Brit Immigration

UK Flat House Rent

Following many years of growth in the UK flat house rent sector of the housing market it has now slumped with an annual fall to date of approximately 15%. Lets take a moment to look at what is happening and where the market is going, particularly at the house flats and apartment market.The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) says that houses for sale property are at their lowest level since their monthly surveys began in 1978. The annual fall in house flats prices is about 15% and property prices have returned to the levels seen in early 2006.There are several reasons for this fall. The “Credit Crunch” means that banks are less able to raise funds from their wholesale markets and therefore do not have the funds to lend on to fulfil the houses for sale property market, even despite the huge bale out that has recently taken place both in the UK and the US. In addition, whereas this time last year banks were keen to lend to almost anyone in the housing and property market, they now see this same housing market as too risky and want only to lend to buyers who are really safe customers. What this means is a buyer who has a very large deposit, an excellent credit rating and a property that is a bargain.For the potential house buyer, finances have been and are being squeezed with much higher costs for food, energy and fuel, and with an official recession here with us, employment is not secure for anyone. Such pressures have not been seen for a decade. I have written more on employment at Work, working and jobs so do take a look.

Many recent house flats buyers are now falling into negative equity.
TO summaries, there are fewer house and flats buyers who have secured mortgages and with fewer house buyers there is less demand for houses and so prices have fallen even further and some experts predict that house and flats prices will fall by as much as 25% in total from peak to trough until the market begins to recover in 2010.
So what will stop the freefall? Well this is the 64,000 Dollar question. The UK government has announced some, in effect, minor measures: interest free loans, a stamp duty level rise and help for those not affording their mortgage. This was a welcome help but is unlikely to stabilise the market significantly as the key problem is the banks having funds to borrow and then those banks having the will and taking the risk to lend. The UK Official Bank Rate today came down again and is now at 1% - quite a help if the banks and building societies actually pass the rate on to customers.Any return to the previous easy lending criteria and large salary multiples are very unlikely and even when banks have funds to lend they are going to demand that the borrower show that they are a good investment: with a big deposit and affordable repayments. For much more on UK housing and property click here.

The housing bubble may have burst but the fact still remains that the property market in the medium and long term will be backed by the simple necessity of housing requirements. We simply still do not have enough houses for sale property, especially affordable property, suitable for the first time buyer market. The population is increasing and there is not enough housing to home everyone.

With drastically less sales, property developers are currently very short of cash and are putting their projects on hold. As a result new house building will be well below the government's targets and as demand outstrips supply prices will go up again. The Centre for Economic and Business Research expect house prices to rise by 30% between late 2009 and 2012.And so the UK housing market is expected to be slow or even at a standstill as we go into 2009 but as the economy recovers so too will the housing market – as sure as eggs is eggs.

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David