Housing Market UK

Evidence how the buy-to-let mortgage marketplace is on its way back to life has surfaced following Paragon, the most significant specialist loan provider before the credit crunch, started offering new loans to landlords for the first time in two years. Paragon, a UK financial firm specialising in the provision of home mortgages to professional landlords, declared its intentions to get back to the buy-to-let market, that it quit due to the downturn in the economy. The buy-to-let mortgage specialist has arranged a £200 million credit to back brand-new mortgage loans together with Australian financial institution Macquarie and is looking to lend £1bn a year. While is this down from the £4 billion a year it was lending prior to the depression, the actual property finance loan marketplace has reduced since then and percentage wise is same amount of share of the market. So this will probably mean that London property auctions will see a surge in business in the next few months.

In its announcement to the stock market, published on September 28th, Paragon declared that the interest in buy to let houses from renters has been strong in the past months and is actually anticipated to either stay the same or perhaps grow. During the last several months the company has been supplying test mortgage loans to professional landlords, who generally own a dozen premises and form the majority of its customers, and observed a strong enough enthusiasm in order to resume large-scale loaning.

The returning of Paragon is broadly welcomed especially given that Lloyds TSB pulled back from the market this month. Paragon’s move comes in the middle of a housing market slowdown, with the the volume of loans accepted for purchasing homes in the UK dropped in August to its lowest for over a 12 months.

You can read more about Paragon’s return here.

I supposed someone thought it was a good idea, and undoubtedly speeding up the selling and buying process when it comes to property is something we all agree on, but HIPS have finally bitten the dust.

Making people have to pay upfront to put their house on the market was never going to be popular. It particularly penalized those people who decided to sell because of financial difficulties or anyone who didn’t have much ready cash who needed to move.

I doubt that many people will moan the passing of Home Information Packs but their legacy hasn’t quite vanished as home owners still have to obtain a Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) before they sell their home. Unlike HIPS you don’t need to have one before you put your house on the market so those with a tight budget will have a little longer to save up and buy one. If you shop around you should be able to get one for under £50.

So has the abolition of HIPS improved the health of the property market? Apparently there has been a rise in the number of sellers on the market. Unfortunately there’s also been a fall in the numbers of buyers around so there’s been no real discernible improvement.

There’s more information on the communities.go.uk website.

For sellers in Scotland things haven’t changed and you’ll still need to commistion a home report. There’s no news of this changing any time soon. More information about home reports can be found on the Scottish Government’s website.

Wondering about what’s happening in your area, or indeed any area of the England, Wales or Scotland, when it comes to the housing market?

The BBC website has a handy little feature that allows you to type in a postcode or select a region to find out what the average house prices are for that area.

It breaks it down as the average cost of a house and then lists the average for detached, semis, terraced and flats. It also tells you how many sales there have been in the area for the period covered. It also gives you the very useful information of the annual and quarterly changes in house prices.

This makes it easy to track exactly what the market is up to in any given area.

Currently the information shown now (July 2010) is using data that was gathered in Jan 2010 to March 2010. To make use of this tool you need to go here.