Every six weeks or so I work with BBC Radio Nottingham’s Mark Dennison’s morning show to bring you up to date with what’s actually happening in the Nottingham area to property prices and rents.
Normally our market lags behind the likes of London, partly as we have quite a lot of supply versus demand, so normally plenty of properties for sale.
Below the chart shows the data from the Land Registry which suggests we are doing a bit better in September – with prices down around 16% versus the height of the market in 2007 and seeing some small annual rises. We’ve still some way to go through until property prices recover to 2007 levels.
| Land Registry September 2013 data | 07/08 High | Date | 09 Low | Date | Sep-13 | Monthly Change | Annual Change | % Change v's 07/08 High |
| England & Wales | £183,622 | Nov-07 | £152,623 | Apr-09 | £167,063 | 1.5% | 3.4% | -9% |
| East Midlands | £147,541 | Jul-07 | £119,971 | Mar-09 | £123,967 | -0.1% | 1.4% | -16% |
| Nottinghamshire | £142,870 | Dec-07 | £119,175 | May-09 | £119,909 | -0.2% | 0.2% | -16% |
| City of Nottingham | £106,431 | May-07 | £85,514 | Apr-09 | £85,232 | 1.1% | 1.5% | -20% |
City of Nottingham prices are now on average £85,000 versus the height of the market of £106,500, so this may be a bit of an issue if you are looking to sell your property and it’s not worth what you paid for it. The good news is property price forecasts suggest prices will increase by 20-25% in the region over the next five years, so worst case appears to be if you hang tight, you will see the value of your property recover.
If you are thinking of selling, according to Hometrack, from a sales perspective, it’s taking 11.5 weeks to sell your home in the East Midlands, which is a week less than this time last year. And the offers versus asking price ratio has increased from 93% to 94.5% year on year, so buyers are offering closer to the asking price, which is good news at last!
Moving onto rents, Belvoir Lettings’ data shows rents remain pretty static nationally. Across the East Midlands rents are still lower than they were in the heights of 2008.
Within the different areas in Nottingham, the City area appears to be fairly up and down, but averaging around £560 per month, the South West area is fairly static at around £561 per month, and West of Nottingham remains at £536 per month.
The market in Hucknall has been extremely buoyant throughout 2013, and Haart are telling us they have been rushed off their feet!
Properties across the board are selling very quickly, if they are priced correctly. Prices generally though have not increased in the area, contrary to what the media say. There are a good number of first time buyers around, but have a real shortage of smaller properties to sell to first time buyers, around the £100,000 to £110,000 mark. The announcement of the Help to Buy Scheme has certainly given first time buyers the confidence to go out a look at properties.
Hucknall is popular with Buy to Let investors as properties are cheaper to purchase than some of the surrounding areas, such as Arnold and yields are good. Investors like traditional style three bed semis are always very popular, and two bed Victorian terraces – ones with the bay fronted are more popular than the flat fronted houses.
In Hucknall, the average price of a two bed traditional terrace property is between £80,000 and £100,000, and traditional style three bed semis are between £120,000 and £160,000.
Richard Watkinson & Partners of Radcliffe on Trent report a very buoyant market since the beginning of the year. They feel it is certainly a vendors' market, with properties selling very quickly, in particular for first time buyer priced properties and those up to £250,000 (the stamp duty level). Equally there is a big demand for more expensive properties up to the £500,000 mark. Over this level, there are fewer buyers around, therefore the properties take a bit longer to sell.
Sensible pricing when placing a property onto the market is still important, but properties have recently been selling for the asking price or in some cases, exceeding the asking price. They do have a shortage of all types and sizes of properties, but particularly, bungalows -they cannot get enough of them! Due to the number of buyers outstripping the number of available properties, they have seen prices creep up slightly across the board.
In Radcliffe on Trent, a two bed Victorian property are priced at between £115,000 and £150,000 and a 1930’s three bed semi is £300,000.
