Zoomf Blog - UK Property Blog.

It appears the unthinkable has happened, London house prices fell at their fastest rate in more than two years last month. According to the Land Registry, the London housing market was outperformed by England and Wales as a whole in October, for the first time in ten months. And according to Nationwide, house prices across the whole of the UK have seen the biggest fall in 12 years during November. First time buyers may be getting the break they’ve been waiting for, even if it was reported this week that up front mortgage fees have nearly doubled in two years from an average fee of £441 in November 2005 to an average £827 this month.

But what if you want to rent out office space? It seems you don’t want to be looking in the West End if you’re after a bargain. The price per square foot of top quality offices in the West End have soared by 41.9% since last year, with an average price per square foot now being £159.23. These rising prices have secured the West End the prestigious honour of having ‘The Most Expensive Office Space’ in the world. Unsurprisingly, The City bagged third place.

America is full to the rafters of professional ’stagers’. Rather than being luvvies that go to too many theatrical performances, these people are the type you may want to buddy up with if you’re trying to sell a property. ‘Staging’ is the act of preparing a home for sale, those of you who watch too much Channel 5 may be familiar with the concept as it was used to sell plenty of homes in the House Doctor series. Stagers have a trained eye and can transform your home in a way that appeals to buyers, out go all the photos of your kids on the fridge, in come colour co-ordinated pillows and the smell of baking bread.

The art of staging in the UK is nothing like the commercial empire that it is across the pond, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great companies offering staging services in London. You may want to look into what they’re offering if your home has been on the market a little longer than you expected, or you want to sell up by Christmas, or if you just want to get the best price for you home - and let’s face it, who doesn’t? Stats from the US have shown that professional staging can reduce the time a property spends on the market by half and can fetch prices of 15% more than similar empty properties.

Milc Property Stylists, Poised to Move, About Property Presentation and Home Stagers London are just a few of the companies that you may want to contact, if you check out their websites you will come across some pretty impressive ‘before and after’ shots of various homes.

But what if you don’t want to enlist a professional? Can you do it yourself?

Poised to Move have put together a fantastic document of ten things you can do to help your home sell, with their kind perimission I have reproduced it here for anyone looking for ideas to spruce up their home to clinch a sale.
1. Declutter

Buyers will be looking for more space; they need to see that your property has plenty of room to store their own ‘stuff’. Pack away anything that creates visual clutter – that’s too many ornaments, the collection of fridge magnets, piles of toys and excess pieces of furniture. You’re moving anyway so it makes sense to start packing things away now and create that much-desired feeling of space and calm.

2. De-Personalise

Help a buyer to visualise themselves living in your home by removing any overly personal items such as family photos, children’s drawings, holiday souvenirs and mementos. Family photos are fine in the bedroom but keep them to a tasteful minimum. If you have too many personal items on show a buyer will find it difficult to imagine their own possessions in your home.

3. Kerb Appeal

It’s a fact that many potential buyers will do a ‘drive by’ before deciding to arrange a viewing. Tidy the garden, repaint the front door if necessary, make sure that curtains are symmetrical and windowsills are free of clutter. Add some colourful plants in pots or hanging baskets by the front door. In other words, make your property as inviting and welcoming as possible.

4. Hallways and Entrances

Once you’ve got them through the front door buyers need to instantly feel ‘at home’. Help them literally ‘see’ themselves in your home by placing a mirror in the hallway; this will also help introduce additional light into what is usually the darkest part of the home. Remove all coats, shoes and sports bags from this area – a cluttered hallway can set a buyer into thinking that there isn’t enough storage space in the property.

5. Complete any unfinished DIY jobs

Any unfinished DIY jobs are a red flag to potential buyers as they send a subliminal message that your property could be ‘maintenance heavy’ and will alert them to look out for other outstanding jobs, which they could use against you to negotiate alower price.

6. Clean, clean and clean again

It can’t be stressed enough that a sparkling home always creates a good impression and also that the property is well maintained. Clean all bathrooms and the kitchen until they gleam, clean the windows and make sure that the home smells fresh - dog and smoke odours are big turnoffs for buyers. To create a brighter atmosphere it helps to turn the lights on and have vases of fresh flowers in most rooms.

7. Define the space

If you’ve got 3 bedrooms they must be presented as 3 bedrooms – not 2 bedrooms and a box room. And if you’ve got a lounge and a separate dining area they need to be presented as such (even to the extent of laying the table ready for dinner) and should not be seen a lounge and a kids’ playroom or ironing room. Buyers need to be shown the lifestyle they can lead if they were to move into your property.

8. Redecorate where necessary

It can be a stretch of the imagination to spend time and money on a property that you’re about to leave but a neutrally decorated, well-presented and inviting property has the potential to add thousands to your asking price. Remember, you’re in danger of devaluing your property if you don’t present it to it’s fullest potential.

9. Presentation

If you really want to see your property through the eyes of someone else take photos of all areas of each room and then take a cold hard look at them, it will become obvious what needs to change. Today’s buyers are attracted to clean, bright, clutter-free and spacious environments. Buy a few interiors magazines (Elle Decor, Ideal Home and Living etc are good ones to look at) as they give good examples of what people find attractive today. You’ll also see how good accessorising can enhance the look and feel of a room.

10. Mentally move out

This is perhaps the most important piece of advice we can give. You’ve decided to move so do all you can to help yourself achieve a quick and profitable sale. Remember, living in a property that is for sale is not the same as living in a home you’ve settled in so don’t fret if the presentation of your property is not to your taste –it doesn’t matter, you’re moving out anyway! Present your home to its very best advantage and you can soon look forward to creating your own space again in your brand new home.

This week I was lucky enough to have a quick catch up with the lovely Harvey Edgecombe from Renthusiast. Renthusiast is a great example of a property blog, with plenty of fans in the US as well as on our shores.

So Harvey, in your humble opinion, will the property bubble burst or will prices just keep rising?
It depends on which neighborhood you live in. I think the credit, finance and equity markets will pop, but I think overall property will remain relatively stable.

And what about investment, is property a safe bet?
Yes, certainly it is a sound investment, but I think we have to differentiate between different types of investment, and the risks associated with them for example speculative investments, where people buy off plan properties in anticipation that the property will appreciate by a certain amount within say a year or maybe 6 months, well they might as well be in Vegas or Atlantic City, because gambling is essentially what they’re doing. Nobody can accurately predict the future. There is a science to speculative investing, but it’s more of an art than it is a science.

What do you hate most about landlords?
I hate landlords that don’t pay attention to their tenants!

What one thing would make online property search easier?
Good question … a search engine that can read our minds (ha ha).But seriously I think there are general trends and particular habits that people use when searching for property or when searching for anything. But it may be that we have become accustomed to or have been trained to search in a particular way. Nevertheless the internet is still very young, the www is less that 20 years old and I’m sure somebody will soon re-invent the way search is done on the internet and we will all probably be saying to ourselves ‘why didn’t I think of that’. I read somewhere about a search engine called Hackia, and they seem to be doing some interesting things with regards to natural language search. But I think ultimately Facebook and social networking are now changing the way we use the internet as a communication platform and the way we ’search’ for old friends, business associates .. whoever . Eventually that model will probably spill over into the business world and other aspects of our day to day lives. What interests me with facebook is how many facebook haters there are already, and the service hasn’t been around for that long, already having such an impact. I don’t even think Google had this much hate so soon after they launched, which is interesting.

Would you pay more to live in a property a celebrity had lived in?
Probably not, but I think I would pay more to live in a neighborhood with lots of celebrities.

What’s the best thing and worst thing about your part of London?
I live in Kings Cross, which has a really bad reputation for drugs and prostitution, although there are significant efforts to clean it up, I think it will take a long time for that reputation to go away. So I would say the worst thing about Kings Cross is probably its seedy reputation, I used to be so ashamed of Kings Cross that I would always say ‘Islington’ when people asked me where I lived if I was at a posh dinner party or something. If they tried to get specific I would say ‘Upper Islington’ and most people would assume I meant Upper Street (smile).
Ironically though probably the best thing about Kings Cross is its reputation ’cause for whatever strange reason the seedy reputation is now attracting celebrities and the night life is fantastic! My next door neighbour is a tabloid celebrity, which makes me feel important when I go outside and the see the paparazzi!

Well thanks for that Harvey, it’s been great to hear your musings…but you know you’re going to have to tell us who that next door neighbour of yours is!

During June and July we were inundated with nice keyrings and well rehearsed presentations from shiny new HIP providers, in fact these companies were so new that HIPs weren’t even in force yet. I remember thinking these guys were taking a bit of a gamble, what if HIPs were scrapped all together? There was so much umming and ahhing from the government that at one point it looked like the scheme was not even going to go ahead. But HIPs are here, and they don’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon, so it should be all peachy for home inspectors, non?

Unfortunately not. There now seems to be more inspectors than there are homes to inspect, if you want to make a good living anyway. Ludicrous promises of an endless supply of work and claims that you should expect to earn £65,000 to £100,000 per year have meant that in a couple of months there will be around 15,000 qualified inspectors. People have certainly been sucked in, but as the BBC has reported, where inspectors expected to earn around £100 per home visit, the reality is that they are receiving less than half of that figure.

And as the market is set for a “significant slowdown” in 2008, it looks like these new inspectors will have even less work to do. David Thompson of the Institute of Domestic Energy Assessors said, “It’s quite clear, there are far too many people now qualified to become home inspectors and energy assessors compared to the government’s statistics of what they need.”

Perhaps they should spend some time assessing the efficiency of their own industry, it looks like it’s well needed.