I was having a lazy Saturday morning, reading through the newspapers at my favourite Blueberries coffee shop in Bexhill. I find the most interesting bits are their commentaries on the British Housing Market. Some talk about property prices, whilst others discuss the younger generation grappling to get a foot-hold on the property ladder with difficulties of saving up for the deposit. Others feature articles about the severe lack of new homes being built (which is especially tr

Recently I was having a chat with one of my second cousins at a big family get-together. The last time I had seen them their children were in their early teens. Now their children are all grown up, have partners, dogs and children. Wow – how time flies! So, I got talking over a glass of lemonade with my 2nd cousins and a couple of their children, about the times of 15% interest rates and how the more mature members of our family had to endure the 3 day week, 20% inflation and

As the dust starts to settle on the various unread General Election party manifestos, with their ‘bran-bucket’ made up numbers, life goes back to normal as political rhetoric on social media is replaced with pictures of cats and people’s lunch. Joking aside though, all the political parties promised so much on the housing front in their manifestos, should they be elected at the General Election. In hindsight, irrespective of which party, they seldom deliver on those promises.

There are 23.4 million properties in England and Wales with 64% being owner occupied and 36% being in rented either from a private landlord, local authority or housing association. Over nine out of ten of those English and Welsh owner-occupied properties are a whole house or bungalow. Now, most people would assume they would be freehold – however, of those renting, nearly half of rental properties, 44% to be precise, lived in other leasehold apartments and flats. It might be

According to the Land Registry’s latest House Price Index for Bexhill and the surrounding locality, the value of apartments/flats are rising at a faster rate than terraced/town houses, semi-detached properties and even detached property. Values of apartments in Bexhill have increased by 8.22% over the past year, which is proportionally 20% more than the Bexhill average rise of 6.85%. The last time flats/apartments in Bexhill out performed all the other types of property, by s

A Bexhill homeowner emailed me last week, following my article posted in the Bexhill Property Blog about the change in attitude to renting by the youngsters of Bexhill and how they thought it was too expensive for first time buyers to buy in Bexhill.  There can be no doubt that buy to let landlords have played their part in driving up property values in Bexhill (and the UK) and from that made housing a lot less affordable for the 20 and 30 somethings of Bexhill. In the email,

The Bexhill housing market has gone through a sea change in the past decades with the Buy-to-Let (BTL) sector evolving as a key trend, for both Bexhill tenants and Bexhill landlords. A few weeks ago, the Government released a White Paper on housing. I have had a chance now to digest the report and wish to offer my thoughts on the topic. It was interesting that the private rental sector played a major part in the future plans for housing. This is especially important for our g

2017 has started with some positive interest in the Bexhill property market.  Taking a snap shot of the Bexhill property market for the first quarter of 2017, the picture suggests some interesting trends when it comes to the number of properties available to buy, their asking prices and what prices properties are actually selling for. Let us first consider the number of properties for sale, compared to 12 months ago: So when we add in building plots and other types of propert

Investing in Bexhill buy to let property is different from investing in the stock market or depositing your hard-earned cash in the Building Society. When you invest your money in the Building Society, this is considered by many as the safe option but the returns you can achieve are awfully low (the best 2-year bond rate from Nationwide is a whopping 0.75% a year!). Another investment is the Stock Market, which can give good returns, but unless you are on the phone every day

If I were a buy-to-let landlord in Bexhill today, I might feel a little bruised by the assault made on my wallet after being (and continuing to be) ransacked over the last 12 months by HM Treasury’s tax changes on buy-to-let. To add insult to injury, Brexit has caused a tempering of the Bexhill property market with property prices not increasing by the levels we have seen in the last few years. I think we might even see a very slight drop in property prices this year and, if

It was late May 2016, The Right Hon. Member for Tatton, Mr George Osborne, published an official HM Treasury analysis stating UK house prices would be lower by at least 10% (and up to 18%) by the middle of 2018 compared with what is expected if the UK remained in the European Union. So, eight months on from the Referendum, are we beginning to show signs of that prophecy? The simple answer is yes and no. Good barometers of the housing market are the share prices of the big UK

An Englishman’s Home is His Castle as Maggie Thatcher lauded – everyone should own their own home. In 1971, around 50% of people owned their own home and, as the baby-boomers got better jobs and pay, that proportion of homeowners rose to 69% by 2001. Home ownership was here to stay as many baby boomers assumed it’s very much a cultural thing here in Britain to own your own home. But on the back of TV programmes like Homes Under the Hammer, these same baby boomers started to j

Well, it doesn’t seem like two minutes ago that it was Christmas – and now it’s all over! Happy New Year to you all. One cold December morning, after arranging the office’s Christmas cards I thought I would nip out for a quick festive coffee and mince pie at my favourite local coffee shop, Blueberries Coffee Shop in Endwell Road.  I met an old client of mine in the coffee shop and we got talking about the Bexhill Property Market. I had just completed my research for my next b

Bexhill people aged over 65 currently hold more housing wealth in their homes than the annual GDP of the whole of Powys, and this is a problem for everyone in Bexhill! Many retiree’s want to move but cannot, as there is a shortage of such homes for mature people to downsize into.  Due to the shortage, bungalows command a 10% to 20% premium per square foot over houses of the same size with stairs. To add to the woes, in 2014, just 1% of new builds in the UK were bungalows, acc

Well, hasn’t 2016 been eventful. The ups and downs of Brexit, the Queen’s 90th, Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, Trump, Bake Off to Channel 4 and something close to the hearts of every buy to let landlord and homeowner in Bexhill … the Bexhill Property Market. So, let’s look at the headlines for the Bexhill property market… In the last month, Bexhill property values rose by 0.63%, leaving them, year on year 10.8% higher, whilst interestingly, Bexhill asking prices are down 2% m

Tenant fees set to banned within 12 to 18 months Concern this may cause rents to rise as those fees are passed to landlords Landlords won’t be worse off – and neither will tenants or agents Our new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond, revealed a ban on tenant fees in his first Autumn Statement on Wednesday. What does this actually mean for Bexhill-On-Sea tenants and landlords? The private rental sector in Bexhill-On-Sea forms an important part of the local housing ma

Figures just released by the Bank of England, show that for the first half of 2016, £128.73bn was lent by UK banks to buy UK property – impressive when you consider only £106.7bn was lent in the first half of 2015. Even more interesting, was that most of the difference was in Q2, as £68.12bn was lent by UK banks in new mortgages for house purchase, which is the highest it has been for two years. Looking locally, in Bexhill last quarter, £310.6m was loaned on TN39 properties a

The Bexhill Property Market continues to disregard the end of the world prophecies of a post Brexit fallout with a return to business as usual after the summer break. The challenge every Bexhill property buyer has faced over the last few years is a lack of choice – there simply hasn’t been much to choose from when buying a property (be it for investment or owner occupation). Levels are still well down on what would be considered healthy levels from earlier in this decade, as

Let me speak frankly, even with Brexit and the fact immigration numbers will now be reduced in the coming years, there is an unending and severe shortage of new housing being built in the Bexhill area (and the UK as a whole).  Even if there are short term confidence trembles fueled by newspapers hungry for bad news, the ever growing population of Bexhill with its high demand for property versus curtailed supply of properties being built, this imbalance of supply/demand and th

The orthodox way of classifying property in the UK is to look at the number of bedrooms rather than its size in square metres (although now we are leaving the EU – I wonder if we can go back to feet and inches?). It seems that homeowners and tenants are happy to pay for more space. It is obvious, the more bedrooms a house or apartment has, the bigger it is likely to be. The reason being not only the actual additional bedroom space, but the properties with more bedrooms tend t