Letters Stuck in the Middle

It’s tough being a letting landlord if your properties are near the top end of the market. On the other hand, demand from putative tenants wishing to rent the most expensive properties and for those properties which are lower down the pecking order is buoyant.

It’s the properties that are in the middle to the top bracket which are sticking around.

Some rented properties that are languishing can be found in some of the most desirable areas. Cadogan Square in Belgravia – one of the choicest places to live in London – is a prime example of how sticky things have got in the rarefied middle to upper echelons.

Once it would have been brimful with American bankers and lawyers and hedge funders with bonuses bulging out of their wallets. But it’s all changed. There are now more than 30 flats to rent on the square and several have been put up for rent in the past few weeks.

Some owners would have preferred to have sold up. After all, one-bedders were going for nearly £3 million in the boom. But such buyers have disappeared.

Owners have turned to renting out their properties. But with rents of £1000 to £2500 a week on the square tenants are scarce and those who are around are becoming increasingly picky.

Several agents at the top end – with properties up for rent at £3000 to £3500 a week and above - report that there is still a healthy demand.

To get rents like that properties have to be of superb quality, often quite sizeable, and in the finest locations. Think especially of certain parts of Chelsea, Mayfair and Kensington.

Landlords who have got properties at the more realistic end of the market – those going for under £650 to £700 a week – are optimistic. If landlords can offer reasonable places in London at such rents there is still a robust market and a steady demand.

Outside London it’s reported that demand for rented properties in towns within commuting distance of the capital is still strong, though there is now a greater choice of properties for tenants to consider. Such places as Winchester, St. Albans and old favourites like Cheltenham are being mentioned.

In London demand for rented flats is strong in such areas as Hither Green. It’s up and coming and offers short journey times into central London (Charing Cross 15 minutes) or by the DLR from bustling Lewisham to Canary Wharf and central London. It’s close to Blackheath with its café scene and beautiful heath and the glories of Wren’s Greenwich.

Other favourite London areas where demand is high and rents are reasonable include Canning Town – excellent for Canary Wharf and the DLR into Central London. It will take off with the development of the East End as the Olympics gather pace. Bermondsey, too, is an excellent letting location with easy and fast links into the heart of the capital.

Property Hot Stuff

What’s hot in residential property today? Not a lot you might say. But wood burning stoves are a bright spot. It’s one of the first things putative buyers are asking for.

Sales have tripled as gas and electricity prices have soared. Domestic heating oil also shot up though prices fell recently. But Opec are now cutting production of oil so the cost might rise again. They’re a famously friendly crowd at Opec of course.

With such volatility householders are going back to the iron age. Coal mines are being reopened and if the demand for wood burners continues whole forests might have to be felled for logs. So the hug-a-tree Green lobby will be up in arms.

If things get really bad watch out for your neighbours tearing down garden fences and the odd potting shed and bunging those on the burner.

Wood burners used to be produced primarily in Scandinavia. Now they’re arriving from everywhere – from China to Czechoslovakia.

You can get big and small. Bear in mind that even the smallest log burners pump out an extraordinary amount of heat. So if you’ve got an average sized room you won’t need a large wood-burner to feel as warm as well-done toast.

The internal chimney, if that’s what you want – often just a stainless steel pipe - can get very hot – throwing out the heat. Such chimneys add to the warmth by acting as radiators.

Wood burners come in all shapes and sizes. Some are traditional, others sleek and modern. Some have a cooking facility on the top. So if things get really bad you can always knock up a saucepan of hot soup.

Some models will heat the odd radiator and give you hot water. But here’s a tip. It’s a fundamental and very efficient form of heating. So no matter what the makers claim it’s best not to expect it to do everything. Many users say it’s better just to use it as a fire, to let it do unhampered and uncluttered the one thing it really does well

Prices range from a few hundred pounds to several thousand. And they shouldn’t be that tricky to install so make sure you’re not being ripped off.

It’s the same with the wood. It’s sensible to shop around. Ask your neighbours rather than trusting to pot luck in the Yellow Pages

Keeping the glass clean can be a bit of a devil. Although most have a flow-down facility (don’t ask) which is supposed to do the job for you. Some do, some don’t, some call for a lot of fiddling around.

So here’s another hot tip. Before you light it (obviously) dip a damp cloth in the ash and use it as a gentle abrasive on the glass. It’s a cheap and easy way of getting off scorch and burn marks and gluey resins which can spit from the wood.

Also, try and make sure the wood is properly dried. It’s best to have it seasoned for a year or two. If you’re a city dweller make sure you’re OK having one if you’re in a smoke-free zone. You don’t want some council busy body quenching your fires of delight.

There are folksy accoutrements – from super doopa poker sets to wicker log baskets. You can even make logs by buying a little machine which pulps damp paper into logs. Some users, though, say it’s a bit of a palaver. But if forests start disappearing …

Wood burners are a bit like an Aga. They make you feel good just by being there. There’s nothing as nice as standing in front of them and feeling their warmth.

Like any real fire they bring a room to life and exude a feel-good factor, which in this doomy-gloomy economic climate is invaluable.

A wood burner can make you feel all ski chalet and Heidi-ish. You can’t wait for blizzards and snow and power-cuts when your neighbours are perishing and huddled round a candle and you – smug and snug – simply have to chuck another log on the fire.

Marx and Mortgages

It’s all very well for a great hue and cry to be made on behalf of little businesses. But what of the great mortgage famine which continues to blight Britain’s housing market?

Various campaigns have been launched to ensure banks start lending to small companies – that late payments should be made illegal – and that red tape should be slashed.

That’s all well and good. And given that Britain’s small businesses are where the real risk takers can be found – and that such entrepreneurial operations represent the lifeblood of the nation – only the most churlish would disagree.

After all, it is from small acorns that mighty oaks can spring.

But the government must not lose sight of the fact that first time buyers are still finding it impossible to get on the housing ladder and millions who already have mortgages are facing crippling hikes in interest rates as their existing deals come to a close.

The government has to tell – correction, it must instruct – bankers, building societies, the entire panoply of lenders to launch a diversity of manageable deals at sensible rates of interest and which do not require thumping deposits which many people cannot stump up.

This is not a cry for a return to the bad old days – nobody wants a re-run of the sub-prime debacle – but it is a plea for the application of common sense on the part of the lenders.

It should not be beyond the wit of bankers and lenders ( though having seen the mess they’ve made of things perhaps that it is ingenuous) for them to be capable of sorting the wheat from the chaff, to decide who is a good risk and who is more speculative

That, surely, is the art of lending? It certainly used to be. It’s what building societies did in the past and were rather good at. But such discernment was abandoned when they got their noses stuck in the trough, when greed elbowed out discretion and judgement.

The newspapers lately have been filled with pieces about Karl Marx. Several of them – including The Times – have been asking whether recent events prove that he was right.

Bankers and mortgage providers must fall into line. They must remember that Britain is not just a nation of shopkeepers but it is also an island of homeowners.

If they remain recalcitrant, ungrateful that the taxpayer has bailed them out and footed the bill for their own folly, then perhaps Alistair Darling will be forced to add a dash of Marxism to his grand plan to save Britain from disappearing down a financial black hole.

Make the lenders lend

In trying to fire up the housing market and to get mortgages flowing and to stop little businesses going to the wall the government has bailed out bankers and the City with a massive dollop of taxpayers money.

Question: So why didn’t it attach more strings to the deal?

Answer: Who knows?

There is no point in cutting interest rates or trying to play cricket with the bankers and the lenders if they are going to insist on bowling hand-grenades.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing. There is little sign of them cutting rates and bringing out new mortgage offers as Brown and Darling wanted.

Instead, the reverse is true.

Mortgage offers have been slashed. Rates to borrowers have gone up rather than down. The number of home repossessions by state-owned banks is rising. Businesses big and small are going to the wall. Taxes will rise. And red tape keeps increasing.

The one thing that has become certain out of the Great Crash is that bankers are not to be trusted. In the old days bankers were portly folk in pin-stripe suits and bowlers and it was all done on a handshake. The word of a gentleman was his bond.

But gentlemen in the world of banking seem to be a touch thin on the ground. And given the great shake-out which is happening now – and gathering pace – getting even thinner.

Now that the UK is officially in recession – and Keynesian economics are the order of the day – it’s high time that Brown, currently hailed as the saviour of the financial world, became more demanding with the banks.

Gentle imprecations and pleading with bankers and lenders clearly isn’t going to do the trick. They’re going to grab the money and give as little back as they can get away with.

The government and the taxpayer have saved the City’s bacon. Now it’s payback time. It’s time for the City to start giving something back to the people who have rescued them. And it’s time for Brown, Darling & Co to start wielding the big stick.

Maynard Keynes is now the flavour of the month. Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher free-market economics are in disgrace, at least for the time being.

Interventionism rules and the government is going to try and spend its way out of the recession by promoting as many big state sponsored construction projects as it can.

More than one commentator wants to go further. There have been calls to have hedge-funders and their ilk brought back from the tax havens in which they hide to answer
some very serious charges. Very few have shown repentance but, instead, have brazened it out and tried to shift the blame for the carnage on to other people.

If found guilty they should be penalised – and stripped of their assets – the monies going to charities or to help the pensioners and the millions of ‘little’ people, small businesses and ordinary householders, scarred and sometimes ruined by becoming ensnared, often quite unwittingly, in a sleazy culture of gambling and financial profligacy.

To control – well, almost – the commanding heights of the economy, to have a stake in the upper echelons of Capitalism – has, perhaps, a slight smack of Marxism. Be that as it may. But somehow the UK seems to have ended up with the worst of all worlds.

The government is trying to operate the economic levers with politeness where firmness is required, with patience where decisiveness is vital, with Britishness and fair play when all courtesies have been abandoned and the vulgarians are still playing grab it and run.

Investment bankers and hedge funders and the accountants and auditors who sanctioned and signed off he madness must realise that the days of being bothered only with the thickness and the blackness of the bottom line are finished. They have a duty, as does everybody else, to the community which they serve and of which they are merely a part.

If such people cannot learn how to behave properly – with ethics and morals and a sense of tragedy about the way in which they have brought the UK and others to their knees – then the people, that is their governments, will have to impose parameters in which the role of bankers and lenders and providers of mortgages are fundamentally revised

Letting & Renting IN VOGUE

With Britain’s property market in turmoil thelettingsite.co.uk has been launched at a highly appropriate time.

According to the influential Times newspaper renting residential flats and houses has never been more fashionable.

The Times authoritative property supplement Bricks & Mortar published today headlines its lead cover story ‘It’s chic to rent. Why being a tenant is suddenly back in fashion.’

Times journalist Anne Ashworth - the charming and respected Property Journalist of the Year – says ‘ the balance of power has shifted from landlord to tenant as people realise that renting is the smart way to ride the credit crisis.’

Ashworth quotes property professional Jo Eccles of Sourcing Property who says ‘ not so long ago 80 per cent of her clients were looking to buy. Now the same number are looking to rent, having done their sums.’

Thelettingsite.co.uk is a free web portal featuring thousands of properties to rent across the UK. It concentrates specifically on landlords, letting agents and tenants.

Scottish Property & SNP Policies

It’s difficult to gauge the precise impact of politics and the economic crisis on the Scottish residential and commercial property market for both selling and letting.

But the financial tumult has scarred the area as it has every other corner of the globe. The economic wounds are perhaps especially evident in Scotland where the crucial Glenrothes by-election is looming, where the cry for independence has grown and where Alex Salmond’s buoyant SNP has gained ground.

As the dust settles, though it is still far from settled, witness the continuing volatility on the world stock markets - Scottish nationalist issues have been brought into sharp focus.

Scotland’s reputation for financial probity has been questioned and the near extinction of the RBS and HBOS strikes at the heart of Scottish Nationalist economic policies.

The well-being of the banks is vital for Scottish employment, the social and cultural activities of Scotland, the building and construction industry and the health of the commercial and residential property market.

Given that financial independence for Scotland rests to a considerable degree on the price of oil – which is currently falling ( just 68 dollars a barrel today) and a thriving business sector aided and abetted by a robust banking and administration industry – the policies begin to look somewhat fragile.

The reality is that the bail out could only have been achieved by the collective financial muscle of a united – rather than a fragmented kingdom.

The banks will now be controlled from London not Edinburgh. With nationalisation of the banks – and thus a great chunk of the City – Westminster Rules OK.

There’s been speculation about an ‘arc of prosperity’ stretching from Scotland to embrace Ireland, Iceland and Norway. It’s a romantic but increasingly unrealistic notion.

Each ‘arc’ nation has difficulties. Ireland is in recession. Iceland’s economy is in despair. Norway has a level of taxation which would be unacceptable in Scotland. Norway is often touted as a working model of what an independent Scotland might look like. But Norway is being bailed out for almost £3billion by the US Federal reserve.

As far as property is concerned – like everywhere else - prices in Scotland have fallen. But the renting and letting market could be affected by rising unemployment.

With many economists predicting unemployment will exceed 2 million by early next year – some say by Christmas – the axe might fall heavily in Scotland and there could be an increased drift to the south of people looking for work, and for somewhere to live.

Prices being higher in the south – and though they have dropped there is still disparity between average prices in the north and the south – it is likely that jobseekers will, at least to start with, look for a residential property, be it a flat or house, to rent.

This will add to what is already a strong market for landlords and estate agents in London and other areas where job prospects are at their most promising. And this is certain to further increase business for fleet-footed and innovative property companies such as fledgeling company thelettingSite.co.uk which is already being swamped by landlords and letting agents keen to promote their properties on this free website.

A rumour – entirely unsubstantiated – is that councils on the coast in England are to suggest that lucrative defence contracts at Faslane and on the Clyde in Scotland be switched to their seaboard.

This might bring into the frame Great Yarmouth, say, in the east - where a deep water port is presently being constructed – or perhaps Portsmouth in the south.

If Scotland ever did break from the Union Westminster could think of switching defence contracts. The ramifications on employment and property would be immense.

The mind boggles. But it is only rumour. And currently the City is swarming with those.

Landlord career opportunity

Calling all landlords and estate agents

Has your [url=http://www.thelettingsite.co.uk/uk-properties-to-rent/]residential or commercial property[/url] portfolio taken a bashing?
Are you another sad case of Die to Let? Looking for a change of career?
Well, how about banking? Banking offers astonishing and unimagined scenarios with lots of excitement and very little responsibility.

The money’s not much cop though. For a footling £240,000 a year (which we’re paying since it comes under the Treasury) you could have a job with one of the longest titles in the City (what’s left of it) Get to know the right people and you could be, wait for it .. ‘The Bank of England’s Deputy Governor for Financial Stability.’ The job’s just been advertised with lines like ‘..the Bank of England exists to ensure monetary stability and to contribute to financial stability.’ And what about the perks? Well, for starters, you’re appointed by the Queen on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So you get to meet her Maj and Darling. Wow! That’s a winner.

That should make your eyes water. The ad continues: ‘It is an opportunity to put in place robust long-lasting frameworks to deal with stresses in the system and in individual institutions.’ You have to be of ‘undisputed standing and integrity.’ Well, naturally; that surely goes without saying? All in all it doesn’t sound a barrel-load of laughs. There’s no mention of bonuses or Ferraris or rounding up bankers on the run and organising firing squads.

Birmingham canal flats fall

[B]Residential flats in city centres[/B]

Often in newly built apartment blocks and alongside canals or rivers or on former brownfield sites – top a list of 10 areas in England and Waleswith the largest annual fall in property prices.

A new survey suggests flats in the BirminghamCanal development have taken the biggest price hit. It’s estimated there’s been a 17.3 per cent fall making £153,500 the average price of a flat there today.

The Brum fall is followed by Deansgate Manchester where property has fallen 17.1 per cent and where the average price today is £196,500. Third biggest faller is Erebus Drive Thamesmead London (average price today £208,500, 16.9% drop) fourth is Elmwood Lane Leeds (£149,000, 16.3%) and fifth Millsands Sheffield (£120,500, 15.1 %).

Lakenham Norwich is sixth (average price today £140,500, 14.8% drop) seventh Abbey Road Barking London (£166,000, 14.7%) eighth Dame Dorothy Street Sunderland (£132,000, 13.7%) ninth Russell Road London NW9 (£ 266,000, 12.8%) and tenth Walton Hall Avenue Liverpool (£87,000, 12.6%).

The survey was conducted by Mouseprice.com based on Land Registry sale price statistics and updated with valuation data gathered from surveyors.

The survey indicated that the areas most hit had attracted buy-to-let investors some of whom had offloaded causing supply to outstrip demand. In collating the figures the average values were narrowed to postcodes using an automated system. Streets where the highest number of properties sold at a loss were then identified within the areas.

The survey quotes a recently married first time buyer in Birmingham Canal who paid £185,000 for a two-bedroom flat in February now worth £153,500. They spent £675 a month on rent but had secured a five-year 5.5% fixed rate mortgage with a 5% deposit. They liked the location near the railway station, gym, bars, restaurants and shops.

Sky high in Dubai

Dubai looks to the heavens

Residential and commercial property in the doldrums? Not in the United Arab Emirates apparently. While in the UK Brown bails out the City and all around is economic gloom the pocket-sized Gulf state of Dubai marches on – and upwards.

Dubai is the showiest of the seven member states comprising the Emirates. A shoppers paradise with malls to die for if you’re that way inclined. A desert country with temperatures regularly well above 100F where everything is big, flash and commercial, from the Atlantis Hotel where you can pay $25000 for a night to the Nakheel port and harbour complex where you can party on your super yacht.

In the middle of the harbour complex – where there will be homes and offices for 100,000 people – there’ll be almost 20,000 residential apartments – is to be built a tower which will be over a kilometre high – a 1000 metre sky-scraper. To put that in perspective, imagine how it dwarfs Canary Wharf, a pigmy at a mere 235 metres.

The Nakheel tower will be so tall it will have five different micro-climates. The temperature at the top of the building could be 10 degrees cooler than at the bottom. It will have 150 lifts and 200 floors. There’ll be a 100-room hotel at the top of the tower. 30,000 people will be involved in its construction. There’ll be 10,000 parking spaces.

But for all the hype – a massive public relations launch – there remain big question marks. Many economists around the world believe Dubai has its head in the clouds.

Oil prices are falling. World stock markets are being shaken to the core. Lines of credit are being tightened almost hourly. The threat of terrorism remains and is global.

It’s impossible to estimate how much all these factors which have shaken the American, Asian and European economies will impact on the Middle East. But it would be ingenuous to imagine that any corner of the world is immune to such tumultuous events.

Letting while you learn

Parent-landlords can profit from student digs

Even in these straitened times buy-to-let properties in university cities can make sense. It’s wise if you’re a parent looking to buy somewhere that your offspring can stay in and share with friends to look around carefully before flashing a cheque book.

The most sensible thing is to rent first – and to use your rented property as a base from which to survey the buying market.

Get to know the area and its ease of access to the university. If there’s not good public transport links you’ll have to buy a car for your sprog as well as somewhere to live.

Try and imagine that in three or four years when your child’s degree is finished you might want to sell. Is the property sufficiently attractive to draw putative buyers? Properties which are good student-lets aren’t always what residential buyers want.

On the other hand, many parent-landlords hang on to the properties – seeing them as good long-term investments.

Try and find out if the university is growing – many are. This will increase your letting potential. Buy to let mortgages are thin on the ground. Make sure you can get one at a rate which you can cover with the letting income.

Your offspring will no doubt pick who they wish to share with.

But using a light touch – you don’t want any rows - try and gently run the rule over them yourself. Discreet vetting might not go down well with your offspring. But you don’t want a bunch of lunatics who are going to completely wreck the place.

Don’t forget that by law you must now keep the deposits that your tenants give you in one of the government approved schemes. This was brought in because too many landlords were doing a runner with the deposit monies.

For a diversity of reasons it can be sensible to put the property in your offsprings name. Check with your accountant/solicitor/broker/ Citizens Advice Bureau. Don’t forget that estate agents are also a mine of information. They don’t all speak with fork-tongues.

Make it clear to your heir that they are on the on- the- spot- landlord. You expect them to be responsible and to make sure that the chosen sharers are coughing up their dues. Don’t do it on handshake or some vague tacit agreement. In the longer term you’ll find it’s wise and advisable to lay down the ground rules, in writing, at the outset.

Give the sharers – no matter how well you know them – a tenancy agreement and have the rent paid by direct debit and the bills divided equally between all tenants. It is crucial that all this should be written down. Friendships can soon vaporise where money is involved.

If boyfriends and girlfriends start moving in – it can and almost certainly will happen – then try and build in some provision at the outset to ensure that they too pay their share of the bills if you want to avoid a mini world war breaking out among the other tenants.

There are also legal rules about multiple occupation. If there are more than half a dozen tenants in a property you have to get council permission.

Every property in the land has been hit by the Great Crash. But it’s intriguing how many university towns have remained relatively buoyant.

Having said that, Cambridge has taken a biggish hit in the latest figures. But there are special circumstances.

Out of all university towns Cambridge property price escalation was largely because of the Silicon Fen phenomena, a cluster of high-tech industries whose bosses earned sky-high salaries and whose presence sent property prices rocketing. So any fall will appear higher and disproportionate to that seen in other university towns.

Property price growth in the last five years in such places as Durham (59%) Birmingham (34%) Sheffield (48%) has been remarkable, though of course those figures will have been lessened now.

And it’s not just the old established university towns. Polytechs and their ilk have been turned into universities from one end of Britain to the other and in some of the lesser known new university towns you may be able to pick up a bargain.

A final word. Try and make sure that the university which your child is attending hasn’t got some grand plan up its sleeve to build all their own accommodation. Most students stay ‘in halls’ for their first year. But if a university is planning to house all their students for the entire duration of their degrees it could prove catastrophic for a parent- landlord.

Tesco old folks homes

Since the government has now effectively abandoned elderly people there’s a cruel twist to the property collapse. Older people who want to sell up to pay the obscene fees being demanded by residential care homes and councils – around £500 a week minimum but often rising way beyond that – can’t sell their homes.

So they or their loved ones have to try and borrow the money – not easy in this climate - and because the lenders know that times are hard they’re charging up to nine per cent or more in interest rates. That’s about four percentage points above base rate. Isn’t that a shocking indictment of Britain today? Wouldn’t it be heart-warming – and wouldn’t it to do a lot for the reputation of capitalism which has taken such a battering – if Tesco, for instance, were to wade in with a helping hand? Sir Terry Leahy’s empire has just turned in wopping profits and it’s said it’s going to offer mortgages and banking facilities. Well why not? The banks and the building societies are clearly useless at it. A bunch of big time grocers couldn’t do any worse.

But why doesn’t Tesco really live up to its slogan of Every Little Helps by offering three extra items? The first would be help with deposits for people who want to rent a property. It can sometimes be very difficult for people to raise, say, a deposit of four to six weeks in advance on a residential flat or a house they wish to rent. Yes, Alistair and Gordon et al, stuck in your Westminster bubbles, that’s the real world. It can be damn tough even for those who wish to rent. The second idea is this: Tesco might like to offer competitive Granny Bridging Loans for elderly folk and their relatives so that they could be eased into residential homes with a smidgeon of dignity left in their lives. Once their properties have been sold the loans would be repaid. But even if Tesco got involved the whole wretched business is still a disgrace. Why should people have to sell their homes to finance their twilight years? Britain is supposed to be a civilised society.

But you can go to some of the most remote corners on earth deep in forests or lost in swamps to find cultures which treat their older people with more respect and care. So the third thought is even more radical. Why don’t Tesco go the whole hog? Tesco’s got a big land bank. It could build residential homes of its own offering quality care at competitive rates. It’s a booming and lucrative market. Like food it’s recession proof. Everybody gets old. It’s a market that’s just waiting for some proper competition to shake it up and do it properly.

Residential homes have been hit by a succession of scandals. Every time you pick up a paper another home has been exposed for maltreating residents or employing too few real nurses. The government either doesn’t care or can’t afford to get too involved. Politicians have only ever paid lip service to the pensioner vote. So they rely more and more on the private sector. This would be a golden opportunity for Tesco to offer quality at a good price. C’mon Sir Terry. Now’s your chance. Fly the flag for truly Caring Capitalism!

Poor Darling

As if Alistair Darling hasn’t got enough problems. Between 2006-7 stamp duty – the hated tax on property that’s been a good earner for the Treasury – rose by £1.8 billion.

But for 2007-8 they rose by only £175 million. With the collapse in the residential housing market it’s reckoned the total grab for this year will be £4 billion compared to almost £7 billion raised during 2007-8. Darling dithered so much about bringing in his promised stamp duty holiday the residential property market went into deep freeze.

The plans have been confirmed – at last – but it’s only a one-year-deal on homes up to £175,000, which in many parts of Britain might buy you a shoe-box (minus the lid). Too little, too late. Chancellors and housing ministers should serve time as landlords, estate agents, builders and surveyors, and work in the residential and commercial letting market before being allowed to lord it over all those who pay their wages.

Bad in Barnstable

[b]Second home syndrome comes home to roost in the south west.[/b]

The wave of repossessions hitting Devon and Cornwall is said to be largely because of three factors. Low wages, limited employment prospects and incoming retirees and second-homers who have pushed residential property prices through the roof.

The residential renting and letting market is under enormous pressure – or booming - depending on whether you are a landlord, agent, tenant or homeless family.

The situation is getting so bad that people are being forced to live in caravans on parks where legally the caravans should only be lived in for a limited period each year.

It was reported that an eviction court recently in picture-postcard Penzance dealt with fifty cases in a morning. Repossessions are up 40 per cent on last year.

A combination of lower than average wages and above average house prices has meant that many people have had to over-stretch themselves.

In north Cornwall, boasting beauty spots such as Bideford, the average wage is £23000 a year. But The Guardian newspaper says the average house price is 23 times that.

There’s a lobby in Cornwall which believes second-homers should either be banned altogether or punitively taxed with the money that is raised being used to fund affordable homes backed by government-sponsored mortgages.

Job prospects in the south west can be limited. There is a level of temporary work often linked to the ups and downs of tourism. Tourism is crucial but it’s an industry subject to such fickle vagaries as the weather which can determine the length and the propserity of the tourist season

Up Sticks

It’ll be interesting in these tricky times to see what happens to the UK’s residential property market in places that were touted in the good old days – only a few months back - as being super-smart places to buy or to rent for sky-high prices that left locals gasping.

Such places as the Lake District, the West Country, north Norfolk or the Suffolk coast, the latter boasting Southwold and Aldeburgh – or, a mile or two inland, the little market town of Framlingham, with its good-looking public-school, Framlingham College, set serenely on a hill which overlooks a reed-fringed mere and a ruined castle.

When everything was rocketing the second home market was buoyant. Spend your bonus on a nice little snip in north Norfolk, around Brancaster, Thornham, or Burnham Market.
It’s all flint and pantiles and before the invasion of four-wheel drives and gaggles of bankers in new wellies and barbours it had an unspoiled, undiscovered charm.

But then the second-homers arrived. Every barn owl took to the wing when their natural habitats were converted. Simple hostelries became gastro-pubs. Locals call them gastro-enteritis pubs; ambition exceeding culinary capabilities. Property prices went through the roof and whole villages came to life on a Friday and died again on Sunday evening when the incomers swept back to London or Brum in fleets of Beemers and Range Rovers.

Or there’s Southwold in Suffolk – home to Adnams beer and rocketing property prices, where second-homers gazumped each other for beach huts. Aldeburgh, immortalised by Ben Britten and Peter Pears, and slightly less-smart Leiston.

But fings ain’t wot they used to be. Will the brayin’ Triumphalists be routed? What goes first? The school fees or the country cottage? The mortgage on the house in Notting Hell – where you actually live – or the rural bolt-hole which costs you a fortune in petrol every time you jump in the Volvo and make the trek out of town, with the kids in the back saying they don’t want to go anyway because the country is always so boring?

So for the brave and the sharp-eyed who still fancy a bit of greenery there could be a few bargains. Or maybe there won’t be a great exodus. Perhaps redundant Triumphalists will have had their fill of Town and head for the sticks on a permanent basis, flogging the main house, chewing on straw, keeping goats and growing their own fruit and veg?

In places like Aldeburgh if the collapsing property prices don’t get you – the sea will. It’s an area which the government appears to have practically written off.

So if you’re determined to buy in Southwold or Aldeburgh, Brancaster or even Burnham Market, it’s worth observing a few rules. It’s always best to rent property in the area before you buy. This gives you a chance to have a good look round, to find out what the pitfalls might be. Have a word with the environmental agencies. You don’t want to find yourself all at sea. And there’s no point in trying to play King Canute. Thirdly, check up with the insurance companies. Are they banging up the prices of their policies?

Oh, and don’t forget your life-rings.

Soap Opera

A few years ago when the Independent Broadcasting Authority (the IBA) regulated television and ITV stations lived on five-year licences issued by the authority any TV station which got involved in the likes of premium-rate phone-in scandals would have faced more than hefty fines. They might have had their licenses taken away. In other words, their businesses would have been closed down and offered to somebody else.

The IBA used to have an officer based in each ITV region. The executives of each TV station had to report on a regular basis to the IBA officer to tell them what they were up to. If the executives fell behind on their license promises to produce, for instance, so many hours of news, current affairs, drama or natural history programming, their license could be revoked, or they could be subject to a diversity of other penalties.

Since ITV was deregulated – and the companies bought and sold like any other businesses ( such takeovers were previously controlled) – it has been plagued with uncertainty and scandal. Viewers who participated in phone-ins competitions they could never win were cheated out of £20 million.

The turnover of Opera Telecom – the company at the heart of the GMTV phone-in scandal – has fallen from £81 million to £57 million, give or take the odd bob or two. The figures are revealed in the accounts filed up to May 2007.

There was a lot wrong with the old ITV system. It was bureaucratic and fussy. But when you look at today’s picture one begins to wonder if the old ways were the best.

The new deregulated ITV shares were launched at around £1.14. Today they’re wobbling at around 41 pence and they’ve been even lower. If you’d bought shares in ITV you’d probably have done better if you’d spent it on a rigged phone-in competition.

ITV as we know it today was primarily Granada and Carlton TV which swallowed up most of the other companies. They still exist – places like Anglia and Meridien – but principally in name only. It’s the type of badge engineering which quickened rather than helped stem the decimation of Britain’s once mighty car industry.

Anglia – for example – was first sold to Lord ‘ Call me Clive’ Hollick and then flogged again to Gerry Robinson’s Granada, best known then for its motorway caffs and devouring the Trusthouse Forte hotels empire. Anglia’s quaint silver knight logo was scrapped, replaced with an anonymous flag. It was all part of the corporate branding rubbish which in reality merely helped to destroy Anglia’s strong regional identity.

Since the great takeovers which ended the federal system ITV has been a shambles. Michael Grade’s performance as the ITV boss has been lambasted. Its ratings are abysmal, its programming downmarket, its attraction to advertisers has shrunk, it can’t compete with myriad feisty little satellite channels like Dave and Nuts and Fiver and it’s desperate to free itself of its public service remit.
Northern Rock, maybe the Bradford & Bingley and a big chunk of the US economy might be nationalised. Could ITV be next?

No, of course not. ITV’s still making money and anyway who cares if it goes under? But it won’t. It’ll be snapped up by a continental player. Berlusconi keeps being mentioned
( usually in the same breath as programmes about stripping housewives).

The rumour that ITV is about to be taken over has been around so long it’s become a hoary old chestnut. Without such talk the share price would fall even lower.

Imagine though if ITV decided – and was permitted – to flog off all its studios and offices around the country. If it decided to up sticks and pull out of the regions altogether and just to transmit its utterly dreary output from London.

In that event there’d be more commercial property to rent or lease coming to the market.

There’d be more houses for sale or to rent in the residential market as well. Redundant TV execs in the regions would have to pack their bags and move elsewhere to get jobs.

Television studios are sometimes as big as aircraft hangars. An Anglia studio in Norwich used to be a bowling alley. But why would anybody want to rent a redundant TV studio?

If the recession really begins to bite obsolete TV studios could be used as hostels for the homeless, giant soup kitchens or emporiums selling mountains of second-hand clothing.

Perish the thought. Even Berlusconi in the buff would be preferable to that.

Hold the frontpage

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The Great Squeeze has produced some really great headlines. Two at random from the Sunday Times: ‘Life gets tough-ish in Notting Hell’ and ‘Bonfire of the Bankers,’ which both referred to well-written pieces by Rachel Johnson.

Tom Wolfe’s seminal novel – ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ – featuring bankers and other horrible people of whom we were once in awe ( Masters of the Universe we used to call them) reads today like a history book bursting with wit and spite and the acid observation of which only the ascerbic, famously white-suited Wolfe, is capable.

And what of that box-office smash-hit flick Wall Street with Michael Douglas playing the barking but compulsive Gordon Gekko? “ Greed is good, “ Gekko shouted, strutting around watching his giant share-screen. And we all thought it such a scream, what a rib-tickler, we were rolling in the aisles. How times have changed.

You could re-release Wall Street today and watch the audience throwing cabbages and bad eggs at the screen. It used to be that estate agents, politicians and journalists were the most hated groups. Today estate agents and hacks don’t look too bad.

There never was any hope for politicians, even in the good times. So in these dark days together with the spinners and semi-literate speech-writers that so many politicos employ today they’re all but a step away from the tumbrils..

The new villains today are bankers, hedge-fund managers, short-sellers, derivative experts, vulture fund managers, and anybody who so much as dares to mention the hated B-word. That means bonus. It’s those of that ilk who are currently in the frame.

It all began going wrong long before the world had ever heard of a sub-prime crisis.

One only has to look back a year or two.

In the UK Thatcher said that if Gekko’s greed was good, money was God. Into the City came Big Bang and deregulation and armies of Yuppies in Porsches. In came financial yobbery and a brazen post-Thatcher Triumphalism. Out went pin-stripes and bowlers and fuddy-duddy carefulness and any semblance of integrity or propriety.

Then a vast sense of hubris engulfed the West as Statism collapsed like a rotten apple falling from a tree and Capitalism suddenly emerged supreme. Blair, Brown and Bush – three Bs in a row – said the Free Market, in all its unfettered, unbridled glory, would solve all the worlds ills. Dear old Milton Friedman had been right all along.

And what has happened? Northern Rock has been nationalised. Nye Bevan would have been proud of Mr. Darling and Mr. Brown. And the Hell-fire capitalism of the Republican party which is in its DNA has been turned on its head as it reluctantly plunders government coffers to save the US economy from collapse.

Just goes to show. You can never trust a word the politicians tell you.

Sun Trap

Bricks and mortar spies reckon some of the developers in places like the Portuguese Algarve must have been in the sun too long.

They’re still building, building and building as though they haven’t heard we’re in the worst recession in memory with banks going bust every five minutes and governments having to nationalise and bail out entire economies.

In pricey places like the Vale do Lobo you can’t have a nice quiet eighteen holes for the cacophony of diggers and tractors and platoons of builders wolf whistling lady golfers.

Every spare inch of greenery is having a mini-palace built on it. They’ve all got multi-million pound price tags but the word on the street – yet to be built, of course – is that there’s a dire shortage of buyers.

Wopping prices are still being demanded. But whether they’re being achieved is anybody’s guess. Nobody in the property biz who’s trying to sell is going to let on that they had a Hell of a job finding a buyer, that they’d had their property on the market for months if not years, and even when they’d got a punter hooked they’d had to slash the price at the last minute. It’s called guzundering and it’s happening all over the place.

Even the Russian oligarchs who used to be so much in evidence in Portugal’s hot-spots are getting thin on the ground. It’s hardly surprising. Russia isn’t immune from crunch-fever.Trading on the Moscow stock exchange was suspended for the odd day or two while everybody got into a tizz trying to figure out what was happening to the rouble.

You’d have thought the Portuguese might have taken a look over their garden fence at their neighbours in Spain. It’s estimated that there are something like 800,000 unsold homes in southern Spain – better known as ‘Brit’ Spain – as opposed to ‘real’ Spain personified by such places as Madrid and Toledo.

If you own property in somewhere like the Costa Blanca or the Costa del Sol the chances are you’ll be up against it if you want to sell. It’s very much a buyers market. Offer a song and you could end up with a symphony. But buyer beware. You might be able to snap up what looks like a bargain today – but by tomorrow it could have turned into a dodo. No wonder Brits who want to sell and can’t call it the Costa Lot Mora.