BREAKING NEWS – 5 top stories 16/12/2020
95% MORTGAGES LOANS ARE GOING, GOING WELL ALMOST GONE
In what is perceived to be shades of the 2008 stranglehold on high loan to value lending there are now is in December less than a dozen mortgages which only require a 5% deposit. Eleven-months ago the figure was topping out at 400 mortgages to choose from.
This is especially worrying for the first-time buyer mortgage lending sector. In 2019 first time buyers made up over 320,000 of the 1.1M buyers in the year and in 2021, they were predicted to be taking out 306,000 mortgages. But if the brakes are applied, well new homes a favourite staple of new entrants to the housing game may feel a cold draft.
CLADDING MISERY NOT GOING AWAY
Despite the government setting up a £1BN Building safety fund to alleviate the problem caused by change in regulation, post Grenfell, it has now been realised the fund would only resolve the problem on 500 units, a drop in the ocean.
Also the lack of trained persons to actually produce the EWS1 has meant that some homeowners held to ransom in their leasehold homes are likely to be there for five or maybe ten years until the bottleneck of forms and surveys can be cleared.
MARCH 31ST WHAT THEN FOR THE RENTAL SECTOR
Due to Covid-19 tenancies which are problematic in any vertical are now very much on an elongated path, we still have section 8 and section 21 notices, and everything is on a slow go, with more and more landlord’s even looking at mediation as a way of helping things along in some cases.
But all the constructs and temporary measures that are in place now – are due to fall by the wayside at the end of March 2021, less than four months way. So where will the court system and all the stakeholders be then?
PURPLEBRICKS MAKES A PROFIT – AT LAST
Bit of un-news as if an agency can not make profit in the best market since 1998, they are never going to make profit, and as a percentage of turnover is it a worthwhile figure, and what will the final year end EBITDA figure be anything to write home about. Also, look at all of the years of hefty multi-million-pound losses, it will take many years to claw those sums back if ever.
ALL QUIET ON THE COUNTRYWIDE PLC FRONT
With all factions digging in, and trenches being burrowed out, in the no-mans land which is the zone before any action can happen in January, who will be captain of Countrywide come the Spring?
I have a personal interest having worked for Dinosaur Countrywide, when it was the Sabre-toothed tiger of the 1980’s property market, a fearsome beast that enjoyed making profit. I do hope that whoever ends up as guardian of this beast feeds and waters it and brings it back to life, time will tell.
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