Posts tagged ‘graph of the week’
Graph Of The Week: Winners & Losers In 2009
January 4th already?! Yikes, where does the time go?
To mark the passing of the year, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the property market’s winners and losers in 2009.
And this being January, we’re serving up two graphs for the price of one … the regional risers and fallers and the best and worst of ten major cities.
The most obvious trend in the data is the stark North/South divide: London and the South East did best at regional level; and coastal powerhouses Brighton and Southampton did best at city level.
And the worst city and region? Sorry, homeowners in Greater Manchester and Scotland (but rejoice first-time buyers!), prices dipped by 10.1 per cent and 12.2 per cent respectively.
Graph Of The Week: Market Confidence Improves
This week’s graph comes from our research team, whose MyHomeLife survey regularly polls our visitors to find out how they see the housing market.
Back in May – just as prices were beginning to pick up again – they were pretty downbeat. Only 11 per cent thought prices were recovering while 23 per cent expected them to keep falling.
By August – no doubt in response to several months of positive reports – 18.7 per cent felt prices were on the rise while 17.9 per cent expected them to keep falling.
The most recent wave of research was carried out in November and found that 30 per cent thought prices were rising while just 12.8 per cent thought they would keep falling.
Looking further ahead, 45.5 per cent expect the market to stabilise over the next six months.
This is somewhat at odds with the gloomier predictions for 2010, but it does accurately reflect the surprising recovery this year.
Can it continue? Our users seem to think it can, but only if there’s more money available at the bottom end: 84 per cent think a full recovery will depend on greater mortgage availability to first-time buyers.
With this in mind, it’s worth noting that lending levels, while still low, have risen significantly over the year (from a low of 27,294 in November 2008 to 57,345 in October 2009).
The latter half of 2009 surprised us all; if this lending trend continues, could 2010 also prove to be a better year than many pundits are predicting? Your thoughts, please!
Graph Of The Week: Seasonal Trend Or Market Change?
This graph probably doesn’t look very exciting, but bear with me.
It comes from our latest House Prices & Affordability Index and shows an interesting shift in a recent trend.
Prices started to firm up last May and have been on the rise since then, but as our analysis of different market segments (first-time buyers and home movers) has shown, all of the price rises were for larger properties at the moving stage.
Given that first-time buyers are much more mortgage dependent, that makes a lot of sense: the people who found it easiest to move in the second half of 2009 were equity rich and cash rich, and this kept the pressure on prices between May and October.
But as the graph shows, the price of home mover properties fell by one per cent in November and by 1.2 per cent in December.
This is most likely a seasonal trend – prices tend to slide in the run up to Christmas as everyone gets caught up in the festive season and decides to hold off until the New Year.
Then again, it may be early signs of a more fundamental change: could it be that the flurry of home movers has blown itself out, or that those still looking are starting to resist recent price rises?
And could it be that the price stability / stagnation at first-time buyer level in the second half of 2009 is a sign that while prices have bottomed out, the mortgage market hasn’t recovered enough to boost values and transaction levels?
I’d be interested to know what you think – is this a seasonal trend or something deeper? And if it’s something deeper, what will it mean for 2010?
Your thoughts please!
Graph Of The Week: Rents Rising
This week’s graph comes from the latest RICS Lettings Survey, published today (2 December 2009).
The report (Q3 2009) reveals that as the sales market recovers, excess stock in the rental market is on the wane and rental prices are edging back up.
RICS spokesperson Jeremy Leaf commented: “It seems the current upward trend in the housing market is having a more significant effect on the lettings market, with many of the accidental landlords returning to the sales market to take advantage of the recent price increases.
“As a result, the recent oversupply is reversing, with new instructions at the lowest levels we have seen. This, of course, is impacting on prices, and tenants no longer have as strong a bargaining power as they did.”
Our own FindaProperty.com: Rental Index shows a similar trend. This month’s report (November) revealed a rent rise of 0.1 per cent to £831pcm, the seventh consecutive month of stable or rising rents.
The supply of rental properties fell by a 3.5 per cent in November, following a ten per cent fall in October. And properties let within 55 days, 16 days less than at the beginning of the year.
For tenants, the message is clear: the days of discounted rents, juicy incentives and plenty of high quality stock to choose from are probably drawing to a close.
Graph Of The Week: The Price Of A Good School
Ok, this won’t come as a big surprise to parents: a property close to a good school will cost a whole lot more than one close to a … not so good school.
But how much more? Savills have crunched the numbers and concluded that:
- Homes in the vicinity of the top-performing 25 per cent of secondary schools now cost 16 per cent more than their county average, up from 13 per cent in 2007.
- At the extreme, homes in areas with a combination of good state and independent schools can be worth two or three times their county average.
The results are much more dramatic at suburb level than at town level.
House prices in first placed suburb Altringham are more than twice the average for Greater Manchester, while those in Hallam in Sheffield, Clifton in Bristol, and Solihull and Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands all outstrip their metropolitan authority average by more than 50 per cent.
(Ps: I know this is a table, not a graph. There is a graph in the Savills’ report, but it will make your head hurt.)
