I was thinking of selling my houserecently and so I invited some local estate agents to value my property. I had thought of selling back in 2008 and had had a couple of valuations then, so I was able to compare charges.

What I want to know is.... how onearth estate agents can charge so much for properties that no longer hold thesame value??  I was mortified when they told me what their fees were, witha straight face too!! Both had flat fees, unless you wanted multiple agency(about which I shall comment another time) of 1800 plus VAT and the other was2500 plus VAT.  This on a property they valued at 75,000 to 80,000 and80,000 to 85,000 respectively.  Where do they get their front?  Oneof them wasn't even going to advertise the property on Rightmove. 

From memory back in 2008 theircharges would have been approx 1500 plus VAT and in those days theproperty could have sold for anything from 89,000 up to 95,000.  Sucha rip off!!

Going to try out UKhousing.com and see if I can save a bundle.

Are house price rises a good thing?

Over the past few weeks there have been a number of positiveindicators that the housing marketing is staging a recovery, or at the veryleast prices have stopped falling.

This may come as some as welcome news for the bewildered Britishbuilding sector and the countless pig like estate agents and greedy home ownerswho are dying to go back to the price rise bubble of the past 10 years.  However is this what we need in the UK.  Should out economy be so dependent on the residentialconstruction industry?

The resultsof the 2008 ASHE show that median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UKgrew by 4.6 per cent in the year to April 2008 to reach £479. Median earningsof full-time male employees was £521 per week in April 2008; for women themedian was £412.

It was the availability of cheap credit and lacks controlsof many of our financial institutions that got us into this mess.  This resulted in the average house price risingto 180,000 at its peak, whilst the average income roughly tracked retailinflation at a steady 2-5% pa over the last ten years.

"As a society we need to decide that if we want to live in a four bedroom house with a x5 parked on the drive it should be a question of how much money i can earn, not how much credit I can access." 

The government of the day seemed unwilling to say in publicwhat many of us industry insiders knew which was this housing bubble is unsustainable.  Instead what we got were ever more ridiculousschemes being announced to help first time buyer got on to the housing ladderand the banks lining up to oblige with ever more risky lending practise.

But enough of the past..

Looking to the future do we want house prices to rise?  Contrary to the current evidence, we at www.UKhousing.compredict that the worst in not yet over, and that government has constructed an artificialstabilising mechanism which has successfully halted the downward spiral.  If anyone is old enough to remember blackWednesday you'll now that governments can not buck the market, and that whenthe housing market supports are removed we will see an accelerated increase inrepossession.

What do you think?

Question...I am already using an Estate Agent, can I still attempt sell my house privately?

The answer is 'maybe'...It depends on what contract you signed with your agent.

If you are already with an estate agent you will have one of the following types of contract between the estate agent and yourself:

1. 'Sole selling / letting'
Sole selling / letting means your estate agent is the only one with the right to sell or let your house. Even if you find a buyer or tenant yourself, you'll still have to pay the agent!

2. 'Sole agency'
'Sole agency' also means the estate agent is the only one with the right to sell or let your house but if you find a buyer or tenant yourself, you will not have to pay the agent.

3. 'Multi agency'
'Multi agency' means that you can choose several estate agents to market your house but you will only have to pay commission to the one who sells or lets it

4. 'Ready, willing and able purchaser'
'Ready, willing and able purchaser' is a contract. If the estate agent finds you a buyer and you later withdraw from the sale, you'll still have to pay them.

As we are not an estate agent and your contract is either 2,3 or 4 then you can still use our services and sell or let your properties privately.

Note: Check your contract is not for Sole Selling rights.
Under Sole Selling Rights, your agent can claim commission even if you sell the property. Hopefully your contract is for Sole Agency.

Repetition of the now oh so tired news about the UK Housing Market Crash. After reading countless stories, news articles, blogs, comments and email campaigns about how generally unpleasant things are right now, I thought it best to look at the bright side of things.

The main reason for this was an article I found on the Times Online about...yes...the UK Housing Market being close to Collapse! Yet another one to possible glance over and read things I already know. Analysts describing the current conditions as a "House of Cards" due to reckless mortgage lending, fraud and the over-building of city centre flats etc etc etc. Nothing new there at all. As I read on a little further there were observations on action taken against two mortgage brokers for falsely submitting information about clients in order to get a mortgage. Also quoted in the article was an analyst from the Financial Services Authority to advise shareholders in house building companies to get their money out and "head for the exit" due to the impending market being vulnerable to a crash.  

Nothing really new here and it didn't make any new insights or theories. Then something struck me, this wasn't retrospective at all. In fact it read like a future warning. How can this be an article worth publishing? For some reason, I didn't notice the published date...February 2008! Before the real crash happened of the summer and when everything really started to hit the fan. What was also quite striking were the comments left by readers at the time. One in particular saying, "A complete load of rubbish. What does this analyst know about housing?" Clearly quite a lot and clearly someone who had the foresight to warn people of what was to come. There was the answer to everything right there, stop taking such huge risks.  

As every successful business owner will tell you, risk is what makes you successful. Of course but is there such a thing as a calculated risk? If people were warning of the impending crash and the mortgage lenders continued on regardless then wasn't this inevitable? What left me feeling most optimistic was that if enough people can have the knowledge of how markets will behave and the banks took heed of this then perhaps we would be able to maintain the markets in the future? Sometimes we need to really lose everything before we can see what we had in the first place. Where some things are totally out of our control what we really should be paying attention to is how to maintain markets in the light of possible crash. As most of us are not professional gamblers, sorry stockbrokers, and used to making such risky decisions then perhaps we should be willing to take advice from the right people and be more cautious with our money in the first place?  

Here's a nice illustration of what things currently look like for the market:

Image courtesy of www.marketoracle.co.uk 

On the positive side, when things get so bad - the only way is up. At least we will have the foresight and regulations in place should there be a next time!

Why not take control of your house sale and sell your house privately with UKHousing.com

I don't think estate agents should take the blame for the rise in house prices and subsequent large falls.

They were simply doing their job, which is (was) to get as much commission as possible for themselves and realise the highest value for the property.

I do however blame the banking system and indirectly the government for allowing this house price explosion to occur in the first place, becuase when even first time buyers in the North of England, earning a wage which is above the national average are struggling to get onto the housing ladder, alarm bells should have been ringing loud and clear in number 10!

At this point steps needed to be taken to address the irresponsible lending which was going on and the bank of England given a new mandate.

Call me a cynic, but I looked into buying a shared ownership apartment some months ago and was left with the feeling that the whole scheme was a trick to allow me to buy a fraction of an overpriced property and pay rent of the remaining portion. 

If the banks would not lend me a mortgage with repayment of 1000 pounds per month, why would they lend me 600, knowing that I still had a further 400 pounds in rent to pay? They shouldn’t right? But this was how shared ownership works. Smoke and mirrors!

As a result of the cheapness of money and the ever more imaginative ways of getting people onto the housing ladder , the UK went property mad, with countless property shows illustrating how even the most inept Neanderthal can make money from property.

Now the party is over and we all have the hangover and collectively as a society we need to adapt.

My thoughts go out to all who, like myself, are caught with negative equity. I console myself by saying that negative equity is not going to be an issue for me until I need to sell, which is not going to be for a while.

Other people are not so lucky as this credit crunch and subsequent fall in property values are leading us ever further into a major economic downturn.

So who do I blame..?

Everyone.

We all got greedy and brought into the myth of money for nothing. We should remember that a house is a home, not a Magic piggy bank.

Sometime in the next few years, house prices will start to rise again, but with fewer estate agents (thanks to this downturn, and ukhousing.com) and financial institutions.