House Price Spy Blog

At House Price Spy Keeping our eagle eye on property news this week its clear that something has changed, maybe not for the average buyer/seller or the average UK taxpayer but the industry is showing active signs of recovery. Despite prices actually falling the property industry namely regular estate agents and online estate agencies, whose profits have jumped by around a third in the last month.

The finance sector is also showing signs of green shoots of recovery (albeit Direct Line went bust Yesterday), with profits and funds available to lend returning to 2007 levels. So anyone who profits from the UK property market is going great guns, why are we unenthusiastic about the recovery?

Property professionals have looked after themselves while the regular buyer/seller pays the bill, as with the ‘hard times’ of the Tory government to come in the next few years we will be left to pay for over-ambition and over-expansion.

Before the 2007 slump it seemed that you could never lose money on property, now the long term view is the most reliable position. We need the government to do the same, the first year of the new government has seen them reverse a lot of plans, the merry go round of promises and apologies rolls on!

HIPS or home information packs have been disposed of by the government in a move that should save consumers almost a billion pounds of the next decade. I knew this change was made in May and this is not very topical but interesting none the less.

HIPS were, I assume designed to push the balance back in favour of the buyer thus boosting numbers of sales with knock on effects to the country as a whole. In reality they made minimal impact on the number of sales and we are back where we were with a large public pot of money used up. The problem they were meant to address, namely the rising expenses that sellers face to ensure their intended property is sound, was left unresolved. Lets face it any expense sellers have will certainly be passed onto the seller in one form or another.

Making the whole process fairer, cheaper and quicker would increase the number of sales, but saddling the seller with a higher than normal cost which he has to pass onto the buyer rather some sort of standardisation of surveys and the whole process was never the answer.

With the economy the way it is we are more money conscious that speed conscious, spending over the odds for a HIPS pack was never the way to encourage sales. Apart from that, anyone who retrained as a HIPS provider will be joining the long unemployment lists….

We all know that the market is flat and with all the cuts in jobs and public spending we are not expecting changes during 2010 or early 2011, so house prices will also be expected to stall this year. Is this really bad? For forced sellers and anyone struggling to get finance for their purchase it will, but in general the remarkable recovery of last year was not as stable as it would seem.

Smart predictions are that 2011 will be the year where the market drags itself back onto track with serious gains that will last this time, the double dip recession is not quite happening like we thought although more companies and jobs are still being lost across all sectors of the economy but this is just a hangover from the troubles of 2008 with thousands of companies hanging on for grim life in the face or dropping orders and rising charges.

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The property market in the UK has kept to a slight fall in average prices, continuing on from last month. Prices are now back at 2006 levels, rises are not expected to rise in 2010, although falls are not expected to reach the depths of 2008.

Rising countries are now far outstripping the UK for growth in the market overall, add to this the fact that many purchases are now made from outside the UK due to falling prices and you see the weakness in the market.

As mentioned, mortgage lending is actually up, the number or properties being sold rises by the month and it seems there is a sounder foundation to the market than before when many expected a quick recovery within a year. The rising number of properties being sold and the stronger market that is based on greater numbers of sales, is good for the individual home owner in the UK. A slow growth is one that wont fall back like the gains we saw late in 2009.

Low interest rates it seems are to be kept up, the BOE/government seem reticent to lose goodwill they have created and the media are predicting another few years of this concession at least. With no month to be made from selling property and none from savings and various kinds of mortgage to be banned (moving these borrowers onto other more expensive ones) we need something to keep us afloat!

The FSA have made positive moves to ban certain types of mortgages in the UK, after consultation with lenders it has discovered some worrying statistics: almost half of UK home-owners with interest only mortgages had no money to off their mortgages and where relying on value rising to close the gap. Half of mortgages approved since 2007 were self certified with no proof of earnings.

Fair enough, they are seeing a problem but 3 years too late surely! Interest only mortgages are increasingly popular and outlawing them may be the final nail in the coffin of the property industry. They are popular for many reasons, with all the cash which the government has been spending on first time buyers as one of their single mother/new parents type causes do they really want to price another chunk of the mortgage market out of the game?

I agree that proving earnings will be a good thing, making lenders a little more accountable for their own failures is important but having an interest only mortgage myself it seems that they may be throwing the baby out with the dishwater. Further restrictions have been long in coming but with the market set to be back on track in 2011 is this the time to lose around a quarter of the mortgage market?

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The average property price in the UK has stalled in its rise, while never plumbing the depths expected by some who predicted up to 40% to be wiped off the value (the average was just 16%) the recovery has been put on a pause by its own success. Due to the large number of properties being put on the market in the last 6 weeks the expected price has actually fallen, despite this the market IS more stable.

The main problem with the 2009 recovery it was based on too few sales to be a reliable one in the medium term, subject to wild fluctuations from week to week. With increased sales comes confidence that gradually the market will build up to what it was rather than slipping back to 2007 levels.

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