Blogs of author

British Land, one of Europe's biggest listed property companies, reported full-year results last week and the key takeaway is this: London property prices are still going crazy. The value of the property owned by British Land went up by 12.1% last year, while the value of its office and residential space jumped by 18.8%. British Land said this was due to "the strength of the London market and our actions." British Land's "Cheesegrater" building in the City — proper name the Leadenhall Building — smashed rental records in London last year, with space going for £90 per square foot. British Land

Remember, if you've decided on the property that you want to bid on, and have everything in place in order to attend the auction, then the final piece of advice, in the run-up to the auction, is to keep an eye on the 'guide price' (this is the price listed in the catalogue).

Guide Prices are provided as an indication of each seller's minimum expectation. They are not necessarily figures which a property will sell for and may change at any time prior to the auction. Virtually every property will be offered subject to a Reserve (a figure below which the Auctioneer cannot sell the property during

Why buy property at auction

People buy at auction for lots of reasons. They may want to move quickly or they could be looking for a plot of land to build on, a repossession, or quite simply they want a quick purchase without the risk of gazumping. Also, many buyers looking for investments buy at auction as a catalogue full of properties gives them lots of opportunities to choose from.
Buying a property at auction is both exciting and potentially profitable. It avoids all of the lengthy purchasing procedures that you usually have to endure and the risk of everything falling through at the 11th

The latest Acuitus/IPD Commercial Property Auction Data (cPad) report analyses the £171m of commercial property assets that sold at auction during February and March and illustrates the strength of investor demand. The All-Property sale rate at the first auctions of 2015 was 86% which even surpasses the sale rates achieved in the 2005-2007 boom market.

Although the volume of assets sold in the first auctions of this year was slightly down on the corresponding period last year, the comparative average sale price year-on- year was up to £737,446 - nearly 6% higher than in 2014.

Acuitus

A three-bedroom house in Gosport went under the auctioneer’s hammer for £126,000 last Thursday.

The freehold mid-terrace at 7 Freemantle Road was among 17 lots being sold by regional land and property auctioneers Clive Emson.

Rob Marchant, auctioneer, said: ‘The successful bidder voted with their wallet on general election day. The house requires a programme of improvements, with the selling price reflecting that.’

Also sold was a three-bedroom house at 65 St Michael’s Grove, Fareham. The freehold property, chalked for ‘improvement’, went for £141,000.

Eight bedsits with communal facilities at

• UK landlords expect annual rent growth to slow to 1.7% by next year, down from 3.7% currently
• Finding trustworthy tenants deemed more important to landlords than higher rental yields
• Nearly a quarter (24%) of landlords want to purchase additional rental properties this year
• Three in five landlords (60%) think it is a good time to invest in buy-to-let, up from 54% six months ago
• More than a fifth of landlords (22%) find their buy-to-let mortgage payments cheaper than a year ago

After a recent spurt of rent growth, landlords anticipate that rent rises will taper off over the next

According to a latest report detailed in Money.co.uk first-time buyers need to earn almost £41,000 to afford a home in the UK, while those in London would need to be on £77,000.

Homes are unaffordable for first-time buyers in every single one of the UK’s regions, the study by KPMG shows.

Its economists mapped the average house price for first-time buyers in each of the regions and worked out the required average salary in that area to secure a mortgage with a 10 per cent deposit. In every one the current median average annual wage for potential homeowners fell short of that figure.

Across the

Auction House’s latest blog advises how reforms to pensions should boost auction sales....

We have entered a new, much more flexible pension’s environment thanks to the changes introduced by the coalition government. It means that savers over the age of 55 now have the option of taking some lump sums from their pension pot with a proportion of it being tax free. The pension reforms will be most beneficial to those who have built up a large pension pot and would like to take greater control of that investment; all will benefit with the tax free element being 25% of their pension pot.

Whilst the

Sales of homes worth more than £1 million have plunged by nearly a fifth year-on-year, Land Registry figures show.

Across England and Wales, 851 homes were sold for over £1 million in January, a 19% fall compared with January last year, when 1,049 properties in this bracket were snapped up.

The bulk of transactions involving homes worth more than £1 million were in London, which saw a sharp 23% decline in sales in this bracket compared with a year earlier.

The Land Registry's figures show that house prices in Kensington and Chelsea, where the average property is worth £1.29 million, have shown

A pre-election lull in the property market has hit revenues at estate agent Foxtons, as potential housebuyers and sellers await the results of next week’s poll.

The upmarket chain made revenues of £33.1m between January and March, 3.1% lower than the first quarter of 2014 when the sales market was at its strongest since 2007.

Sales commissions were down nearly 12% at £15.5m while lettings held up with 5.4% growth to £15.9m, and mortgage broking rose 13.5% to £1.6m. Foxtons made adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £8.3m in the quarter.

Nick Budden, the chief