“Many landlords will have been looking to offset the government’s punitive tax regime by raising rents. However, the uncertainty surrounding Brexit has forced the vast majority to forfeit this to maintain a steady income.” Time to look at ratcheting up recurring property taxes in general now that the grown-ups' predictions of no adverse effect on prices have come to pass? ARLA et al are strangely quiet on this one. Imagine if they do manage to get the tax rise overturned, will they immediately drop rents? Luckily there's no political will to do this for the foreseeable future, who are landlords going to vote for - Corbyn?

Fergus Wilson is understood to be putting all of his properties on the sales market today. The portfolio, in and around Ashford, Kent, is thought to consist of 300 homes. Wilson has long-threatened to sell off his portfolio

Overall Annual Growth was 0.5%, so money in the bank might actually have outperformed houses. I like the way all the "experts" are predicting rises will start going up again. I wonder how many "experts" predicted that at the end of the great Japanese property bubble. Being an engineer I keep thinking of one simple principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback I like the way Wikipedia illustrates it with cattle stampeding

The same old story. Greedy baby boomer couple who bought their home for sub-£100k back in the day try and fail to flog it for £550k. When it doesn't sell, rather than reducing the price they turn to a house lottery, aiming to sell 60,000 tickets at £10 each for a chance to win the house. As always this got copious local media attention and free publicity despite being a well known scam. Gambling Commission have now shut them down. Entrants will be refunded (minus administrative costs of course)

Has there ever been a more difficult time to predict the future of UK house prices? Political uncertainty looms large over the UK’s property market, but experts have nonetheless given their expectations for the year to come.

[...] prices in the area have been declining: in the past four years, prime prices have fallen 9.3 per cent, according to Savills’ prime London index. In the year to June, they dropped 5 per cent. [...] Normally HPC site goes quite just before the market tops. All the bears capitulate. Not this time! They've been quiet through this slow-motion crash. Why...? Gone to Twitter??

Posted by sneaker @ 06:17 PM 17 Comments

So this is what happens when you reach the end of your IO loan with no payment vehicle. I suppose that renting from the bank is more secure than renting from an unknown stranger and you cut out the yield off the top too. Perhaps they weren't such a bad idea after all!