London saw by far the biggest gains, with a 13 per cent rise in prices over the last year, according to Hometrack. Within London, the Land Registry has pegged price rises in the capital’s most expensive borough, Kensington & Chelsea, at a shocking 16.3 per cent. Other high-value boroughs, such as Camden (average price £437,540) and City of Westminster (averag price £494,471) also made big gains.
Very few counties saw prices stay the same or fall. The Isle of Wight, which has seen a virtual freeze in prices recently, had no price movement between January last year and this month. Other counties that stayed the same include Teesside and County Durham; the latter had been experiencing a sort of price surge until last year but seems to have stalled somewhat.
The Home Counties continued to perform well price-wise, with Berkshire showing a 9.3 per cent gain. Also strong were Hertfordshire at 6.5 per cent, Essex at 6.0 per cent, Surrey at 5.3 per cent and Kent at 5.1 per cent. Not the earth-shattering rises these areas saw in between 2001 and 2002 but healthy nonetheless.
London leads, most areas followT he latest figures from the Land Registry show a very strong performance price-wise from the capital, with high-end areas doing exceptionally well. The only London borough that experienced no monthly price movement in December was Bexley, while the 4.1 per cent growth seen in Barking and Dagenham counted among the lowest rises.
Only Greenwich slipped price-wise, with a fall of 0.3 per cent.
Nationally, the Land Registry figures show that the year 2006 ended with a solid rise in prices in England and Wales – indeed, the past year saw a greater pickup in prices than 2005.
Buying abroad gains in popularity
The number of British now owning a property abroad is 800,000 an increase of 45 per cent in just two years, according to recent figures from Mintel. This is set to double in the next few years.
‘We have been aware of the rapidly burgeoning overseas property market,’ says Steve Emmett, Chairman of the Federation of Overseas Property Developers, Agents and Consultants (FOPDAC), who calls attention to the fact that the overseas property scene is a ‘huge unregulated market’.
One country that is consistently popular with British buyers is Spain; the profile of the buyer of Spanish property has changed in recent years, with a growing trend towards younger buyers often in their thirties with families.
The Office of National Statistics says that more than £6 billion has been invested in Spanish property, accounting for 27 per cent of British foreign investment.
Tenant deposit protection unveiled
A new scheme for overseeing the deposits of tenants will be ready this spring. The Tenant Deposit Scheme (TDS), which will come into effect in England and Wales in April, will oversee deposits equating worth £1.2 billion, according to Communities.gov.uk.
The scheme will provide protection to both tenants and landlords entering into assured shorthold tenancy (AST) agreements by offering an independent and regulated means of dispute resolution.
The National Landlords Association (NLA), the sponsors of one of the two insurance schemes, will principally concern landlords and agents not belonging to RICS, ARLA or the NAEA. David Salisbury, chairman of the NLA, hopes the TDS can help to ‘nurture and encourage a professional private-rented sector’.
More landlords, more disputes
The boom in buy-to-let is likely to lead to a growing number of tenant/landlord disputes, according to the government-sponsored Residential Property Tribunal Service (RPTS).
As the number of households installed in buy-to-let properties exceeds one million, and that figure set to rise steadily, the government hopes to reach novice landlords with the message that the RPTS is best placed to adjudicate in the event of a disagreement.
A study by RPTS has found that almost a fifth of landlords have only entered the residential letting sector in the past few years, with almost two-thirds involved for less than a decade. In addition to the growing number of first-time landlords, lack of affordable homes and changing lifestyles have meant that people are renting longer and buying later. At the end of the 1980s, around 40 per cent of 20 to 24 year olds and roughly 66 per cent of 24 to 29 year olds were already owner occupiers; now only 20 per cent and 50 per cent or these age groups respectively purchase.
This is a considerable social change, with many people moving to owner occupation at least a decade later in life than people of their age used to.