Happy New Year To All First Time Buyers

As 2007 looms what are your property dreams and how likely are you to fulfill them?

2006 had a shaky start with predictions that the property market was running out of steam. However, not even two interest rate rises and market crash predictions could cause this to come true. The property market has recovered it seems, and is moving on in leaps and bounds, showing the best November in years. The traditionally quiet as a church mouse month of December has seen property flying off the proverbial shelves.

As we all know, the more people there are out there buying property, the better the market is and the more prices rise leaving the lesser spotted first time buyer in their dust. But it's Christmas time and to add to the unseasonably warm property market there are also thousands of city workers who have just been paid their December bonuses. According to a recent report that's around £8.8 million, of which it is estimated almost half will go into the property market. Buy-to-let investors, second homers and first time jobbers bonuses in hand will ensure a buoyant January through February. In the natural order of things the market should be quiet over this period, but spurred on by the trends of 2006 and the positive predictions for 2007 these cash rich city folk will be sure to push on with their property plans.

So it's crystal ball time again folks, lets see what the 'experts' say will happen in 2007, and whether there is any good news on the horizon for first time buyers and others looking to get onto or move on up the property ladder.

I'm afraid it's a little like the weather forecast in Arizona, sun, sun and more sun (if you're already on the property ladder that is, otherwise it's very overcast). Yes, although a few pundits predict just a 4.5% growth next year as the result of a slow down at the end of the year, the RICS and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, two of the most important crystal ball watchers out there, predict a 7% rise in the value of residential property next year. Wonderful for all you home owners (sunbathers). But, for the rest of you already struggling to get onto the property ladder it just means waving goodbye to the idea that a change in property prices would bring you closer to affording your property dreams.

So with a runaway 2006 and predictions for a popular 2007, market confidence at a high, and cash rich city folk on the loose, prices are guarantees to move further and further out of reach of many first time buyers. Not all doom and gloom though, for we Brits are an innovative lot and whilst the Government has been patting itself on the back for promising 35,000 new homes through their HomeBuy scheme over two years there are moves in the private sector to help the 100,000 plus of you each year who find that you cannot afford to buy.

Way out front is the growth of the co-buying 'sector' which has built from nothing a few years ago to an acceptable 'option' for first time buyers today. The trend towards first time buyers clubbing together to afford to their first property and benefit from multiplied buying budgets, shared costs and the ability to afford somewhere bigger, better and sooner than they could alone has spawned a number of organisations to follow in the footsteps of the UK's original 'co-buyer network' www.sharedspaces.co.uk .

With the New Year SharedSpaces will be launching it's new website offering information and advice to anyone who wishes to co-buy, co-invest or co-rent (flatshare). More information, more advice, simpler navigation, and new partnerships with other organisations that will be able to help you onto the property ladder.

Board Stupid!

I love this story in yesterday's 'London Lite' newspaper. It reports that estate agents in Hammersmith will now be required to apply for permission from the council to put up their 'For Sale' boards because so many people have complained about conservation areas in this borough being blighted by board blitzing. Could this be the start of a National cull on the estate agent's favourite advertising tool?

I have some first hand knowledge of this as in my dark and distant career past I spent three years as on of London's finest... no not a police officer, but an estate agent in the Docklands and North London, so I know from first hand experience that there are two things more dear to an estate agent's heart than anything else; his commission and his boards. 'Sell the board, always sell the board' my old manager used to say. Woe betides anyone who failed to get a board outside a property they gained instruction on. There's nothing finer for a branch manager's ego than to be able to do a walkabout around his area and see more of his boards up than anyone else's. It's a kind of status symbol, an estate agent hierarchy indicator.

This fixation on boards stems from the tradition of buyers choosing their agent by wandering around an area and seeing what boards were out. They would then contact the agents whose boards were either larger in number, or were in the locations they wanted to live in. However times have changed and the majority of people now are happy with virtual wandering instead. A very high percentage of those surveyed over the last few years have said that they would be searching through the major property portals on the net as part of or the entirety of their search for their next home. Also of course nobody registers with just one agent in these enlightened times, it's far more productive if you register with all of them.

That being said, if you know exactly what house or what road you want to buy in you may go the old fashioned route. Also it is true that at some point we've all called up the agent whose board has gone up on the house next to ours so we can sneakily ask what it's on for to discover how much ours might be worth now. Then again our buying habits have changed so much over the last 10 years that the 'For Sale' board has become near redundant to the process.

It's not R.I.P. yet for the 'For Sale' board though. They are after all the advertising banners of your local estate agent. They indicate and imply size and status of the agent, the more boards there are the better that agent MUST be. This could influence your decision on who to buy or sell through.

But something sinister has been stirring for some time now and being a London lad all my life I've noticed that some agents have become a little over zealous with their board presence. I'm sure the rules when I was an agent were that no property, including a block of flats, could have more than one post outside it with agent's boards on it. That means a maximum of two, one of either side of the post. But more and more I have seen three or more nailed to the same post, on two or three posts leaning at precarious angles and in varied states of disrepair. There are also unscrupulous agents who will put up boards on properties they do not have for sale, who will put them up at the end of a road so no-one is quite sure which property it is meant to be outside, and that will mass their boards outside a property they all have for sale.

I have to say that I have never liked the 'For Sale' board. Whilst I completely appreciate its role and purpose I do not feel that it's the miraculous selling tool that the agent will try to tell you it is to keep his manager from berating him for not selling it to you. They clutter up our streets and make pretty little roads look untidy, or indicate by their numbers that streets or areas are undesirable as it looks like everyone's trying to leave them. I feel the £150 removal fee the Hammersmith and Fulham council has said it would charge any agent that does not comply with their new rule might hit where it hurts, and could at least reduce the advertising clutter that blights so many of our roads today.