Direct Property News

The capital’s commercial real estate sector managed to attract record levels of investment in Q1 of 2017 as foreign investor shrug off any Brexit fears, CBRE figures reveal. Between January and March 2017, there was a total of £4.9bn in transaction in London commercial property market. This was the highest number ever in the first quarter of the year as well as the biggest quarterly total since the end of 2014. The biggest contributors to this were overseas investors who shrugged off any fear of uncertainty accompanying the country’s fare well from Europe. They made up 80% of transaction volume, an increase of 6% from 74% at the end of last year. CBRE revealed that a…

Councils in England and Wales are to get new tools to speed up the development of derelict and underused land for new homes, Housing and Planning Minister Gavin Barwell has confirmed. Local authorities across the country will now have to produce and maintain up to date, publicly available registers of brownfield sites available for housing locally and Barwell said that the new registers will help house builders identify suitable brownfield sites quickly. The news comes as new research shows that the majority of developers back the release of more publicly owned brownfield land for home building and they also welcome the speeding up of the planning process. Communities will be able to highlight local derelict or…

Overall, the housing market in the North of the UK is strong, with Manchester particularly feeling the benefit of increased global interest, ever increasing housing demand and substantial development activity. The UK Government’s Northern Powerhouse initiative is continuing to pick up momentum which is allowing Northern cities to look to the future with assurance. The figures back this positive rhetoric, with 16% in capital value growth in Manchester last year. JLL have recently forecast house prices in Manchester to grow by up to 28.2%, and the North West to rise 18.1% until 2021. The region is expected to welcome almost 42,000 new households each year, many of these making cities their home – this projected increase…

According to the latest figure from Halifax, the annual rate of house price growth has more than halved over the past 12 months to 3.8% – the lowest annual rate since May 2013. Annual house price growth is below February’s 5.1% and less than half the 10.0% peak reached in March 2016. House prices were unchanged between February and March for the second consecutive month, and rose just 0.1% in the three months to march – the lowest quarterly rate of change since October 2016. Research released yesterday from Cebr predicts that average house price growth will slow to 4.4% in 2017, below the rate of 7.4% seen in 2016 and the slowest rate since 2013.…

According to the latest stats Moneypenny, calls from to estate and letting agents to request viewings and valuations rose 61% in Q1 of 2017. In a like-for-like comparison of calls to its estate and letting agent clients, the telephone answering service reported a 61% increase in calls during the first three months of 2017, when compared with the last three months of 2016. The findings come as the company, which looks after over 1.2m calls a year for over 1,300 agents of all shapes and sizes, announces the results of its first quarterly review of 2017, taking a look at property calls handled between January 1 and March 31. The property team at Moneypenny also reported…

The UK property market gained momentum in March, according to the latest Property Activity Index from Agency Express. The monthly data shows a nationwide increase in both new property listings, which rose by 21.7%, and the number of properties sold, which was up by 18.0%. UK Property Market Gains Momentum in March, Reports Agency Express These increases appear consistent with recent reports from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which stated: “The housing market has been slowly building up momentum over the last few months, largely getting back to activity levels we saw in the beginning of 2016.” Assessing property market activity across the UK, Agency Express found that all of the 12 regions included in the…