Hi Folks, here we are, another month and another blog and this time, on a different topic completely, the law!

Buying and selling a property can be confusing to say the least and that is before you even get to the conveyancing part.

On 21 December 2017 the Government announced plans to tackle the growing problem of newly built houses sold as leasehold rather than freehold, and to limit ground rents on new lease agreements. Leasehold reform was included in the Law Commission’s Programme of Law Reform with the aim of finding ways to make buying a freehold or extending a lease “easier, faster, fairer and cheaper.”

In The Queen’s Speech 2022 “The Government will be taking forward a comprehensive programme of reform to improve fairness and transparency in the leasehold market. The Law Commission’s work on leasehold reform is now complete and will become law from 31^st May 2022.

There are around 4.6 million leasehold homes in England, according to estimates from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). Long leaseholders buy the right to live in their homes for the term of the lease. Around 68% of these are flats, while 32% are houses. Most flats in the private sector are leasehold (an estimated 93% of owner-occupied flats and 73% of private-rented flats). Leasehold houses are uncommon across England, at around 8% of the stock. There’s evidence indicating that developers had started to sell new-build houses on long lease agreements as this can represent a lucrative future income stream.

Leaseholders report a range of problems, including: high service charges and a lack of transparency over what they are being charged for; freeholders who block attempts by leaseholders to exercise the Right to Manage; excessive administration charges and charges for applications to extend lease agreements or enfranchise; and a lack of knowledge over their rights and obligations.

From the end of May, estate agents and other property businesses must include length of lease, amount of service charge and ground rent and whether the property is in a shared ownership scheme when marketing properties. This information is absolutely essential to buyers finding out from the start whether a property is worth pursuing or not (e.g., is the lease so short they won’t be able to get a mortgage).

What does this information include? Perhaps most significant is that details of tenure of the property (how you own a property) must be disclosed, this includes the following categories:

1. leasehold
2. freehold
3. commonhold

Currently most reputable estate agents and property professionals are in the midst of obtaining the relevant information required to comply with this new legislation, however it is not an easy task as some of the property owners are not even aware of what their exact lease terms mean to them. There are some developments in our area that are indeed freehold but also have a leasehold element, including the cost of maintaining communal outdoor areas or the cost of electric and maintenance of gates in gated communities etc: –

The story here at Cross Keys Estates is no different. We are speaking to vendors and their solicitors to obtain this newly legally required information. The best way is to get a physical copy of the lease, that way we can quote the lease details directly. If a copy of the lease is not immediately available, then maybe either talk to the solicitor that is either doing or committed to doing the conveyancing on the property. Unfortunately, we cannot just take the vendors word for this information anymore as it forms an integral part of the Government’s reform for the housing market.

If you would like a personal chat with me to see if now is the right time for you to sell or rent out your property, please feel free to either give me a call on 01752 500099 or 01752 500018 or pop in to our Stoke office where I or one of my experienced property consultants will be only too happy to see if we can help.

I get asked a lot “What’s going to happen to the housing market?” I guess that a lot of people would expect a property professional to know the answer, however does anyone know exactly what to expect in these turbulent times.

With interest rates predicted to be around 2.5% by the end of the year and inflation currently at 6.2% and rising faster than predicted, the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and many of its oligarchs causing huge distress to the Russian people and putting huge pressure on the cost of oil creating a shortage and associated price increases adding to inflation and causing lots of financial issues for us here in the UK.

As I sit here and write this, I am not too concerned about how houses are selling or the figures that they are currently achieving. Here at Cross Keys Estates, we are still seeing properties going under offer in record speeds and with eye-watering offers. Just this week we have put a property on the market, booked 12 viewings in 2 days and now accepted an offer £20,000 above the asking price in under 5 days since first appearing on the property portals.

“WOWZERS” I hear you say but this is not a one off, in fact, this is happening on many of our properties at the moment. The rush for buyers to climb the next step on the property ladder shows no sign of slowing down, in fact the opposite is happening, people are entering into bidding wars for some of these properties. The exact same thing is also going on with rental properties, we are renting out houses even before they are coming to the market and we also have a growing waiting list of prospective tenants looking for a home.

So going back to the first question, “What do I think is going to happen to the housing market?” In short “I don’t know” but I do have an opinion which is what I will explain to you now. There are a lot of people, especially the younger generation, including many first-time buyers, that have only recently managed to get on the housing ladder. If the financial experts are correct then the increases in living costs, inflation and interest rates on mortgages and loans could prove to be too much for many of these people to keep their finances going.

The last time we saw these signs was in 2007 when financial markets collapsed under the strain of adverse lending and the poor decisions from the banks and other financial institutes, it was at this time that property prices fell between 10 % and some areas even up to 50%.

Now I am not saying that this is what is about to happen, however, here in the UK, we are experiencing one of the highest amounts of borrowing than ever before, mortgages and personal loans have been at the lowest levels of a lifetime and a lot of the younger generation have lived a life on borrowing. If the interest rates rise to above 2% then this level of borrowing will become unstainable and there is no evidence that borrowers have any means to pay the back the money borrowed.

I do think that the rising house prices will level off by the end of the year as will the demand for properties. I do not (at this moment in time) think that the values of these properties are likely to decline. With all of this in mind, now is still a fantastic time to sell your home if you are looking to cash in on any equity that may be in your property.

The demand is high, the values are high and the borrowing costs are still very low. Summer is not very far away and the perfect property right now is any three or four bedroomed houses with good size gardens, preferably with off street parking or a garage.

If you have a property that matches or comes close to this description then please get in touch with Plymouth’s number one (#1) estate and letting agent where we can offer you the best service in Plymouth and the surrounding areas for the best value.

Here we are again folks, thank you for continuing to read my blogs. In this one, I would like to try to educate some of my readers as to what some agents say or claim on their media to make you think that they are the top in their class.

I will not name any companies or websites but I think you will recognise enough of them from what I reveal.​

My first myth buster is the online comparison platforms that claim to have the best estate agent in your area. If you put in your postcode, they will show you which agents are at the top of their game and therefore the best ones in your area should you be looking to sell your property. There are a few of these online platforms and they all work in the same way. The estate agent has to pay (quite a lot) money to go on these platforms. ONLY agents that pay end up being represented on these platforms, not all the agents in your area. If an agent decides that he doesn’t want the added expense of going on one of these platforms in order to keep their cost down for you as a client, they are not represented. How can the online platforms possibly claim then that they have the best estate agent in your area for you if there are a lot of agents that will not pay to go on them?

Next myth to be busted is very similar to the first. There are a few online companies that also say that they have personally checked the estate agents in your area and can now let you know which ones won awards for best service etc; some agents then claim that “they have been independently selected as the best estate agent in their area”, again, where is the evidence to back this up? Who were they judged against? Who were they judged by? How much did they pay to join that scheme? Was this a level playing field with ALL the other agents in their area included? If not, why are they allowed to claim to be the best? Maybe they should rephrase it to say ”We are the best of a small selection of estate agents in this area” but of course this doesn’t quite sell them in the best possible light but at least it would be more honest.

Another myth, those “Easy Move” “Smooth Move” “Assisted Move” schemes that say that they make your moving experience much easier and smoother than if you tried to do it all yourself the traditional way. This simply is not the case. The scheme companies again only use the local estate agents in your area that are prepared to pay them part of their potential fee for selling your house. Again, this does not mean that you will be given the best estate agent in your area just that an agent that is happy to give away 25% or more of their fee to the scheme organisers. Does this mean you get the best agent at the best value for you? I think may be not !! My advice is that if you are looking at buying a new build house, you are in a much stronger position to have sold your property privately first or at least be under offer to a buyer. If you are in this situation you are classed as a proceedable buyer and you will be in a much stronger position to negotiate a more favourable purchase price instead of being held hostage by what is essentially “Part Exchange” companies. Trust me when I say that if you use one of these schemes there are many strings attached that you may not see at first glance.

I recently had a case where a really lovely lady (who is now a good friend of mine) was looking to move, she decided to downsize and went for a new build property. As she was dealing with the developer (and an assisted move company), she was pressurised to use one of the agents that was paying away a proportion of their fee to the scheme operator. After a sale was agreed, below my valuation, the process began. Half way through, the buyer decided to reduce their offer by a substantial amount. This lady felt pulled in all different directions by the scheme operator whose only interest was getting paid by the developer, until in the end, she decided to use her life savings to buy the property outright without using her previous home in the deal, (this is very rare that people have enough funds to do this), thus breaking the chain. I was eventually instructed about three months after this fiasco started and sold her semi-detached property for £60,000 more than she would have got if she had carried on with the assisted house buying scheme.

I will end this blog by saying this, please check that if your agent claims to be the best, ask them if they have had to pay for this privilege? If you are using an assisted move scheme, is your agent paying to be on the list of agents that you have to choose from?​

Remember, GOOD estate agents should never need to buy/pay for an accolade, www.allagents.co.uk is a website that genuine customers leave their honest opinion on agents in your area. Trust others that have been in your position before you believe the HYPE.