Sales

Bridging loans have long been viewed as specialist products used by niche borrowers and those in distress but the finance sector has noted a new trend. The image of bridging loans has undergone somewhat of a rebrand and their appeal has become more mainstream.

For many home movers, a garden is a must have and new research has revealed just how important this feature is. A survey by Home Sale Pack found 90% of prospective purchasers considered outside space important when looking for a new home. 

What kind of outdoor person are you? Lush lawns and well-tended flower beds? Do you prefer to focus on fun, with a trampoline and hot tub? Or are you all about the atmosphere, with festoon lights and firepits?

Based on three different data sets, the average age for a first-time buyer in the UK is 34 – a figure that has been rising over the last decade, whichever analysis you look at.

Bedrooms that never get used? Too much time spent cleaning and fixing? Yearning to be mortgage free? It may be time to weigh up the pros and cons of downsizing to a smaller property.

You may have joined Instagram to document your life. Some of you may have opened an account on behalf of your pet but have you thought about an Instagram account purely for your property?

There’s only a very small minority of buyers who will purchase a property without visiting in person. For the masses, a viewing is the ‘make or break’ stage in the search process. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll be discouraged from making an offer and will swiftly move on to the next possibility.

As estate agents, we stay up-to-speed with finance news, as mortgage rates have a huge impact on buying and selling activity. As a rudimentary reminder, the lower the mortgage rate, the cheaper monthly repayments become. We know many home movers have delayed buying a property until mortgage rates eased and that has definitely happened as we start 2024.

When Rightmove decided to compile a list of the top 10 most in-demand features among buyers, it looked at more than 600,000 property listings to establish which aspects led to the highest number of enquiries. Forget a garden or being near a station (they languished at the bottom of the list), the most in-demand feature among purchasers is a renovation project – a home classed as a fixer-upper in need of work.

Keeping up with the latest property and mortgage news can feel like a full-time job, and that’s why our team does the reading and research for you. Something homeowners may have missed is the launch of the Mortgage Charter. It got a very brief mention in the press, so we’ve provided some more details in the shape of this Q&A article.

Moving home is one of the most physically, emotionally and financially challenging milestones in life and very few people decide to relocate on a whim. That was until the pandemic.

Improving a property can be done for a variety of reasons. Some have their eye on a ‘fixer upper’ property that needs work, while others may want to make changes ahead of a sale. Whatever your motivation, it’s good to know how much the work will cost, what’s in fashion and what might tick the boxes of potential buyers. Luckily, the latestRated People Home Improvement Trends report sheds light on all these aspects.