Archive for July, 2010
Where is Abbey Clancy house hunting?
Scratched heads among estate agents at Gascoigne Pees who, despite being excited to see in today’s Daily Mail that WAG and TV presenter Abbey Clancy is on the hunt for a place in London, were confused to read that she’s looking north of the river, where GPees branches are decidedly thin on the ground.
Pictures of a casually-dressed Clancy strolling past one of their branches with a mobile clamped to her ear located the model and long-standing girlfriend to Peter Crouch somewhere in Tottenham which, the writer reckoned, the couple could be planning to make their home.
But the branch in question, we are happy to point out, is the Walton on Thames one deep in Surrey’s commuter belt and the house she’s looking at in the window is a £650,000, five bedroom address in Shepperton. But it must have been pure curiousity – her and Peter live in a £6 million mansion in nearby Weybridge.
On the other hand, the area Abbey is pictured wandering around is best known as the home of Shepperton Studios, so perhaps she was looking for a rental property to use as a bolt-hole while filming her next TV series – she’s already fronted several including ITV’s The Fashion Show and has appeared on others as a guest including Alan Carr: Chatty Man and The Chris Moyles Quiz Night. She is also currently hosting the fashion elements of ITV’s mid-morning TV show This Morning.
New sort and listing history tools now on Zoopla
We have just rolled out two great new features on Zoopla.co.uk. They’re designed to make your search for property for sale or to rent even easier and provide you with up to date information on the property market. Ultimately, they exist to help you make the best possible property related decisions.
Sort by: ‘Most Reduced’ or ‘Most Popular’
When you search property to buy or property to rent on Zoopla.co.uk you can now sort your results by ‘Most Reduced’ or ‘Most Popular’. You’ll find these clever little tools at the top of the search results, right next to our existing sort features: Highest Price, Lowest Price and Oldest Listings – see the images with the highlights below.
Sort by: ‘Most Reduced’
Sort by: ‘Most Popular’
Listing History
The other feature, the first of its kind in the UK, is a powerful listings history information box. We’ve done all the hard work and in this box you’ll find the history of any property for sale or to rent which includes: when the property was first listed on Zoopla, asking/rental price changes, the number of page views the property has received and last sale date where applicable and where we know it. This clever little box can be found on the right hand side of the property details page – see the image below.
‘Listing History’ information box
As always, we welcome your feedback, so leave us a comment at the bottom or find us on twitter or facebook.
Grand Designs ‘Wooden Box’ house for sale
News has reached us of yet another Grand Designs house for sale, which begs the following question:
If, like most participants, you’d put so much time, effort, cash and emotion into creating the home of your dreams, why would you want to sell up a couple of years later?
Yes, the recession may have been a factor for some but I wonder whether it’s ever a wise decision to throw every penny you have (or can borrow) into a property, as many of the programme’s homeowners continue to do under the watchful eye of Kevin McCloud.
Equally, perhaps it’s a bad idea to invite in a TV crew to witness your whole ‘Dream Home Journey’ warts and all if you’re then going to try and sell later on.
The latest Grand Designs home to hit the market is Longwood House in Cambridgeshire aka The ‘Wooden Box’. It first appeared on series three of the show in 2003 and was then featured on a ‘Revisited’ episode five years later.
3-bed detached house for sale in Southwick, Cambridgeshire. Asking price £700,000. Chesterton Humberts: 0843 2829 927
As is customary in the series, many hoops were jumped before the project was completed; the house was later extended as the 2008 ‘Revisited’ programme revealed.
The property is now on the market for £700,000 through Chesterton Humberts in Stamford, but to give an idea of the number that don’t become life-long homes, there’s also…
The Curved House, Clapham
4-bed house to rent in Clapham. Rental price: £1,900 per week. Morgan Randall: 0843 2822 080
This re-design was originally about providing more living space but became a Grand Designs classic due to the planning permission problems concerning a giant tree which resulted in the curved wall.
Earlier this year, the owners decided to put the property on the rental market. Ironically, they’d decided that the house was too big for them.
Brighton Modern Mansion
6-bed house for sale in Brighton. Asking price £3.5 million. Hamptons International: 0843 2816 026
A very contemporary design with outstanding countryside views. This property featured on the show just last year, leading people to question why it was up for sale so soon after.
No takers so far despite it having been on the market for several months.
The Loch House
5-bed house for sale near Killearn. Asking price £1.5 million. Savills: 0843 2821 599
This Scottish house sits right on the edge of Loch Lomond so you can imagine the wonderful views from the double height glass windows.
It’s another fairly recent one having featured on the programme in 2008, and again, it’s been lingering on the market for a while.
Zoopla Rent v Buy Index – buying cheaper than renting in 74% of Britain
We’ve just released our Rent v Buy Index which reveals the top places across Britain where renting a property beats buying and vice versa in current climate. This was done by comparing current asking prices to the average rents for two bedroom flats in the top 50 locations around the country.
What may come as a surprise to many is that buying a home beats renting in 74% of cases around Britain with average monthly mortgage repayments being 8% lower, on average, than the cost of renting (assuming interest-only mortgage at 5% interest p.a.). Perhaps the biggest surprise is that it is still cheaper to buy than rent in London, despite high prices.
Topping the list of places where renting is a better option than buying currently is Huddersfield, where the average two-bed flat costs only £493 per month to rent versus £146,898 to buy. Renting is also cheaper than buying in a number of other places including Oldham, Brighton, Swansea and Edinburgh.
At the other end of the scale, Dundee comes in top of the list of places where buying is currently the best option with average asking prices for two-bed flats at only £88,263 versus £530 per month in rent. Other locations around Britain where buying is by far the better choice at current asking prices include Birmingham, Derby, Cambridge and Milton Keynes.
Even in London, which has the highest rents in the country, buying is still the more cost-effective option, with average rents on two-bed flats currently at £2,155 per month versus average asking prices at an eye-watering £446,345.
While buying wins out over renting today, the impact of a rise in interest rates cannot be ignored. If interest rates were to increase by 1% and rents to remain the same, renting would become more cost-effective in 80% of the locations studied.
Zoopla.co.uk Top 50 Rent vs Buy Index July 2010
| Rank | City | Average Asking Price 2-bed flats |
Average Monthly Rent 2-bed flats |
Rent/Buy Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Huddersfield | £146,898 | £493 | 1.24 |
| 2 | Oldham | £153,228 | £549 | 1.16 |
| 3 | Brighton | £274,231 | £1,035 | 1.10 |
| 4 | Swansea | £185,925 | £702 | 1.10 |
| 5 | Edinburgh | £179,583 | £693 | 1.08 |
| 6 | Bournemouth | £181,772 | £711 | 1.07 |
| 7 | Bristol | £189,691 | £743 | 1.06 |
| 8 | Cardiff | £153,741 | £614 | 1.04 |
| 9 | Plymouth | £157,546 | £630 | 1.04 |
| 10 | Stockport | £143,721 | £579 | 1.03 |
| 11 | Warrington | £127,178 | £526 | 1.01 |
| 12 | Bedford | £140,139 | £583 | 1.00 |
| 13 | Wigan | £115,820 | £482 | 1.00 |
| 14 | Liverpool | £151,860 | £640 | 0.99 |
| 15 | Lincoln | £130,535 | £555 | 0.98 |
| 16 | Leicester | £130,679 | £558 | 0.98 |
| 17 | Bolton | £114,301 | £493 | 0.97 |
| 18 | Wolverhampton | £118,078 | £515 | 0.96 |
| 19 | Bradford | £109,315 | £491 | 0.93 |
| 20 | Stoke-on-Trent | £100,387 | £451 | 0.93 |
| 21 | Aberdeen | £171,379 | £770 | 0.93 |
| 22 | Middlesbrough | £109,493 | £493 | 0.93 |
| 23 | Reading | £197,513 | £907 | 0.91 |
| 24 | Colchester | £135,658 | £626 | 0.90 |
| 25 | Barnsley | £96,327 | £444 | 0.90 |
| 26 | Sheffield | £125,576 | £580 | 0.90 |
| 27 | Hull | £118,527 | £549 | 0.90 |
| 28 | Newcastle | £131,978 | £613 | 0.90 |
| 29 | Leeds | £144,749 | £675 | 0.89 |
| 30 | Doncaster | £104,072 | £490 | 0.88 |
| 31 | Swindon | £119,549 | £568 | 0.88 |
| 32 | Manchester | £142,508 | £677 | 0.88 |
| 33 | Ipswich | £127,043 | £609 | 0.87 |
| 34 | Preston | £116,626 | £562 | 0.87 |
| 35 | London | £446,345 | £2,155 | 0.86 |
| 36 | Southampton | £163,207 | £790 | 0.86 |
| 37 | Glasgow | £116,271 | £567 | 0.85 |
| 38 | Rotherham | £100,021 | £491 | 0.85 |
| 39 | Coventry | £113,532 | £558 | 0.85 |
| 40 | Northampton | £116,267 | £574 | 0.84 |
| 41 | Norwich | £130,729 | £655 | 0.83 |
| 42 | Peterborough | £116,481 | £589 | 0.82 |
| 43 | York | £174,225 | £891 | 0.81 |
| 44 | Nottingham | £123,160 | £633 | 0.81 |
| 45 | Walsall | £94,437 | £493 | 0.80 |
| 46 | Milton Keynes | £135,633 | £728 | 0.78 |
| 47 | Cambridge | £193,577 | £1,046 | 0.77 |
| 48 | Derby | £100,483 | £562 | 0.74 |
| 49 | Birmingham | £131,546 | £765 | 0.72 |
| 50 | Dundee | £88,263 | £530 | 0.69 |
Source: Zoopla.co.uk
Zoopla.co.uk Rent vs Buy Index – Key and Methodology
The Rent/Buy Ratio indicates the degree to which renting is less/more expensive than buying in each location. A figure above 1.0 indicates it is cheaper to rent than buy and the greater the figure the more expensive buying is versus renting. Similarly a figure below 1.0 indicates it is cheaper to buy than rent and the lower the figure the more expensive it is to rent versus buy.
Current active property listings on Zoopla.co.uk have been used to compare the relative costs of buying versus renting two bedroom flats in the largest 50 cities/towns across Britain. The cost of buying is based on repayment costs of an interest-only mortgage at 5% interest per annum.
All 27m UK homes listed on the new Zoopla.co.uk property app
Ever walked past the home of your dreams and wondered if it’s for sale or what it last sold for, or even what it might be valued at right now?
Perhaps you’re just naturally curious or a bit of a nosey neighbour?
Well, the new Zoopla property app caters for everyone – property addicts, home-hunters, owners and estate agents.
It’s the ultimate, highly addictive, free resource for the residential property market giving you access to much more than just property for sale or to rent listings. Our app has over 15m sold prices (who paid what for what), allows you to generate current value estimates on any UK home (27m of them!) as well as access to essential local market information (what’s happening in my area), all available on the move!
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| List view | Map view | Augmented reality |
There are a few property related apps out there, but we have some genuine points of difference; the main one being that we do more than just for sale or to rent listings. Here are some more:
1. Map-led search as well as list view and Augmented Reality*
2. Free, instant value estimates for all 27 million UK homes – yes, your home will be on our app
3. Over 15 million house prices paid dating back to 1995 – who paid what for what?
4. Local market data including average home values by area – essential research
Download the Zoopla.co.uk app FREE from the iTunes store today
More information can be found here and images here
As always, we’d love to hear your views and feedback, so leave us a line in the comment box below, or better still, write a review on the Apple site!
*Augmented Reality available with iPhone 3GS and 4 only
