar figures.
- House sales recorded in the Land Register dropped dramatically in January 2009 by 64 % from the 2008 figure.
- House sales recorded in the Land Register to end October 2009, the last date on which figures are available, are running at 5503 per month compared with 8571 per month in 2008. That is a massive fall of about 36%. And remember 2009 sales will have been artificially inflated from “Normal” by purchases under the Lift scheme and by the stamp duty holiday.
On any logical view of the house market and these figures it is clear that Home Reports have had a significant deleterious effect. If the rules of a market change on a particular date and from that date activity levels collapse I think it fair and reasonable to conclude that the rule change has affected activity. Our own experience in Caesar and Howie on volumes is typical and the chaos caused by this legislation is reflected in our daily work.
- Our listings halved in number from precisely the date of the introduction of Home Reports and have not yet recovered.
- Multiple surveys had been unknown in our firm for years until the introduction of Home Reports – now we are aware of them happening all the time – and who pays for them is often a cause of dispute.
- House Purchase and Sale transactions are taking longer and are usually more expensive for both buyer and seller.
- Many sales clients have complained bitterly to us about the cost of Home Reports, many buyers do not trust the sellers Home Report and lenders frequently reject the Home Report and require their own survey to be done.
- Potential sales clients have simply said they would rather not sell than meet the cost of a home report in a slow market.
- Sellers and buyers alike treat Energy Performance Certificates (part of the Home Report) with open contempt and see them as worthless.
- In many Home Reports, some, and even most of the questions in the Property Questionnaire section are answered “don’t know”.
- Sellers in financial difficulty who cannot get credit are selling “off market” often well under valuation because they cannot afford the Home Report and they therefore cannot put their house on the market.
In the face of our experiences and the figures I have quoted I am at a loss to see how any objective view of Home Reports could fail to confirm that they actually hinder the house market not help it. We have had a recession since early 2008 and yet the largest falls in listings and sales have come since the introduction of Home Reports – most markedly so. Many commentators predicted aspirational sellers (in our view the majority of sellers) would leave the market if it became too expensive to sell – and they have done just that, in their thousands. Every aspirational seller is also an aspirational buyer – which is why chasing this group from the market by ratcheting up the price of entering the market was such a daft policy decision. Indeed I wrote to Alex Neil, the Housing and Communities Minister, and all MSP’s advising that Home Reports would decimate the market and cause redundancies throughout the property and mortgage sector as well as in areas where trade relies on house transactions such as furniture shops, carpet shops etc. Such closures and redundancies throughout Scotland are now well documented.
As an aside, it seems pretty remarkable to me that a policy introduced to stop the non-existent problem of multiple surveys can actually cause multiple surveys and still be declared to be a success by our Housing and Communities Minister. If this mess is a success what on earth would constitute failure?
Sadly Home Reports were conceived in a Fantasy Land peopled by politicians, consumer “champions” and surveyors, with a sprinkling of a few non-representative lawyers. In Fantasy Land the 250,000 or so Scots who bought 155,241 houses in 2007 (and similar numbers in the years before that) were all hapless victims, recklessly spending their hard earned money on houses they knew absolutely nothing about. All these unfortunates apparently quite unwittingly bought “pigs in pokes” which might ruin their lives forever. This upset the consumer organisations and politicians who always know much better than the actual buyers themselves how and in what way they should spend their money. Oh and of course, these silly buyers were racking up about 5 survey fees a purchase as well. Of course in Fantasy Land it was all just that – pure fantasy.
Without wishing to be offensive I see from a recent press release that the proponents of Home Reports remain happily resident in Fantasy Land congratulating themselves on how they have fixed the house market – which they surely have.
Home Reports have “benefited buyers and sellers over the last 12 months” – The RICS.
“Which is delighted the new system is working well” – Which.
“It’s good news for everyone” - Alex Neil Housing and Communities Minister.
Well it must be great to live in Fantasy Land, where propaganda trumps facts. For the rest us left behind, we have to live with the gritty realities of life, one of them being the worst property market in living memory, a market brought to its knees by compulsory Home Reports.
There is an easy fix to this shambles. Just remove the compulsory nature of Home Reports – get rid of the £500 civil fine for selling without one – so sellers can freely decide whether to commission a Home Report or not. Then we will soon see who is right in this debate – because members of the public will decide for themselves whether Home Reports are a good thing worth paying for or whether they are not.
Should anyone in Government, the RICS, Which, or Consumer Focus Scotland read this article I hope someone will publish their response.
To save the hard pressed the bother of having to read it – I can tell you now what it will be.
“It wisnae us – it wis the recession”. How convenient. At all costs the Home Report Project must be saved irrespective of fact, logic, job losses, or the economic damage it has done. Just wait and see.
Tags: Home Reports, housing market
Posted in Conveyancing, Estate Agency | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Many clients of Kupdom have been buying houses in the Inverness area.
Those buyers will be pleased then to have seen figures from the Lloyds TSB house monitor issued this week. They show that the average price for a house in Inverness and the Highlands and Islands is £168,815. Also the price shows a healthy growth of 6.9 % from the same period last year.
Not all parts of Scotland have experienced figures like that with Glasgow and Edinburgh still showing price falls.
Aberdeen showed the highest prices rises – averaging 13% – but the North now lies third behind Edinburgh and Aberdeen in the house price league.
Many Poles buying houses in Scotland have been drawn to Inverness and the North with Inverness now experience good population growth.
“I am not surprised at the figures” says Sebastian Kedziora from Kupdom. “A lot of our clients appreciate the beauty of the North and many have found jobs perhaps a little more easy to come by than in some parts of Scotland. It looks like they have been making a good investment buying there also – so I expect the Polish community in Inverness to continue to expand”
Tags: Buy a house in Scotland, House Prices
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Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
I suppose, I should not be surprised at the latest RICS attempt to suggest Home Reports are a great thing for the Scottish house market. After all, some parties have suggested surveyors are making a killing to the tune of £36 million a year out of Home Reports and Energy Performance Certificates – but it is not for me to comment on that since I do not know the figures. I think it fair, however, to point out that surveyors do not generally carry out Estate Agency or conveyancing and therefore their experience in the house market is limited to just one part of the sales process.
What I find pretty disquieting is that the RICS simply interview their own members, who clearly have a financial interest in Home Reports continuing, and then they present to the unsuspecting public their “findings” as “research”. Then the RICS public relations staff pull in some quotes from sponsors of the legislation who are only too desperate to see some good PR for this legislation whether or not it fits in with the facts.
We deserve better than that but we are not going to get it from the RICS, politicians or consumer groups.
Here is some information I have gathered from our experience at Caesar and Howie since Home Reports became compulsory on the 1st December 2008. Unlike the RICS I would not dream of claiming this to have the title of “research”. But as a collection of experiences it may be of interest to some.
- House sales in Scotland averaged 8571 per month throughout 2008 when the recession was at its height and mortgages were desperately difficult to get.
- Various government initiatives including reduced stamp duty and £61m of Lift mortgage finance were available for most of 2009, mortgages generally were easier to come by also, yet house sales slumped to a mere 5347 per month from January to September 2009 (the last date on which Land Register figures are available).
- Our own listings at Caesar and Howie halved in number from precisely the date of the introduction of Home Reports and have never recovered.
- Multiple surveys had been unknown in our firm for years until the introduction of Home Reports – now we are aware of them happening all the time – and who pays for them is often a cause of dispute.
- House Purchase and Sale transactions are taking longer and are usually more expensive for both buyer and seller because of the Home Report and related fees.
- Many sales clients have complained bitterly to us about the cost of Home Reports, many buyers do not trust them and lenders frequently reject them.
- Potential sales clients have simply said they would rather not sell than meet the cost of a home report when a sale might be difficult..
- Sellers and buyers alike treat Energy Performance Certificates with open contempt and see them as worthless.
- In many Home Reports some and even most of the questions in the Property Questionnaire are answered “don’t know”.
- Hard up sellers are selling off market at reduced prices because they can’t afford the Home Report and can’t get credit.
I could go on a lot longer but it does get a bit boring. However in the face of our experiences I am at a loss to see how any objective view of Home Reports could fail to confirm that they actually hinder the house market not help it. We have had a recession since early 2008 and yet the largest falls in listings and sales have come since the introduction of Home Reports – most markedly so. Many predicted aspirational sellers (in our view the majority of sellers) would leave the market if it became too expensive to sell – and they have done just that in their thousands.
As an aside, it seems pretty remarkable to me that a policy introduced to stop the non existent problem of multiple surveys can actually cause multiple surveys and still be declared to be a success by our Housing and Communities Minister. If this mess is a success what on earth would constitute failure?
There is an easy fix to this shambles. Just remove the compulsory nature of Home Reports – get rid of the civil fine for selling without one – so the public can freely decide whether to commission a Home Report or not. Then we will soon see who is right in this debate – because the public will decide whether Home Reports are a good thing worth paying for or whether they are not.
Posted in Conveyancing, Estate Agency | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
House sellers in the Central Region are now able to benefit from the creation of a new Solicitors Property Centre, designed specifically to help house sellers in the Central region.
Central Solicitors are banding together to create Central SPC – which will offer all the services locally which the traditional SPC’s offer. The website section of the new project has launched and already over four hundred properties are for sale on www.centralspc.co.uk. A property newspaper will follow in January – linked to the massively successful GSPC property paper.
An SPC is effectively a solicitors’ cooperative where pooled resources allow solicitors to offer enhanced marketing services for their clients’ properties.
“I’m very excited about the development” says Caesar and Howie Managing Partner David Borrowman. “ESPC and GSPC have been extremely successful in Edinburgh and Glasgow – and we think this new grouping can do the same out here. Solicitors pooling our resources and buying power means top quality schedules, very cheap newspaper advertising and massive internet coverage for sellers properties over no less than fifteen different property websites linked to our site. On top of that we have a fantastic out of hour’s telephone service for buyers and sellers alike – and that can only help clients selling houses. All property sales work from valuation, home report production, estate agency, through to the final conveyancing can be carried out by each of our members – so it is a genuine one stop service for clients buying or selling property”.
The new service has been launched under the guidance of GSPC – whose Chief Executive Bill Scouller said “we are delighted to be now helping solicitors in central with their new project. It is a great service now but the good news is we are working constantly to improve what solicitors can offer and I’ll soon be announcing yet more innovations for clients using Central SPC. I expect Central SPC to become the main selling force in its market area very quickly indeed – they have a great product which gives an edge to people wanting to sell their house”.
(more…)
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Monday, November 16th, 2009
The latest figures from The Safe Home Income Plan Group, effectively the Equity Release Trade Body, show that equity release lending is increasing.
The total amount borrowed under these planes increased by no less than 19% in the third quarter of 2009 from the year previously.
However the total borrowings figure being well up, actually disguises a slight drop of 2.5% in the actual number of plans taken out. What has put the figures up has been an increase of nearly 4% in the amount borrowed. On the other hand with some providers coming out of the market the figures do show the resilience of this sector of the mortgage market. Figures show in the last twelve months the wider mortgage market dropped by 63% whilst Equity Release only shrank by a comparatively modest 22%.
Partner Carmen MacIver, head of Caesar and Howie’s dedicated equity release team commented “the end of house price falls I think is going to give this market a further boost. The products are getting better and better known in Scotland and our enquiry levels just go up and up. I think the Scottish public did not get to grips with the benefits of Equity Release till after those in the South. But I think this has changed and with so many people enjoying a better retiral life style because of equity release I can only see Caesar and Howie’s services as equity release solicitors become more and more in demand”.
Tags: Equity Release
Posted in Conveyancing, Estate Agency | 1 Comment »
