It may be time for a re-vamp of your property and the way it’s being marketed!

Property not selling?

 

Sometimes it is easy to feel despondent that your house isn’t selling like you hoped it would. Now internet viewing is en vogue, potential buyers will have their own opinions formed before they even walk through your front door! Just visually changing the look of a few rooms could generate new interest or make a previous viewer see your home in a different way. Your estate agent will always be there to help you take more up to date photos and update your property’s  profile. Always remember that your estate agent wants to sell your house just as much as you do!

 

Make sure that your estate agent details and photos will really sell your property. Imagine you are a potential purchaser and you are searching on a property website, there are two virtually identical property with similar prices in your area. One of the properties has an excellent write up and amazing, bright and clear photos, Which one would you choose? Honestly?

 

Consistently ask these two very important questions to yourself:

 

1)      Have all the great selling points of my property been photographed and shown? Are the photos bright and clear?

2)      Have all the great selling points of my property been written out?

 

You could have a newly fitted kitchen with fantastic gadgets but you only have one photo of the kitchen and there are no details about the kitchen or the gadgets that you are leaving. You could have a family bathroom plus an en-suite, shown in the photos is only the en-suite. Potential purchasers could assume you have a very small bathroom. Also, you could have a fireplace which has been photographed, it may not state in the details that it is actually a working fireplace.

These are important issues which need to be addressed if you are selling a house properly.

 

 A few useful tips

 

What you will need to do first is walk around your property and take a good look at it. You could always ask a very honest friend if there are any improvements which they would make as a potential buyer. Ask yourself, are there any scuff marks? Is there peeling paint on the walls? Are the cupboards overflowing? Is the grouting tacky? If so, fix it! Take a look at your dining room table with six chairs, maybe this makes the room look cluttered. Remove two chairs and this will add instant space to the room. You will be shocked at how these minor undoing’s can put the viewer off.

 

Before your estate agent comes to take photos of your property, put yourself in the position of the viewer. Is this exactly how you would want a property to look if you were buying? Think deeply and make the adjustments which are needed. Make sure your house is clutter free and that there aren’t any dirty dishes or clothes lying around. Open all the curtains and blinds and turn the lights on so that the viewer will get a full feel of your homes’warmth. Make sure you are at home while the photos are being taken, as you can ask to see these photos before they are published on a property website. If you are not happy with the photos or details, ask for re-takes or re-writes. This is crucial in making your home perfect for viewers.

 

Remember to give your property a spring clean and remove as many personal touches and clutter as possible. You want your potential buyer to imagine living in your home, so this is vital that you make your home as neutral as possible. They will need to visualise their own family in your home, so removing clutter will make the rooms seem larger and remove unnecessary furniture which may be blocking the view of any hidden features. Viewers are always looking at your property as a whole so storage is always key. It is tempting to hide clutter in a wardrobe or spare room but viewers will always be looking at how big the rooms and storage areas are. A useful tip is to store unnecessary clutter in boxes, tucked neatly away in your garage or you could even ask a friend to store your boxes temporarily until the photographs are taken.

 

If your feel your property has ‘lost its touch’, it is time to give it a small budget makeover! Remember that there is potential in everything you own. That old kitchen dresser which suddenly stands out after you wallpaper the inside with a vibrant print or paint, which was previously viewed as a large, frumpy piece of furniture and unexpectedly lights up the room after being given a lick of something colourful. Also, if you dislike a piece of furniture but you don’t want to replace it, you could always paint it the same colour as the walls which will always make the room look bigger.

 

Always remember, paint, wallpaper and fabric are key to re-creating a brand new look for each room. Tester pots of paint may not cover a wall, but there is enough in the small bottles to paint old photo frames and then hang them on which was previously a dull, white wall. A tablecloth made by stitching off-cuts of fabric can brighten even the most boring dining table. Buying bright and bold bathroom towels or rugs can instantly add life to a room, making it look newer and more inviting. Re-organising your books according to the colour of the spines can instantly add bold patches of colour to your shelves. Adjust the focus of the living room, by organising the chairs so they face each other to add a more sociable approach to the room. Buy a few cheap plants and plant them in bright coloured pots to bring instant life to quiet and shy corners of a room. Any one of these minor changes can refresh your property at once.

 

If you still get people who are questioning whether all of this is worth it, make some changes and see what difference it makes. You will soon see that it is time to move onto the bigger stuff. Don’t forget to have a go; you can always change things if you don’t like them.

 

Remember this, it is all about creating or re-creating more interest in your property to sell your property. Never forget that your estate agent wants to sell your house just as much as you do.

 

Angharad Williams

The force of supply and demand

The forces of supply and demand appear to be at work in the housing market. What looks like a sudden flurry of homeowners willing to test the market by putting their homes up for sale is not being matched by expressions of interest from potential buyers.

The coalition government has in part helped fuel sellers' eagerness by scrapping Labour's home information packs, which were intended to make life easier for buyers in what had typically been a seller's market.

But the dearth of buyers means that homeowners who enjoy a feel-good factor attached to the rising value of their property are going to be disappointed. The latest house price survey registers a small 0.1% rise in July to an average of £220,685. A similar trend is expected for the rest of the year, with the economists predicting that prices will "continue to remain close to flat" for the remainder of 2010 and into 2011.

Little wonder, given that while 72,000 homes were sold in July, up 11% on June, this is still substantially below the 100,000 that would have been expected to change hands in the heady days before the credit crunch took the steam out of the market.

For some, though, selling or buying a new home in the current market is an irrelevance when redundancy is making it difficult to keep up existing mortgage arrangements. While the Council of Mortgage Lenders has revised down its forecast for repossessions in 2010 to 39,000 from its previous estimate of 53,000, there are still potential clouds on the horizon.

The coalition intends, in October, to almost halve the benefit that helps redundant homeowners maintain mortgage interest payments. This will coincide with mounting concerns about public sector job losses. A rise in interest rates, albeit not expected until next year, could cause even further problems. A rethink of the cuts to the mortgage interest benefit is needed.

 

early half of new borrowers took out a fixed rate mortgage in June, reports the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The CML says fixed rates had proved unpopular this year compared to the last several years due to an historic low bank rate with little prospect of the rate rising.

House purchase loans were up 23% in value to £7.6bn in June with 52,000 loans advanced.The house purchase lending was up 14% in volume and 27% in value from June 2009.It is now the twelfth consecutive month in which lending has been higher than its previous year’s levels.

Paul Samter, CML economist, says: "For the time being, the effects of government spending cuts have yet to make an impact on mortgage demand, and activity continues on its upward trajectory. "But we still expect house purchase activity to be muted in the coming months. Both consumer demand and lending capacity remain distinctly difficult to call, especially in the light of the government’s austerity measures and their possible impact."

Remortgages also saw modest increased with 27,000 loans, worth £3.4 billion, up from 26,000, worth £3.2 billion, in May 2010 but down 20% in volume in June 2009 from 34,000, worth £4.2bn.Q2 2010 saw 136,000 house purchase loans, worth £19.7bn., which is 20% higher, by volume and value, than the Q1 2010 and up 17%, by volume, and 30%, by value, than Q2 2009.

For remortgaging, the second quarter saw 77,000 loans, worth £9.6 billion,, up 2% by volume, with no change in value, from Q1 2010. But in stark contrast to house purchase lending, the figure was down 20% by volume and 19% by value from Q2 2009.
There were 52,200 loans, worth £6.2bn, to first-time buyers from April to June, up from 43,400, worth £5bn, from January to March and 85,300 home mover loans, worth £13.5bn, up from 70,700, worth £11.2bn.

 

Cameron announces changes for Council properties

I have just read an interesting article in the Times, David Cameron is hinting at huge changes for council home owners, those waiting and those already living in council properties.

Millions of people who have been stuck for years on council house waiting lists could benefit from sweeping reforms, David Cameron said yesterday.

The Prime Minister revealed the policy during a candid session with voters as he warned that looming budget cuts would shrink the State for good.

Council tenants should have to move into the private sector if their earnings improved significantly, he said, to help to tackle the backlog of five million people on waiting lists.

The Government is considering introducing reviews every five or ten years, which would mean that those given council homes could be moved into smaller places once their children have grown up.

In addition, no one would be able to keep a council property in the family by handing it down a generation.

Mr Cameron said that he wanted to see a more flexible system where people could "move through council housing rather than seeing it as something you get for life".

Launching an event in Birmingham to brace the public for severe spending cuts, he said: "Should we be asking: when you’re given a council home — maybe in five or ten years you will be doing a different job, you will be better paid, will not need that home and will be able to go to the private sector."

He conceded that the proposal would trigger "quite a big argument". He said that people had to open their minds to new ways of doing things so that Britain lives within its means.

Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, will launch a consultation on council house tenure this year and the results could be included in legislation in the current parliamentary session.

Kay Boycott, ofthe Shelter charity, said that the policy could be very costly for local councils to implement. To justify taking away the only bit of safety and security the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have, it would need to be proved beyond a doubt that there would be a significant benefit for those in housing need."

The Prime Minister also claimed "moral responsibility" for public sector cuts amid concerns that voters are unprepared for the sheer scale of the austerity measures to be revealed in October.

In his starkest warning yet of how the £113 billion squeeze will reshape Britain, Mr Cameron said that services axed would not be reinstated when the good times returned. He said that instead the country should use this "painful and difficult process" to find ways of doing more with less.

He insisted that the cuts gave Britain a chance to return to a more secure financial footing and offered a "prize" on the other side. "It’s going to be a difficult period for Britain. We shouldn’t think it’s all doom and gloom. At the end of this there will be light and hope and a stronger economy."

During a 60-minute question-andanswer session, the first of several that he and Nick Clegg will hold over the summer to brace the country for the pain, Mr Cameron fielded 19 questions from an audience of Heart FM listeners and Birmingham Mail readers.

Rose Jones, an official for the West Midlands Fire Brigades Union, asked him to pledge to reinstate anything that the Fire Service lost to cuts once the country returned to economic health.

Mr Cameron replied: "Should we cut things now and then go back later and try and restore them? I think that’s the wrong approach. Let’s do this in a way that’s sustainable. We have all got to open our minds and think, how can we work in a different way? Let’s try and think of a different way of what you are doing so we can find ways of doing more for less."

He urged banks to increase lending >and said that cutting the debt was a moral issue. "I don’t think we should be racking up debt for our children to pay, for future generations to pay."

He said that the budget situation was "dreadful", worse than Greece or Spain.

However, he insisted: "If we can do it, the country can come out stronger and with more better-paid jobs for people. We can be a real success story in this decade as we have been in the past."

Halifax: house prices up 0.6% in July

Halifax has reported that UK house prices increased by 0.6% in July, reversing a fall of 0.6% in June.

Prices were 4.9% higher year-on-year, having lost ground on a month earlier when the annual rate of growth registered at 6.3%.

At £167,425, the value of the average home stood 8.3% above its April 2009 trough but 16% below its August 2007 peak.

According to the lender’s housing economist, Martin Ellis, there has been little change in prices so far this year.

He suggests that an increase in the number of properties for sale, boosted by the recent abolition of Home Information Packs, has relieved upward pressures on prices, while low interest rates and a recovering economy continue to underpin demand.

However, the economist adds: "The mixed pattern of monthly rises and falls over the first seven months of the year is consistent with a slowing market."

By way of comparison, Nationwide recently reported that the value of a typical UK home declined by 0.5% in July, to £169,347.

The building society’s chief economist, Martin Gahbauer, suggest that it is too early to tell whether house prices will remain flat in 2010, or whether further price falls are in store.