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Some 75% of homes in some parts of the country are having their valuations reduced by as much as 20% as lenders become increasingly fearful of a sharp fall in house prices. The mortgage broker Private Finance said: "We have started seeing highly significant down-valuations despite increasing asking prices. It is quite possibly the case that valuers are being told by lenders to be cautious." Mortgage broker Magni Finance added: "In the last couple of months, 75% of our remortgage clients have had down valuations of around 10%. Normally I'd expect less than half to be down-valued and those valuations to certainly be less than 10%.” Arnold & Baldwin chartered surveyors said: "It is quite a bullish market. Estate agents are inflating prices trying to outbid one another.”
The Sunday Times (18/10/2020)
The Telegraph reports that up to 200,000 people risk missing out on stamp duty savings because of backlogs in the property market, with people agreeing a sale by next week said to only have a 50% chance of benefitting from the stamp duty holiday rolled out amid the coronavirus crisis. According to Centre for Economics and Business Research analysis, the tax break has boosted transactions by 6%. With the relief set to end on March 31st there are calls for an extension, with housebuilders Barratt andRedrow say an extension will help avoid a slump in sales.
The Daily Telegraph (16/10/2020)
The six-bedroom house where Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast was filmed between 1992 and 2002 is for sale on Rightmove. The property on Dace Road in Stratford, near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, is on the market at an asking price of £5.7m.
The Independent (20/10/2020) Daily Mail (20/10/2020)
Developer Mount Anvil has unveiled the latest phase of Royal Eden Docks in E16, just around the river bend from Canary Wharf, sitting adjacent to the water’s edge. The Wellspring is a 796-home brick-clad development designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill that “incorporates nature in its architecture”, with communal gardens, outdoor exercise areas and planted rooftops, one with a running track and “reflexology walkway”. Healthy lifestyles are being promoted by green transport options including 1,000 cycle storage spaces, electric car charging points and car club membership.
Prices begin at £357,000.
Evening Standard (12/10/2020)
House prices staged a strong recovery in the third quarter, as lockdown restrictions eased. Prices rose 3.3% in the three months to September, according to the Halifax Property Index, the strongest increase recorded since the end of 2006. On an annual basis prices were 5.5% higher, the sharpest rate of inflation since the final quarter of 2016. The housing market has been buoyed by government interventions such as the stamp duty holiday introduced over the summer. Paul Smith, economics director at IHS, suggested the resurgence in prices was also due to “strong demand driven by a desire for more space – either as a reaction of the lockdown or the structural economic effects of increasing home working”.
City AM (12/10/2020)
Property transactions are being cast into doubt as surveyors claim homes are being overvalued in an uncertain market, the Telegraph reports. Surveyors are valuing homes at significantly less than the agreed sales price, known as a down valuation, which means mortgage lenders asking for a much larger deposit. This then forces buyers to come up with additional funds or risk their purchases falling apart. Britain is in the midst of a property market boom but there is widespread concern that prices will fall when the tax break ends in April. Experts said this has led to hundreds of cases where surveyors have valued properties at less than the buyer and seller have agreed. Down-valuations are most prevalent in areas where the highest price rises are occurring.
The Daily Telegraph (15/10/2020)