House Prices

[Pixipoppy]

Budget today!

The stamp duty holiday for the first 500k I expect is only one of the props coming out. With the job loses there will need to be quite a few tools used to bring stability / stop falls.

Hopefully some of the measures will look for long term prosperity , but not holding my breath.

I really hope they do something similar with LTT in wales but I doubt they will

 

[Moe]

I ended up just putting in the asking price as when I spoke to them they asked for final and best offers. It’s leasehold £125 a year with 230years left.
I saw another similar house a few weeks ago but didn’t get it when I offered just above asking.

Hang about it’s a house then that is surely freehold?

 

[hnoz]

Not sure if this is the right thread - but just watching Martin Lewis' show from yesterday, really shocked that the green improvement scheme doesn't look as shockingly shit as Sunak's tweets initially suggested? He said that it was for low income households which felt ridiculous, how many home owners are going to be low income in this era of house prices, minus pensioners? Apparently they'll fund 2/3rds of green improvements up to £5k, for low income households 100% up to £10k.

Wondering what work you'll be able to get done with it though...

Of course it is going to go to low incomes, they've had schemes like this before for boilers, insulation, windows etc. This is basically a new version and how much grant you are eligible for depends on income and what benefits you are entitled to.
If you aren't low income I don't see why anyone should be eligible for 10k from the public purse to fit new windows. I don't know why some people were thinking this was going to be a free for all.

 

[JoeBloggs]

If theyve 1.5 mill in the bank they wont get free care in Scotland. Also they do check back years if youve gifted it away. My grandmother had to use savings / sell her property to pay for her nursing home care.

They aren't banking all that money, they have debts including to my parents.

 

[Yel]

I do think lots forget what happened last time after 2008 to house prices which this graph does show quite well

House prices dipped 0.5% in June as the stamp duty holiday began to be phased out, according to the Halifax.
Prices rose 8.8% over the year, leaving average prices still more than £21,000 higher, following a broadly unprecedented period of gains.
The lender said it was "important to put such a moderate decrease in context."

House prices dip as stamp duty holiday ends

The start of phasing out of the stamp duty holiday led to house prices dipping 0.5% in June.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Yel]

I think it's nationwide and they're doing it to protect first time buyers.

All these schemes to "help" or parents remortgaging like a pyramid scheme just work to inflate the bubble.

High tight, no rush to buy now during a frenzy and an economic impact that's equal to a world war. I think it would be madness to sign up for lots of debt with how uncertain everything is.

 

[Former_Antelopee]

Do you mean buy the freehold? Only if the current freeholder wants to sell it and at what price. You really need to speak to your solicitor about it, they’ll be able to give you advice as every situation will be different with different clauses/people involved etc

Sorry yes the freehold is what I meant! I will speak with them, its on the list just a few things to do first. It was more if you knew if they did give me the money to buy it, I’m assuming if it’s under the 3k tax free gift limit then there wouldn’t be any issues but if over then I’d have to pay tax on what they gift me?

 

[JoeBloggs]

Weird question but is there such a thing as selling a property with no for sale sign & no online listing for it?! My noisy neighbours have officially left but absolutely no trace of a house sale online… how bizarre? Have noticed a lot of houses for sale locally don’t have for sale signs outside either, it’s only the shit heaps that do, does anyone know why this is? Is it just because they’re selling that quick these days you’ve not even got time to put the wooden sign up?!

Yes, you don’t have to do either if you don’t want to.

I also think sales are happening so fast the boards don’t go up.

 

[Yel]

House prices up 2% in Aug, not a huge suprise. The stamp duty holiday and months of no action would do this. But unemployment is growing and the economic outlook is gloomy. Let's see where things are in a few months though as it feels unsustinable.

 

[Moe]

oh 1000% serves him right, and I never know why landlords are surprised by these sorts of situations happening! I also don't know why councils allow it to happen, we looked around the house as well as ours and it's scarcely liveable. There's no central heating it's this weird air system, the bathroom is horrific, the kitchen scarcely exists because they didn't back in the 50s when the houses were built, windows are all really old (that silver trim?) so it must be freezing to live in. I guess the council have no choice as housing stock is so low (especially as we're in London).

I never understood how they paid rent anyway as there are 3 adults in the house and none of them work & only 1 young girl, the smell of weed was REALLY bad the first few months they were there so I assumed they were dealing, but they're not?! I know this is very NIMBY but this is a very affluent borough and it really upset me that it was happening because we've sunk our life savings into this house, we could have gone to a 'normal' borough (without outstanding schools, with more crime, yadda yadda yadda) for significantly less money if were happy smelling weed all the time? I was looking into selling up a few months after we got here. This is awful but I did complain to the local councillor about it & the community policing team and they were really good, they now go out in their car to smoke weed which is obviously not fab for anyone else on the road. They also park their car on the pavement outside their house which means it's hard for their elderly & disabled neighbours to pass, they have to cross the road, which is just inconsiderate as the road has quite a lot of elderly.

I do appreciate people end up accidental landlords and it's shit that they're being penalised by the new regulations, but I'm glad that it stops these have a go landlords with no experience, no standards, and no links to their local communities from causing issues for the rest of us? I think a big problem is that lenders don't lend for renovations (anymore?) so the only people who can buy these elderly people's homes that require a lot of work are BTL landlords. Not saying that all landlords are slumlords & all tenants are bad, but where we're in a really well connected borough I do worry we'll end up with one of those HMOs with 30 men in eventually, which has happened to my MIL's road and her husband's van gets done in every other month now, after never having it broken into once in 40 years...

You need to keep complaining. The council will have an anti social department so keep a log of what is happening. Try and get neighbours to do the same. Some people won’t want to get involved but others will. You could also write to environmental health if the house is in such a bad state. Keep up the momentum. Also send your complaints to the Landlord.

 

[JoeBloggs]

I'm genuinely not sure what would happen if I had a baby with a joint custody arrangement whilst living in a shared house. Not that I would want to live in a shared house with a kid but what would happen in that situation if you needed to look after a baby for a few days a week for some reason?

Legally nothing, as you cannot be evicted for having a child if already in a secure tenancy, you can however be rejected for having a child before starting to rent the property. There is also nothing to stop the landlord serving notice (within the terms of the lease) should they discover you have had a child as it can be served with no reason.

 

[Former_Antelopee]

Weird question but is there such a thing as selling a property with no for sale sign & no online listing for it?! My noisy neighbours have officially left but absolutely no trace of a house sale online… how bizarre? Have noticed a lot of houses for sale locally don’t have for sale signs outside either, it’s only the shit heaps that do, does anyone know why this is? Is it just because they’re selling that quick these days you’ve not even got time to put the wooden sign up?!

I think someone previously in this thread said about houses selling before being online as the estate agent was sending info out to people beforehand.
Someone in my family who has died their daughter was emptying the house and someone saw her doing this. They went up to her and offered to buy the house, this was well before covid, but she hadn’t even contacted an estate agents about selling.

 

[JoeBloggs]

I know a lot of good landlords in my job, many rent lower thank market rate for good properties. Some are scum but I’d say most are not.

My parents have just taken on new tenants, theirs is well below market rate. They do no exploit their tenants and they have it as an investment/inheritance for me.

 

[Mejustme]

Another way of looking at it
I have 3 children and they all lived at home with their partners moving in while they saved for their own home. I didn't have any spare cash to help them, so by charging them just enough to cover the increase in bills etc that was my way of helping them

 

[Boutros-Boutros Ghali]

Yeah it was all a farse by housing builders and there were some which meant they couldn’t sell or remortgage and were stuck I think. It was to make more money!

Personally I’d never touch a leasehold house.

Especially now it’s going to be banned, the house builders that own the leaseholds will want to make some money now they can’t keep that particular scam going

 

[idk2]

Keep plugging away at it took just over a year get good mortgage even with 22% deposit.
We also changed mortgage broker
Brought on 1 income
Were reasonably flexible on area.
When the 1st house fell through we were gutted the old couple just changed their mind.
It took over a month find house we live in now and when we went back the 2nd house was cheaper and the mortgage rate slightly better plus 1k cashback from halifax.

We're thinking of going to an individual mortgage broker and seeing what they can find us but waiting until next year so we can maximise the amount we can borrow on both incomes and we would (hopefully!) have a larger deposit than we have now too. We're looking for a home for the long haul; something we would start a family in so schools, garden size, crime rate, driveway, etc are all big deciding factors. We have a few areas in mind but we love the area we were bought up in but its too far out of our budget.

Its awful when the sellers back out isnt it? That happened to us a few months ago, Was absolutely wounded! Theres not much on the market now so we're not too put out.

 

[JoeBloggs]

I’ve never heard of a leasehold house before this. Please someone educate me.
Just to add if this is the case do your homework and find out who owns the freehold.

It’s relatively uncommon but does happen. New builds generally.

 

[Mrs McCarthy]

This is interesting. People like to blame it all on BTL, but if people had an option of investing their money elsewhere, we wouldn’t have the same problem with BTL. Also can’t believe that there are only half a million second homes in the U.K. That doesn’t seem to count in the “holiday let” loophole, where as along as you let the house for 183 days a year, you are a small business rather than a second home owner.
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[Book]

The problem is that this extension is going to hit small landlords rather than big ones. We know a couple that only have two BTL. With one of them everything is fine, but the other is not. They were trying to evict them from February because they were not paying rent before Covid, and now they didn’t get any money from it from last November or something like that. And they still need to pay the mortgage.
My partner’s aunt and uncle are also “landlords”. His uncle’s mum has dementia, so she is in a nursing home and they use the rent on her house to top up the payments for the nursing home. Even with that and her pension they still need touse her lifetime savings. Their tenants are not paying their rent either because of COVID, but they live on the same street and frequently see delivery drivers with big parcels from Amazon, etc. They are now draining their own savings to pay for her nursing home, and yet they cannot evict either!
The majority of landlords in this country are just ordinary people with a small number of properties, not moguls with 100s of houses.
Why are these people meant to suffer when some tenants chose not to pay rent and yet they cannot be evicted?

How many landlords and tenants are there in the UK? | Letting Agents | HomeLet

As the UK's PRS continues to grow in size, HomeLet summarises the figures which indicate just how many landlords and tenants there now are.

homelet.co.uk

At the end of the day, if you don’t pay your mortgage, the bank can kick you out and repossess. But the landlord can’t, because it seems cruel? It isn’t. And a lot of tenants treat the rental properties so badly that at best you need a professional clean after they leave, at worst redecoration!

Don’t understand this at all. For tenants claiming Universal Credit etc, are they not still receiving money from to pay their rent with? If why is rent not being paid? Is there not a rule as to who must continue to pay rent? As in if your income had not been affected in any way why the hell are your bills in particular rent, not being paid anyway? Seriously maybe I’ve missed something on the rules of this one??

 

[Yel]

Yes but over Christmas and new year there is a shut down for several weeks where things grind to a halt that you don't have in the summer. Plus there might be a rush of people trying to get it through as March approaches.

So while it's still possible to go from an offer accepted to completing before the end of March, it's also pretty likely it won't go through in that time.

Not that it matters as the stamp duty will be extended