Boomtime for luxury UK holiday lets?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ben

According to the owners of Mulberry Cottages... yes. They tell us that 2011saw an increase in European visitors of 10%, and domestic visitors of 12%, with the Germans, Belgians and Dutch the most common Europeans renting their properties.

Sarah Wood, Director of Mulberry Cottages says that “Bookings for 2012 continue to grow strongly with the northern European market share growing by 15% in the first 6 weeks of trading.  Early signs show 2012 to be a very buoyant market”.

Second-home owners, take note.

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted in letting | Tagged , | Comments Off

For sale: French village, guide price £278,000

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ben

For that, you get n-n-n-n-ninteeen buildings, plus/including tennis courts, a swimming pool, stables and a village hall... and what one local has described as a community of "thieves, ravers and squatters" (French ones, mind, so they're probably quite stylish). The village is called Courbefy, and it's 30 miles from Limoges. If you want it, a French village for the price of a Fulham flat, bids are being accepted up until Friday. According to this, so far there haven't been any. If you sit tight, maybe they'll chuck it on ebay.

20120222 Courbefy

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted in _Other | Tagged , | Comments Off

Apologies for technical difficulties

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ben

Long (boring) story - but posts I thought had "posted" hadn't... so, apologies. Everything's working again now.

Posted in About | Comments Off

Wednesday morning linkage – The Olympics effect (on tenants): pay more or move out

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Ben

Pay more, or move out [Metro]
A map of the world's dearest houses features Bournemouth, Plymouth, but no London [Money Week]
Mortgage demand in steep rise [Daily Telegraph]
Alex James - home improvement Geek [Daily Telegraph]

The Rat and Mouse - it's about your house

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted in Linkage | Tagged , | Comments Off

HMO mortgage deals offered at up to 80% LTV

Posted on February 22, 2012 by landlordnews

HMO landlords can borrow up to 80% loan-to-value on new broker-only deals from Kent Reliance.

Deals include two and three year fixed and discounted deals starting at 5.19% for HMOs, student landlords and limited companies.

Kent Reliance is one of just a handful of banks and building societies considering applications from landlords for HMOs.

Platform – the buy to let subsidiary of the Co-op Bank – has trimmed rates on two-year fixed rate buy-to-let mortgages by 0.20%.

Loans are available up to 75% loan to value on the standard range and 65% LTV for ‘premier’ products.

The deals include a free valuation and free legal fees for remortgages.

BM Solutions has also shaved 0.20% from all buy-to-let mortgages – including fixed and tracker loans.

The lender – part of the Lloyds Banking Group – also cut the cost of borrowing by up to 0.30% on selected landlord mortgages earlier this month.

BM Solutions has introduced some new fixed rate products at 75% loan to value, with a fee option of £995 or 0.50% of the amount borrowed.

BM Solutions Phil Rickards, said: “This is our second round of price reductions in as many weeks. By launching some new deals and reducing all rates in the current range, we’re shaking up competition in the buy-to-let market.”

The Mortgage Works (TMW) has released a free affordability app for iPhone and iPad after launching Android and Blackberry versions last November.

The app calculates how much TMW will lend after landlords enter the estimated purchase price rental income on a property in to their smartphone.

Paragon Mortgages revealed one in four applications handled by intermediaries are for buy to let mortgages – up from one in five a year ago, according to the lender’s latest research.

The survey discovered 40% of landlords are taking loans to buy more investment properties, while 30% are remortgaging for better mortgage deals.

Mortgage brokers increased their buy to let business by 4.5% in the final three months of 2011, said the lender.

Posted in news | Comments Off

I lived here … Mike Oldfield

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Planet Property

The Devil’s tunesmith retreated here after the success of Tubular Bells to write that difficult second album…

How do you follow a record that sold millions, stayed in the album charts for five years and was used as the soundtrack for one of  the most iconic films of the decade: The Exorcist?

This was the task facing Mike Oldfield when he moved to The Beacon, on Bradnor Hill near the town of Kington on the Welsh/English borders.

The second album was called Hergest Ridge – the name of a local landmark in these parts. The cover featured Bootleg, an Irish Wolfhound from Richard Branson’s The Manor studio, and a hand glider Oldfield liked to fly from the ridge.

Was it any good? Well judging by the samples below, it’s trippy, ambient stuff with folky overtones – so well atuned to long-haired flare-wearing types who like a bit of moody Celtic soul while staring at the ceiling.

Where Oldfield led, Enya followed – he has a lot to answer for!

No doubting his immense talent, though – the album lists him as playing Electric guitars, Glockenspiel, Sleigh bells, Mandolin, Nutcracker, Timpani, Gong, Acoustic guitar, Spanish guitar, Farfisa, Lowery and Gemini organs. It entered the UK album charts at number one, only to be displaced by its predecessor, Tubular Bells.

As for the house – it was built in the 20s and sits about 1,000 feet up on Bradnor Hill.

The views are awesome – but bear in mind that the place is a bit of a pilgrimage site for Oldfield fans … so don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to find people called Blue Dolphin and Moonchildhippy cavorting on the lawn.




 

 


Posted in celebrity homes, property news, video | Comments Off

It’s Getting Damp In Here

Posted on February 22, 2012 by RenterGirl
It’s like having your very own private Eden Centre in the lounge. New forms of lush flora bloom on walls, while nearby a pretty waterfall cascades softly into a babbling stream.

Many rented places inflict one horrendous problem on unhappy occupants: damp. This ranges from rivulets flowing down walls and mould growing on everything, to a little condensation and a few discreet dark patches in the shower.

Damp has an impact on owner occupiers too - this isn’t just a problem for renters. But tenants cannot make the repairs necessary to alleviate the situation, and landlords seem to forget they own the place, even if they lived in it previously or intend to do so again. In many cases, they’ve even painted over the worst so that prospective tenants have no idea about the horrors incubating beneath five layers of emulsion.

Try contacting the letting agent and they will generally redirect the problem hurtling it right back to blaming the tenant, and often don’t even raise this with the owner. Landlords claim that drying laundry on radiators causes damp. Well, it’s hard to know where else laundry will dry without garden access and no utility room, especially with energy being so expensive, even if the landlord provides a washer-dryer.

And yes, condensation alone does count as damp (I have this on good authority from bigwigs in the world of Environmental Health.) You can’t expect tenants to install vents, because they might face being penalised with deposit deductions for making such a substantial change to the property.

Landlords generally require tenants to leave windows open (one word: burglary) and blame failure to do this in winter for the mushrooms, the stench of decay and rotting textiles rather than not properly converting the place.

In hermetically sealed newbuilds with double glazing but no garden and no drying area, what are tenants supposed to do when the weather is so bad it rains for forty days and nights? It goes back to reasonable behaviour and good design (there should always be a place to hang clothes indoors) and hanging your jeans on the radiator should not cause an entire new eco-system to grow on the walls.

It’s one argument every renter dreads, causing a ping pong of blame played out with emails, letters and recriminations, with the owner finding reasons to load it all on the tenant and avoid paying, while tenants (unless they have installed an open steam room in the lounge) are unable to do much about condensation, and are left thinking: if I owned this building, I would pay for the repairs that will make this house last longer (damp destroys the very fabric.)

Apart from the fact that it’s miserable and disgusting to find clothes and belongings covered in revolting fungus, the health consequences are well-documented. And yet landlords skimp on extractors, providing cheap crappy examples, repeatedly blaming tenants by using logical somersaults that defy belief.

It’s simple: really really simple. Landlords hear me now: damp is not the tenants fault. It just isn’t.
Posted in damp housing river renting tenant | Comments Off

It’s nice to be busy

Posted on February 22, 2012 by graham downie

It's quite clear already that the economic woes being suffered throughout Europe are going to continue in 2012.

Greece was given a further €130 billion bail-out yesterday and on Friday the bods running the eurozone will ask the IMF to step in and loan them money.  This is unlikely to happen unless the eurozone creates a €750 billion fund of its own....as Germany is reluctant to do this then the chances are pretty slim.

The good news is that these shenanigans don't seem to have affected peoples desire to move to the Charente valley.  I had some clients out over the w/e who have had an offer accepted on an absolutely beautiful house in Chateaneuf.  Prime location and a bargain price.

I'm now turning my attention to two further searches with clients out over the coming weeks.  I'm a small, niche, business and I'm under no illusions about the state of the market.  It's tough out there and will remain so for a while.....but I genuinely believe that with hard work, great service and canny marketing opportunities still exist.

I also believe that it's a great time to buy property in France.  All the pics shown in this post are of houses I have viewed recently and available for under €250,000.




www.cognacproperty.com
Posted in house prices in charente, houses for sale in charente | Comments Off

Narrowing your house search in France

Posted on February 22, 2012 by graham downie
The Notaires de France website is a mine of information and if you are seriously interested in buying property in France then it's a "must see" part of your research.

A few weeks ago they posted a map showing average prices across various regions, you can download the pdf here.

It doesn't really tell you what your money will buy but it does give a decent comparison of relative values between say St Malo & Poitiers.

Once you have decided which region suits your requirements and budget then you can narrow your search by looking here.  The Immoprix site gives a more detailed breakdown by department and areas within a department.

Found your ideal area - then why not take a look at some listings on FrenchEntrée or Se Loger so that you get a rough idea of what your money will actually buy.

Once you have done this and have your financing in place then it's the ideal time to appoint a buying agent to help source the specific property and buy it at the lowest possible price for you.

Here are fifteen I'd recommend....there's bound to be one near you!

www.cognacproperty.com
Posted in map showing french property prices, notaires de france website | Comments Off

Increasing rent with School for Landlords

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Tessa Shepperson

School for LandlordsAs many of you will remember, I ran a series of videos in December 2011 / January 2012 about increasing rent.

It finished with a discussion between Ben Reeve Lewis and myself on various aspects of increasing rent, looking at problems that arise.

School for Landlords videos are (mostly) only freely available online for two weeks (although a few are made available for longer).

However if you missed the series and think it would be useful to you, note that you can now buy access to it, along with links to relevant content and to the pages referred to in the videos.

If this interests you, click here for more information.

Posted in rent matters, School for Landlords | Comments Off