Property Vision
RSS

Tales from the Front Line

Nick Ashe

The market feels fragile at the moment. At the bottom of the mainstream market we hear of over supply (one local agent in Salisbury said he had more for sale now than at any time in the past 25 years) and fewer buyers registering.

In our market, the top end prime, we have more potential clients who have to sell before they employ us. Few people are prepared to buy first and risk a bridging loan. One of the main selling agents has more property for sale over £5 million than in 2008 and 2009 combined and a stagnant list of applicants. The same agent mentioned last week that very little is selling over £6 million.

But, one or two houses are attracting competition and selling for 2007 prices and above. These are prime, and are pretty bullet-proof trophy assets. The best long-term investment.

The thing is whether the purchase is discretionary or not. If you have sold in London and your children are starting school in Winchester or Oxford in September, you have to find a house. Whereas a holiday home in the West Country or a country estate is discretionary and it may be cheaper tomorrow.

Simon Locke

The line between garden curtilage and agricultural land is a fine one at the best of times, and in the last few years this line has been stretched, and in some cases snapped, by adventurous, rural ‘gardeners’. If you want to use a piece of agricultural land as garden, whether it be for a swimming pool, a tennis court or anything else, you’re going to have to jump through hoops to get there.

Where garden fencing is simply removed and no physical changes to the land occur it will undoubtedly be difficult to claim an unauthorised, material change of use has occurred. However, where the land does become ‘domesticated’ by planting, placing of domestic chattels, toys, ponds, etc. it will be easier to argue your case.

A case in York in September 2007 issued a lawful development certificate to a man confirming that an area of over two acres now formed part of his garden. Over a period of eighteen years he had managed the additional land as garden, had created easy access to his property and planted a significant number of trees purely for amenity value. The absence of manicured lawns and planted beds was not important, the land had been used as garden and the fact that it was not an immaculate, formal masterpiece didn’t matter.

The good news is that you might not have to wait eighteen years. Anything from ten years of light manicuring seems to be good enough ammunition before you start making your claim to the local planning department when they refuse to let you put in that swimming pool. Proof is the key, keep receipts for trees planted and fenced erected and document the land’s use with photographs. There isn’t any sure-fire way of guaranteeing acceptance of extra land into the garden, however for the cost of some trees and a few afternoons on the lawn mower, it could be the most worthwhile bit of ‘gardening’ you do.

Nick Ashe

I looked at a house in Hampshire this week, with beautiful views to the south over farmland with hills and woods in the distance. The boundary on the south side of the house was quite close with the view beyond. The neighbouring farmer had recently planted a small wood the entire length of the southern boundary to this house which was enclosed by a seven foot high post and wire fence. In three or four years time the view from the ground floor of the house will have disappeared. It is unlikely that anyone will want to buy the house without negotiating with the farmer to remove the trees and accept a covenant against replanting in the future. For this I was told that the farmer would want £150,000, which represents around 15% of the value of the property!

Clearly the present owners of the house and the farmer were not the best of friends and have fallen out. I have no idea what the dispute was about or who was at fault but this extraordinary and unreasonable behaviour is apparently perfectly legal. In law, you are not entitled to a view.

If you don't have the opportunity or budget to own enough land around you to avoid this sort of dispute, don't fall out with your neighbour or you may end up with an un-saleable asset!

Edward Heaton

Once a week our country team meets to discuss what each of us has been doing over the last seven days. We share property information, discuss our clients’ searches and inevitably we talk about what is happening in the market. Typically, with some regional variances, our market view tends to be fairly consistent. But in the last month or so some confliciting and somewhat confusing trends have developed.

Take the Cotswolds – one of the leading agents there has sold 85 properties in his area this year, when in a normal year he would have expected to have sold 55 or 60. The same agent has fewer houses available for sale at the moment than for as long as he can remember. Even some of the ‘old dogs’, which have been for sale for months, are selling.

In South Oxfordshire there is also an acute shortage of stock, especially in the £1 – 2.5 million bracket. So is it the old story of lack of stock and lots of desperate buyers out there? Well yes and no.

Conversely, there are also a few (there are never many) prime country houses that are currently or have recently been available for sale (many of them on the ‘private’ market) which, all things being equal, would normally attract bun fights in the street. Whilst there are still lots of prospective buyers trooping round to see them, in many instances no one seems willing to make the first move and offer. Some of those buyers who have been willing to commit have been rewarded with some pretty exceptional purchase prices. One high profile estate buyer should be particularly pleased with her recent acquisition…

It’s all a bit of a lottery really. Rather like politics and the economy then!

Philip Harvey

I received a call this afternoon from a vendor desperate for some impartial advice. The agents had been at it again, falling over themselves to secure her instruction but ultimately confusing her with their conflicting advice. Initially they were trying to be accurate and professional, however in their desire to secure the instruction in the face of competition from other agents the mask of professionalism slipped giving way to unabashed “buying” of the instruction by suggesting higher and higher possible figures veiled by the suggestion that they could generate competition.

Generally we find that owners are well aware of the likely value of their properties and disabusing them of long held, if amateur, assessment is a high risk strategy. Far from delighting them with the promise of greater wealth it will more often than not cause anxiety and stress, especially if the opinion changes after an initial assessment or differs from that of other professionals.

Valuing non-commoditised country property is notoriously difficult; rarely are two houses the same, in the same location or sold under identical market conditions. Ultimately many sales are an auction, either the traditional, where the price rises in competition from a modest asking price or a Dutch auction where an over-valued property falls in price until someone is prepared to buy it. However, getting the assessment right is crucial to our business. Our clients are always the first to see houses that are about to come to the market and we have to know what they are really worth. Our role as an advisor is to ensure that our client ends up owning the home they have set their hearts on whilst paying as little as possible to do so. If we didn’t know what the house was worth in the first place it would be impossible to advise when to take it out of the market and when to leave it in order to buy at a more advantageous price once it has failed to sell.

In order to do this we need to use all of the tools available to us. Most importantly we need to see everything and find out exactly how much it sold for to build our comparable knowledge. Clearly here we have a huge advantage as a selling agent only gets to see the houses they are invited into, which even for the biggest players probably only accounts for 25-30% of the market. We then need to combine this with an understanding of who the competing buyers are, how well educated they are in the market, how desperate they are and how deep their pockets are.

I find it amazing that many agents feel compelled to shoot from the hip and provide owners with a figure before leaving a valuation. The margins for error are simply too high, many is the time that I have come away from a house and been glad that I hadn’t nailed my colours to the mast on value as some of the realities of the location, size of rooms, lack of acreage closeness of a near neighbour etc etc hit home and impact on initial thoughts.

Agents have to be credible and provide facts to justify their thoughts. Owners have an expectation and through the valuation process and beauty parade of selling agents they want to know where they are likely to end up and what strategy should be used to get the best result. They don’t want to be filled with false hope and false promises.

In the case of the distressed vendor above, the impartial advice we were able to give has given them comfort to employ the right agent at the right price. They’ll do well too as it’s a lovely house, it’s just a great shame we don’t have a client for it!

| 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >

 
In order to view our film, you will need to download Flash Player 9 here.