Tag Archives: facebook
Number of British homes worth £1 million or more up 14% since beginning of year
The number of home owners in Britain whose property is worth £1 million or more has increased by 75,796 or 14% since January, according to the latest research. This 14% rise over the past year takes the total number of British so called property millionaires to 622,939, and means that 2.2% of all home owners have a property worth £1 million or more, up 1.9% over the past year. Of these million pound home some 82% are situated in London and the South East, a breakdown of the data from property website Zoopla shows. But Wales has the fewest and the number in Scotland have fallen by 4.5%. London, long the nation’s property powerhouse, has once again dominated the property millionaire league, with well over half (61%) of Britain’s million-pound piles located in the capital. In total, 380,337 homes in the city are now above the million-pound threshold, marking a 33,871 – or 10% increase – since the start of the year. Within London the boroughs with the highest number of property millionaires are notoriously expensive areas such as Westminster with 51,607 and Kensington and Chelsea with 44,972 but they have seen the smallest rise in £1 million plus properties of any borough over the past year, up just 0.9% and 0.6% respectively. Meanwhile, the boroughs that experienced the greatest increases of over 55% are within the top 10 lowest average priced boroughs in London including Barking and Dagenham, Newham, Redbridge and Waltham Forest, Outside of London, the East of England and Yorkshire and the Humber saw the largest increases of million pound properties, up 28% and 24% respectively since January. At the other end of the spectrum, Wales has the fewest million pound properties in Britain with only 1,404 in total despite, an 11% rise since January. Scotland was the only country to see a decrease in number of million pound homes in 2015, falling 4.5% to below 9,000 since the start of the year. ‘It's interesting to see that areas such as the East of England and Yorkshire have seen bigger percentage rises in the numbers of property millionaires over the last 12 months compared with the south which typically dominates each year,’ said Lawrence Hall of Zoopla. ‘However the number of properties valued at more than £1 million in the south still outweigh the rest of Britain boosted by wealthy hotspots such as Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster,’ he pointed out. ‘With an improving economy and the ongoing lack of housing supply, this continues to put upward pressure on house prices at all levels of the market and has nudged a whole new raft of properties over the £1 million mark. A price tag that was once the exclusive preserve of stately homes or massive mansions is now an increasingly common label for more modest houses, particularly in London,’ he added. Continue reading
House and rent prices set to soar in the UK, outlook report suggests
House prices in the UK are set to soar by 50% and rental prices by over a quarter by 20025, according to an outlook report from two key real estate organisations. At the same time the number of households renting is set to rise by 9% while home ownership will fall by 7%, says the analysis from the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) and the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA). Other predictions for the next decade included in the report are that buying a house will continue to get further out of reach for many and drastic action is needed to fix what it calls ‘a broken housing market’. With the average house price currently around £280,000, the ARLA and NAEA Housing 2025 report, compiled with CEBR, predicts house prices will reach an average price of £419,000. It’s even worse news for those living in London where house prices are expected to nearly double in the next decade, rising from £515,000 to £931,000. For those planning to enter the rental market in the next few years, rents are predicted to increase by 27% from a current UK average of £134 per week to £171 in 2025. Again, those living in London will be worse off as they’ll need to pay 34% extra in rent per week by 2025, an increase from the current average of £234, up to £314. Lower home ownership rates amongst the working age population and the ageing of the baby boom generation will continue to drive a decline in the proportion of UK households that own their own home, the report also suggest. Currently around 62% of the working population owns their own home and that could fall to 55% in the next decade. The report says that a declining home ownership rate will boost demand for rental properties, and drive house prices up. The Housing 2025 report also predicts the proportion of private renters in the UK will increase from 20% of households in 2015, to nearly 29% by 2025. ‘Buying and renting a home is a giant step, and is out of reach for many. Rent costs are already growing at a rate that people are struggling to keep up with, and they’re due to become even less sustainable over the next decade, particularly when the new landlord tax sets in, which will put off many would be landlords from entering the market,’ said David Cox, ARLA managing director. ‘If we’re to see the property market lifted out of its current state, we need to help the rental market from top down as well as bottom up, ensuring landlords are not penalised for their choice of income, and they can in turn give tenants the best possible price and service they deserve,’ he added. According to Mark Hayward, NAEA managing director, ongoing house price inflation, combined with low wage inflation, tighter lending restrictions and… Continue reading
Bling could be back in Dubai property market
Some of the bling that once characterised the Dubai real estate market is set to return with celebrities seeking to build a new breed of luxury villas and over 50 shelved projects being resurrected. From the ordinary buyer and seller perspective some 51 real estate projects valued at AED12 billion are being revived with government backed funding initiatives which means that developers registered with the Dubai Land Department can get building again. Some 12 projects worth AED2 billion are underway and along with others set for starts in 2016 the initiative will see developers like Emaar Properties, Al Wasl and ICD-Brookfield working on projects. To get the funding the projects need to have adequate infrastructure planned or already in place, a properly managed escrow trust account for off plan sales under Dubai real estate law, a technical report showing that at least 60% of the construction is completed and at least 60% of the project has been sold. Meanwhile, the famous Palm Jumeirah is set to be rejuvenated with reports that leading celebrities and wealthy individuals are looking to build luxury villas on the manmade island. This could see a series of lavish Los Angeles style super villas being built, according to property agent Anne Ogilvie, Palm luxury sales specialist at Luxhabitat. She believes that wealthy investors are set to return to Dubai. ‘These end users look to buy plots on the remaining unbuilt fronds in order to build super villas, akin to those in California or Miami. We expect a sizeable number of them to build and then introduce them to the secondary market,’ she said. However, there are a number of issues associated with development on Palm Jumeirah. Some owners are not happy that fees for extensions to their existing villas have increased by 233%. Under the terms and conditions laid out in developer Nakheel’s Guidelines and Procedures for Villa Extension Applications, residents are required to pay an application fee as part of the approval process before they can start construction. According to property experts this means that for an extension of 1,000 square foot an owner would end up paying over $100,000 to Nakheel but on Palm Jumeirah the fee for a 1,000 square foot extension could be over half a million dollars. Continue reading
