Archive for February, 2010
Cheryl and Ashley could lose £302,463 on Hurtmore House
Girls Aloud singer, Cheryl Cole, who was recently voted the nations second favourite celebrity neighbour in the annual Zoopla.co.uk Celebrity Neighbour Survey, yesterday announced she is separating from her husband, England and Chelsea football player Ashley Cole.
The Girls Aloud singer and X-Factor judge returned to the UK yesterday from a trip to Los Angeles where she had apparently been house hunting in the Hollywood Hills. Perhaps she’s looking to relocate and get away from all the attention?
As part of the separation it is likely that the couple will, at some point, begin the painful process of deciding who gets to keep Hurtmore House, their Surrey mansion.
So, we decided to play nosey neighbour and check out the current value of their Surrey mansion. It turns out that Hurtmore House was bought for £3,550,000 on 19th Oct 2007.
From this data we’re able to work out the current value of this property which we calculate at £3,247,537 meaning that if the Coles sold now, they’d stand to lose a whopping £302,463 on their purchase price.
VALUE CHANGE OVER TIME FOR HURTMORE HOUSE
| Detail | £ / Value change |
|---|---|
| Current Zoopla.co.uk estimate | £3,247,537 |
| ——————————————- | |
| Value change one year ago | £185,548 (6.1%) |
| Value change two years ago | £315,705 (-8.9%) |
| Value change three years ago | £58,552 (1.8%) |
| ——————————————- | |
| Purchase price (October 2007) | £3,550,000 |
Source: Zoopla.co.uk
Guest Blog: 8 reasons to use an estate agent
Recently there has been a lot of online and offline column inches dedicated to privately selling your property. Only last week we saw the OFT come out and suggest consumers consider “private seller platforms”.
We asked Steve Hatch, a director at North London estate agency Castles, who is passionate about this topic, to guest blog for us and give us his reasons on why selling privately online is a bad idea.
Prospective buyers who come to view your property could well be looking at your car, your identity, your family, and your future! Why would you risk all that to avoid paying a fee to an estate agent?
Property Details
Most people have a camera on their phone or own a digital camera these days but that doesn’t make us all professional photographers.
Your local estate agency may well use a professional photographer; or will have trained in the field of residential property photography and use a professional camera and equipment. We do this to ensure that your property – the externals and internals – are well represented and portrayed in a manner that will encourage people to view the property.
Car key theft
Where do we typically leave our car keys…near the front door. Thieves target private sellers deliberately. Professional thieves know that private sellers are easy to distract as they are so pre-occupied with trying, so hard, to sell their home.
Houses with drives are especially vulnerable (for some reason many people feel the photo looks better with their expensive car parked on the drive). An experienced estate agent will spot a bogus buyer a mile off.
Identity theft
Bank statements tend to be left anywhere within the safety of ones own home. An experienced agent will conduct and control the viewing. Private sellers often let people walk around a second time unaccompanied.
An experienced Estate Agent knows how to balance a viewing without letting a buyer out of their sight – the slightest unusual behaviour is instinctively sensed.
Just at the point of exchange…
A private seller is likely to miss all the subtle clues that an experienced agent will pick up on. How many private buyers slap themselves on the back for saving on estate agents fees only to get blackmailed out of thousands, of pounds just before exchange of contracts? What are your options? Reduce drastically, or lose your buyer, plus the home you thought you were about to buy.
You are the weakest link
Add to this the pressure of everyone else in the chain of transactions not being able to move because of your buyer! Very seldom does a seller realise that by going it alone without the experience of an expert behind them, actually makes them a potentially weak link and high risk buyer in the eyes of another vendor, and especially the vendors agent who will have a moral duty to flag this up at the point of an offer.
Personal safety
A private seller will not want to get off to a strained start by asking for extra contact details, work numbers, email addresses, number plates, solicitor details etc. Add to that the sense of excitement at the prospect of the viewing! An experienced agent will not only take care of their own staff safety, but they will also do this automatically for their clients. Part of the filtering process is listening to the response to these questions. An experienced agent will sense any evasiveness.
Negotiations and Re-negotiations
A private seller is rarely polished in the art of negotiating, let alone re-negotiating when it comes to property. Property negotiations are a very different beast to general sales negotiations. An experienced agent will have built up a thorough understanding of their client, their wants, needs and emotions. These are all invaluable tools that the private seller will rarely have at their disposal.
Making the move actually happen
The vast majority of people are ultimately trying to achieve one thing when selling – the ability to move! Of course they want to do well financially, but most people simply want to move to their new home in a calm, confident and reassured fashion. In my experience, most people are prepared to pay a little extra for peace of mind, and the enhanced probability of it actually happening. Realistically this is far more likely to happen in the hands of a local professional. We know what we are doing, and take a pride in what we do, this is where the no sale – no fee comes in!
Written by Steve Hatch
Director at Castles Estate Agents – Harringay Branch
Zoopla.co.uk recognised as one of the UK’s smartest businesses
We are delighted to announce that we have been chosen as a winner of Smarta.com’s inaugural ‘Smarta 100’ by a judging panel including BBC’s Dragons Den Deborah Meaden and other leading entrepreneurs such as Bebo Founder Michael Birch.
The Smarta 100 is the ultimate business accolade, recognizing the UK’s smartest entrepreneurial businesses. During the selection process Smarta.com says it:
“…uncovered remarkable companies who have gone the extra mile to differentiate themselves from the market or found clever ways to compete, from their marketing plan to their ethical stance. The result is a fascinating insight into the unique business ideas that are thriving in the current economic climate.”
We’ve had a good run of awards in the last six months being named as the UK’s Best Property Portal at the Daily Mail UK Residential Property Awards in October and more recently we were named Best Real Estate Website of the Year at the Website of the Year awards – Britain’s most important people’s choice award for websites.
Here’s what Deborah Meaden said about the Smarta 100 award:
“Discovering great new businesses is a passion of mine as is encouraging businesses to think and work better. The Smarta 100 does both of these things – and celebrates the best of British business at the same time. I was delighted to see ambitious people saving hard and raising finances to turn their ideas into flourishing businesses.”
For a full list of Smarta 100 winners, click here
How LIVE property auctions on Zoopla.co.uk work
As we write, there are less than 4 days till our first LIVE auction.
Traditionally property auctions have been for investors and developers. However our auctions are designed for everyone including buyers, sellers and agents. Home hunters can now search properties for sale several weeks in advance at Zoopla.co.uk/auctions, arrange viewings with the relevant estate agents and then place online bids during the live four day auction period. At the end of the live period, the successful bidders will exchange contracts online.
The first LIVE auction starts on February 11th at 12:00 pm and bidding runs for four days.
Here’s an overview of how Zoopla’s online property auctions work in seven easy steps.
1. SEARCH
Find auction properties that are of interest to you.
2. PROFILE & REGISTRATION
Create a profile and register for the auction you wish to bid in. This is a very important step and will ensure you are notified of any changes or additions to the auction.
Separate registration must be undertaken for each auction you wish to bid in. Registration is fast, free and simple.
3. DUE DILIGENCE
Do your research. We advise going to see the property prior to bidding. Relevant documents (including HIPs and Legal documentation) are available to download for each property on the property details page to assist you.
4. FINANCING
Arrange your financing prior to bidding. Further information is available within the finance tab, or you may wish to arrange your own.
5. VIEW
Contact the estate agent to arrange a viewing and inspect each property you intend to bid on. If you wish to have a survey carried out on the property you’ll need to coordinate with the estate agent marketing the property. The contact details for the the agent can be found within the property listing details.
6. BID
All bidding takes place online from Thursday to Sunday.
There are multiple bidding strategies. Either bid the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for the property or monitor the auction very closely and bid in increments competitively as the auction progresses
Remember, a Buyer’s Premium is equal to 2% of the winning bid amount. VAT will be added to establish the total purchase price.
Example: the winning bid = £100,000. A buyer’s premium of £2,000 (2% of £100,000) and VAT of £350 is added to make the total purchase price = £102,350.
7. EXCHANGE OF CONTRACTS
If you are the winning bidder, you will receive a ‘Winning Bidder Confirmation’ via email. If required, a customer service representative will assist with the documentation process and explain the specifics of the sale.
Be prepared to complete the contract and transfer the balance of your 10% deposit within 48 hours of the auction close.
A full set of frequently asked questions can be found here.
Best and Worst Celebrity Neighbours Revealed
 Most Desired Celebrity Neighbour |
 Least Desired Celebrity Neighbour |
When it comes to the value of your home, celebrity neighbours can both add to and detract from property values in a neighbourhood. Our 2010 Celebrity Neighbour Survey makes it clear who would be welcomed and who wouldn’t.
Prolific twitterer and ‘national treasure’ Stephen Fry, who lives in West Hampstead, London where the average value of a detached house is £854,266, has been crowned as the celebrity the nation would most like to share a fence with.
In second place was the nation’s newly crowned ‘sweetheart’ Cheryl Cole who lives in footballers favourite Oxshott, Surrey where average property values are £1,202,774. Completing the top five choices for best neighbours were Location, Location’s Kirstie Allsopp, pukka chef Jamie Oliver and Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson.
Respondents made it clear that being ‘noisy’ and ‘disruptive’ top the list of things that make a bad neighbour and voted Pete Doherty as their least desirable celebrity neighbour – a more unpopular choice than Nick Griffin.
What’s interesting is that it’s likely that the Babyshambles rocker doesn’t have any immediate neighbours anyway. He currently resides in a nine-bedroomed red-brick Georgian house on the outskirts of Marlborough, Wiltshire where the average value of a detached house is £466,781.
Doherty fought off fierce competition from Rehab singer Amy Winehouse who no doubt experienced some ‘for sale’ signs going up in a hurry last year in the leafy suburb of Hadley Wood in Barnet (average value of a detatched house in Barnet: £875,984) when she announced she was moving in.
Politically speaking…
As a possible sign of things to come in May, the nation has made clear which political figure they would prefer as a neighbour in 2010 with David Cameron (who, when not in London lives in Dean, Oxfordshire where average property values are: £646,523) making the list of ten most desirable neighbours, while Gordon Brown features as one of the ten least desirable. However, BNP leader Nick Griffin (Welshpool, average property values: £175,537) outstrips all other politicians in terms of unpopularity, capturing almost 10% of the votes as the celebrity people would least like to find next door.
Sitting on the fence…
Following his recent stint on Celebrity Big Brother, Vinnie Jones appears to have split the nation in terms of whether he would make a good neighbour, with 3.2% of voters saying he would not be their choice of a desirable neighbour and 3.8% voting for him as someone they would like to have living next door. Similar sentiment surrounds Gordon Ramsay (Wandsworth, London, average value for a detached property: £854,266) who appears to be the Marmite of neighbours, with an almost equal number of people voting both for and against him as someone they would want on their street.
What was pleasing to see was that, as a nation, we seem to know our neighbours with only 7.9% of respondents claiming to not know who is on the other side of the fence and in some ways contradictory, the two traits that were overwhelmingly stated as making a good neighbour were ‘keeping an eye on our property’ and ‘minding their own business’!
TOP 10 MOST DESIRED CELEBRITY NEIGHBOURS FOR 2010
| Celebrity | % of votes |
|---|---|
| Stephen Fry | 26.1% |
| Cheryl Cole | 14.7% |
| Kirstie Allsopp | 9.6% |
| Jamie Oliver | 9.2% |
| Jeremy Clarkson | 7.6% |
| Gok Wan | 5.3% |
| Prince William | 5.1% |
| Vinnie Jones | 3.8% |
| Ricky Gervais | 3.4% |
| David Cameron | 3.2% |
TOP 10 LEAST DESIRED CELEBRITY NEIGHBOURS FOR 2010
| Celebrity | % of votes |
|---|---|
| Pete Doherty | 16.4% |
| Amy Winehouse | 15.7% |
| Katie Price | 12.8% |
| Nick Griffin | 9.2% |
| Gordon Brown | 6.6% |
| Jedward | 6.3% |
| Kerry Katona | 6.2% |
| Ozzy Osbourne | 4.8% |
| Vinnie Jones | 3.2% |
| Gordon Ramsay | 2.1% |
Photo credits:
Pete Doherty / Title: Press Images / Artist: Peter Doherty / Photographer: Kevin Westenberg / Date: December 2008 / Copyright: Kevin Westenberg
Stephen Fry / Photographer: Claire Newman Williams
