Real Estate Blog

Have you ever seen a UK house agent in action? If not in the live world, maybe you’ve seen one in a film? No? - Well, don’t worry because we will tell you all about them. House sellers or vendors or even real estate agents are a desperate lot, trying their best to make the house appear as the best house in the world to the prospective buyers. Often they do something wrong in a frantic, hurried move and the buyer lets the house go, even if he had every intention of sealing the deal right there and then. That’s why sometimes you will see brilliant deals on homes for sale.

The first thing that a house seller needs to know that the buyer might seem on the surface to be extremely circumspect, yet the very reason that he is there is because he found something unique in the house and it grabbed his attention. This situation has a parallel in the case where a girl agrees to go on a date with a guy - there was something about the guy which attracted her to him, which is why she said yes in the first place. Just as the guy draws solace from that fact and reassures himself, so should the seller when confronted with an impassive buyer.

Another important factor towards clinching a good deal, which goes without saying, is the amount of homework done before hand. You should know everything about every nook and cranny of the house, lest the buyer asks you a question as his roving eye falls on something unfamiliar. In the event that he does ask, you should be able to rattle off answers without batting an eye. Of course, another piece of homework which always comes in handy is learning all that you can about the prospective buyer - if you can figure out what he wants there should be no problem in getting him to buy. Provided you have no information beforehand, you should keep an eye out. An observant seller watches closely what the customer is doing, who he is with and what he is looking for, and soon the vendor has him eating out of his hand.

If you’re looking to sell the house - make sure you keep an eye out for every detail, such as fresh flowers in that tiny vase in the hall. It is these little things which go a long way towards making a sale. If all of that doesn’t work, take a leaf out of other vendors’ books and club the sale with a scheme so that the customers get lured into buying the house.

With the property market in the UK on the downslide, there are not too many takers for buying new property at the moment. What has become more prevalent is the concept of renting a house - which in most cases translates to renting an apartment or flat. It is not often that you find a bungalow being rented out. So now we have people out looking to rent a home and at a reasonable price at that. There are a few key issues to keep in mind while out looking for homes to rent.

It takes no genius to realise that if it’s a flat being rented, then there are bound to be other tenants in close proximity. Thus, the first thing to cross-check is the society in which you are looking to stay - if the people in the flat are helpful, do they have any rules which might inconvenience you (or your room mates if you have any) and also if you are extremely considerate, if there’s any habit of yours that you think your neighbours might take exception to.

The next thing to look at is if the available infrastructure matches your expectations, whether high or low. The fact is you’re going to live there for a good amount of time and if you don’t have all the required structural support, you might as well not rent the place. This also includes the number of rooms, their dimensions and furniture (if provided by the landlord), etc.

You have to also consider the availability of required resources - if the supply of running water and electricity suits your requirements or not. The location of the house also plays a vital part. It should obviously be close to your work place, but also should be at a reasonable distance from the nearest shopping centre, the groceries store and the like. Connectivity to other parts of town is also a crucial factor to be considered.

Once you have looked at all these factors, the next thing you need to do is talk to your landlord and find out more about the house. There could be some nuances of the house which seem hidden to you, but the landlord (or landlady for that matter) would have a very good idea of each and every part of the house. It always helps to be pre-informed.

Well, that is about all you require in order to rent a house. If all goes well, you might just enjoy yourself so much that you would probably start negotiating a price towards buying the house soon.

‘Convenient for the airport….. earplugs included in price’

‘Picturesque setting, self-cleaning windows….minor rising damp problem’

‘You’ll never see the neighbours…‘cos they’re in prison!’

‘For those who live life on the edge….with deep sunken bath’

‘Cracking buy…… air conditioned throughout’

‘Environmentally designed……by a hurricane’

‘Look out of your window and enjoy a nice long smoke’

‘Top floor apartment for rent, former home of Sir Edmund Hilary’

‘Ideally suit old woman with large family’

‘Traditional two bed council house….in England by the way.’

There are many reasons and motives for buying a house in the UK and below we will try and list a few that we feel are significant.

First up there is the potential sense of fulfilment and belonging that comes with the ownership of your own home. This in turn leads on the very relevant fact that you are able to make changes to, or decorate, your own house on a whim. You are not limited to making any alterations if you so wished as you would if you were renting a property.

By purchasing a house, especially when you are of a younger age(twenties or early thirties), you are more-or-less in the position of avoiding paying any ‘rent’ when you retire as you would have paid off your mortgage by then. Basically, by buying a house, apart from the obvious reason of it being a great investment, means you are also in some respects, saving for your pension. You won’t actually be receiving any money but you would potentially be saving on sky-high rent payments in the years ahead.

Another great reason is capital gains because the value of your house is very likely to increase over the course of time. In recent years, house values have steadily increased more than the actual rate of inflation so it has proven to be a better investment than the stock market. Obviously there is no guarantee that this will continue in the future but the long term housing market is usually seen as having great potential for equity gains.

Sometimes, if you find yourself short of cash, owning a house lets you use its value to secure a loan. It also gives you the opportunity to avail of a better interest rate because there is less of a risk associated with loans secured on your house. Quite a few owners like the prospect of being able to remortgage their house to withdraw equity from its value. This in itself is more financially attractive than taking out other types of loan.

Further motivation, if any were needed, is that actual mortgage interest payments tend to reduce in value as time goes by, whereas rent prices normally increase with the rate of inflation. Real mortgage payments should adjust with a change in the base rate, but presuming interest rates remain stable then mortgage payments will stay the same because they won’t rise with the rate of inflation. Basically, in the latter stages of your mortgage term, the payments will really account for a much smaller percentage of your income. If you want to ride on the wave of property growth, then look at property for sale in Norfolk

Right up until a few years ago, the market for different financial investment products in the UK, such as pension schemes, ISA’s and stock market investment was a much simpler place than it is today.

Land and property investment were still largely in the sphere of estate agents, land owners and house builders, making it effectively a mystery to your average person trying to take a look at land investment opportunities. Similarly, buying to let and consequently the buy to let mortgage products that were associated with this particular market were only really starting to get off ground.

Whilst independent financial advisors were well able to offer advice on a wide variety of what were considered the conventional financial products of the day, land and property investment were viewed as ‘alternative investments’. Only a few advisors were able to offer a service that enabled investors to buy property. Additionally, both land and property investment had further barriers to entry that at the time made them largely unsuitable for your average investor. Trying to locating and purchase suitable land and property was intimidating as you required an extensive capital outlay before even considering getting involved in either market. For locating property, try looking at property for sale in Kings Lynn and . In terms of an initial outlay, property was always considered costly and land was, by and large, sold in quite hefty acreages. This in turn had the effect of putting the price well beyond the reach of most investors. There was also the problem of land being considerably difficult to locate, with only a few pieces offered for sale in the public domain.

When investing in property, there are quite a few advantages over the more usual types of investment, a few of which it shares with land investment. But it is important to remember that when investing in property it is very important to do it for the right reasons.

Property investment is most probably the biggest financially made decision and commitment that any particular person is ever likely to take on during their life. Nevertheless it most probably is one of the most gratifying investment decisions one can ever wish to make, from both a personal and financial point of view. Because of the scale of the investment decision, actual property investment can also help bring order to a few other aspects of an investor’s life. I recently made a big decision to invest in property for sale in Dereham and property for sale in Thetford. Potential gains could be so large that a well-organized property investment could surmount almost any particular financial insecurity an individual investor could have.

Even though property investment is much more accessible nowadays, if all the statistics that are quoted are to be believed, countless people in the UK still continue to live as tenants in rented accommodation. Even though there are a great many differing opinions on the question of renting accommodation being classes as so-called dead money, it remains clear that by renting accommodation you will not really see any return on the all the money you pay to the letting agents. Renting does provide financial flexibility and protect the tenant from nearly all types of financial liability the property owner has to deal with from time to time but ultimately it is not going to make you any money. Actually, if you consider that rent is regularly increased by landlords, it could ultimately cost you more money.

Certainly property investment doesn’t function in a vacuum, but it is part of the larger economic climate and investors know already that the stock market has not performed too well during the past four years.

We are going to be looking into the UK property market in depth on this blog. The UK property is currently walking a tight rope. With recession looming and vast economic problems like Northern Rock, now could be a risky time to buy or sell. It also could be the best decision you ever make if you can play your cards right.

So if you are buying or selling any time soon - good luck with your purchase/sale!