How long to find a buyer for your Preston Property

I had a Landlord call me the other day. She said she had been following my blog (the Preston Property Market Blog) for a while and wanted to pick my brain on when is the best time of the year to sell a property. Trying to calculate the best time to put your Preston property on the market can often seem something akin to witchcraft and, whilst I would agree that there are particular times of the year that can prove more productive than others, there are plenty of factors that need to be taken into consideration.

 

Even if you are putting your property on the market, you don’t know how long it will take to find a buyer - no crystal ball to help with that one. At the moment, the latest set of figures for all 37 estate agents in Preston, show the average length of time it takes to find a buyer for any Preston property is as follows ..

Detached                     164 days

Semi                            147 days

Terraced                      181 days

Flat                              244 days

Overall average          182 days

If we roll the clock back to January 2016, the overall average time it took to find a buyer (again using data from all of the 37 Preston Estate Agents) was 215 days.

So, on the face of it, things have vastly improved over the last six months or so. Well, when I looked at the data going back to 2009, and every Spring since then, the average length of time it takes to sell a property drops between January and the Summer months, for it to rise on the run up to Christmas. For example ..

 

Winter 2009 - 240 days          Summer 2009  - 212 days

 

and in more recent times …

 Winter 2013 - 213 days          Summer 2013  - 195 days

Winter 2014 - 210 days          Summer 2014  - 183 days

Winter 2015 - 211 days          Summer 2015  - 181 days

          

Coming back to the present, even if you placed your property on the market today in Preston, if it takes you on average twenty six weeks to find a buyer, then you can expect solicitors and the chain to take an additional eight and twelve weeks after that, before you move. It comes down to personal choice as to when you place your property on the market.

There are times of the year when it's better to sell, and times when waiting a little longer can pay off in the long run. In a nutshell, I would say this is the way of the seasons ..

EN THE MARKET?

Spring: Customarily there are more house-buyers as the Daffodils show themselves

Summer: Sellers may miss out on house-buyers being on holiday

Autumn: The enthusiasm for buying homes returns

Winter: Interest diminishes as festive period looms 

What this means to buyers and landlord investors is that they often pick up a bargain in later months of the year, as there is less competition from owner occupiers. So, whilst there are better months to achieve a quicker sale, the only piece of advice I can give to every home  owner and landlord in Preston, is do the right thing for yourself, do your homework and buy (and sell) with both your head as well as your heart 

For more thoughts on the Preston Property Market – visit the Preston Property Market Blog www.prestonproperty.blogspot.co.uk

 

Mark Walsh

07872647902

 

55.2% of Preston Tenants are White Collar Middle Class

                            

With Preston youngsters not able to buy their own property, my research would suggests the progressively important role the private rented sector has been playing in housing people in need of a roof over their head, especially at a time of increasing affordability problems for first time buyers and growing difficulties faced by social housing providers (local authorities and housing associations) in their ability to secure funding from Westminster and then compete against the likes of the Wainehomes and David Wilson’s of this world to buy highly priced building land. Renting isn’t like it was in the 1960’s and 70’s, where tenants couldn’t wait to leave their rack-rent landlords, charging sky-high rents for properties with Second World War wood chip wallpaper, no central heating and drafty windows.
Since 1997 with the introduction of buy to let mortgages and a new breed of Preston landlord, the private rented sector in Preston has offered increasingly high quality accommodation for younger Preston households. So whilst I knew in my own mind that the type and class of tenant has improved over the last 20 years, I had nothing to back that up ... until now.
According to some detailed statistics from Durham University just released, for the Preston City Council area, the current situation regarding social status of tenants shows some very interesting points. Using the well known Demographic ABC1 grade classifications which refers to the social grade definitions. Of the 16,543 tenants who live in a private rented property in the Preston City Council area, 12.71% (or 2,102) of those tenants are classified in the AB category (AB Category being Higher and intermediate managerial / administrative / professional occupations), compared to 21.15% owner occupiers who own their property without a mortgage or 2.16% who rent their property from the local authority.
Fascinating don’t you think? Looking at the C1’s (C1’s being the Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial / administrative / professional occupations), of the already mentioned 16,543 tenants in the area, an impressive 7,044 of them are considered to be in the C1 category (or 42.58%). Again, when compared with the owner occupiers who own their property without a mortgage, that figure stands at 29.36% and 13.14% who rent their property from the local authority.
So, if we use the conventional measurements recorded by the white-collar "ABC1" i.e. middle class …. This means 55.29% of tenants are considered middle class in Preston I could go through all of the social categories through to ‘E’, but I humbly don’t want to bore you with too many numbers. The fact is that private tenants are moving up the social ladder and whilst back in the 1960’s and 70’s, the private rented sector in Preston (and the rest of the UK) has customarily been viewed as a temporary tenure for 20 somethings before they bought a property, the increase in renting in Preston, which I have talked about many times in the Preston Property Market Blog may be a reflection of increasing difficulty for this group in accessing other tenures, but may also be a reflection that people nowadays choose to rent long term instead?
Preston Landlords need to be aware that tenants now demand more from their properties, the agent and their landlord and whilst affordability for first-time buyers and tighter controls on lending may mean that potential first-time buyers are in the private rented sector for longer, they will still pay ‘top dollar’ rent for a ‘top dollar’ property. For more articles like this ...please visit the Preston Property Market Blog www.prestonproperty.blogspot.co.uk 

Mark Walsh
07872647902

17.41M BRITISH VOTERS VOTED TO LEAVE THE EU – WHAT NOW FOR THE 4.3M BRITISH LANDLORDS AND 16.78M HOMEOWNERS?

It was 5.50am as I started to type this article. David Dimbleby had just announced the UK will be leaving the EU as the final votes are counted. As most of the polls suggested a Remain Vote, it came as a surprise to most people, including the City. The Pound had dropped 6% this morning after the City Whiz kids got their predictions wrong and MP’s from the Remain camp are using words like “challenging times ahead”.

.. and now the vote has been made .. what next for the 16.78m British homeowners especially the 8.69m of those British homeowners with a mortgage?

The Chancellor in the campaign suggested property prices would drop by 18%. Using Treasury estimates, their method of calculating this was tenuous at best, but focused around the abrupt and hasty increase in UK interest rates, which in turn would raise the cost of mortgages, and therefore lower demand for property, causing a drop in property prices.… and I would say, yes .. that will probably happen.

British Property Values

British property values will probably drop in the coming 12 to 18 months – but by 18% – I am sorry I find that a little pessimistic and believe that figure was rhetoric to get homeowners and landlords to vote in a particular way. But the UK property market is quite a monster.

Since the last In/Out EU Referendum in June 1975, property values in Britiain have risen by 1750.93%
(That isn’t a typo) and whilst property prices did drop nationally by 18.7% between the peak of 2007 and bottom of the market in 2009, when one compares property values today in the country, compared to that all-time high of 2007, (the period before the financial crisis of the Credit Crunch of 2008/9) .. they are still up 10.14% higher.

Another Credit Crunch?

And so, notwithstanding the Credit Crunch, the worst global economic outlook since the 1930s and the recession it brought us, a matter of a few years later, the Government were panicking in 2012/3/4 that the housing market was a runaway train.

Now the same Credit Crunch doom-mongers and Sooth-Sayers that predicted soup kitchens in 2008/9 are predicting Brexit meltdown. Bad news sells newspapers. Stock markets may rise, stock markets may fall, yet the British public continued to buy property in 2009/10 and beyond. Aspiring first time buyers and buy to let landlords dusted themselves down, took a deep breath and carried on buying… because us Brit’s love our Bricks and Mortar .. we need a roof over our head.

However, as mentioned previously, if the value of the pound drops, in the past UK Interest Rates have risen to reverse that drop. However, whilst a cheaper pound will make your pint of Sangria a little more expensive on your Spanish holiday this year and make your brand new BMW pricer .. it will make British export cheaper! Which is great for the economy.

Interest rates

… and what of interest rates? Since 2009, interest rates have been at 0.5% and lots of people have become accustomed to those sorts of levels. So what if interest rates rise .. end of the world? Interest rates in the 1986/88 property boom were on average 9.25%, the 1990’s they were on average around 6.5% and uber-boom years (when UK property values were rising by 20% a year for three or four straight years across the UK) .. 4.5%. Many of you reading this who are in their 50’s and older will remember interest rates at 15%.

But I suspect interest rates won’t rise that much anyway, as Mark Carney (Chief of the Bank Of England) knows, raising interest rates causes deflation – which is the last thing the British economy needs at the moment. In fact they have been printing money (aka Quantitative Easing) for the last few years (which causes inflation) to the tune of £375bn a month. A bit of inflation because the pound has slipped on the money markets (not too much mind you) might be a good thing?

.. because whilst property values might drop in the country, they will bounce back. It’s only a paper loss.. because it only becomes real if you sell. And if you have to sell, again as most people move up market when they sell, whilst your property might have dropped by 5% or 10%, the one you want to buy would have dropped by the same 5% to 10% .. and here is the best part – (and work your sums out) you would actually be better off because the more expensive property you would be purchasing would have come down in value (in actual pound notes) than the one you are selling.

The British landlords of the 4.3m British buy to let properties have nothing to fear neither, nor do the 10.11m tenants living in their properties.

Buy to let is a long term investment. I think there might even be some buy to let bargains in the coming months as some people, irrespective of evidence, panic. Even if we pull up the drawbridge at Dover and immigration stopped today, the British population will still increase at a rate that will exceed the current property building level. Britain is building 139,600 properties a year, but needs according to the eminent ‘Barker Review of Housing Supply Report’, the country needs to build about 250,000 properties a year to even stand still, and as the the birth rate is increasing, the population is living longer and just under a quarter of all UK households now are occupied by a single person demand is only going up whilst supply is stifled. Greater demand than supply equals higher prices. That is definitely a fact.

So, what will happen next?

Well, there are many challenges ahead. The country has spoken and we are now in unchartered territory – but we have been through a couple of World Wars, an Oil Crisis, Black Monday, Black Wednesday, 15% interest rates and a Credit Crunch … and we survived!

And the value of British property? It might have a short term wobble… but don’t panic because in the long term -it’s safe as houses anyway.

Just my thoughts

Mark Walsh

07872647902