UK Bargains in Sunday Business Post

It was good to see the OverseasCafe get a meritorious mention in Sunday's Business Post. Group MD, Eilis FitzGerald, was quoted on the virtual explosion in queries to the site for repossessed or 'value for money' properties in the UK since the start of the year. Extraordinary when you consider the financial environment in which we currently find ourselves.

Here's the text:

'According to Eilis FitzGerald, of Irish property portal OverseasCafe.com, the site was receiving considerable traffic from people looking for information on the British market. She said there had been more than 50 solid enquiries for information on repossessed British property listings since the beginning of January.

‘‘Investors are looking hard for deals, with most people only considering property that is being sold for at least 40 to 60 per cent be low peak market values,” she said. ‘‘Those investors remaining in the market are seasoned campaigners who avidly hunt bargains and haggle mercilessly, so this environment suits them perfectly.”'

If you are interested in current bargains to be found in the UK property market you'll find an article on it here and you can apply for further information on listings here.

You'll find the full Sunday Business Post article, "Bargains Emerging in Britian", here.

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For a selection of property in the UK click here.

For a list of agents selling property in the UK click here.

For independent articles on overseas property click here.

For advice on purchasing in the UK click here.

For news on the UK property market click here.

For new releases and product updates from UK agents click here.

For a selection of property exhibitions featuring UK property click here.

UK Property Prices Tumble

A recent report by Knight Frank has said that prime residential prices in central London fell by 3.6% in November, the second largest fall on record after the decline of 3.9% recorded in October. This latest decline in prices leaves them 14.1% lower than this time last year, having fallen by 9.3% over the last three months alone.

According to the report all areas and property types have been hit by falling prices but houses are depreciating at a faster rate than flats. 

On the upside for agents in the UK the weak pound is beginning to re-stimulate foreign interest in prime London property, an interest which had fallen off greatly over the past year.

Liam Bailey of Knight Frank commented: “These dramatic falls may be painful to vendors, but prime London property is increasingly looking like very good value, particularly to foreign buyers who also benefit from the weak pound. Indeed, a fall of 15% may translate to a fall of as much as 35% to someone watching the market from the USA, as the pound has fallen by 20% against the dollar since the beginning of the year. There has been a increase in interest from such buyers over the past few weeks, which has not yet been translated into activity."

You'll find the full story, with a month by month price fall breakdown, on our website here. 

There is also an interesting piece in London's Evening Standard on the 'Return of the £100,000 home." It is a run down of prices at a Lodon auction house where "18 lots changed hands for £100,000 or less, an extraordinary total given that only 42 homes were sold in the whole of London in this price bracket in August."

You'll find the full article here. 

Register now to receive our informative newsletter, save searches and tailor your OverseasCafe.com experience to your own needs.

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For a selection of property in the UK click here. 

For a list of agents selling property in the UK click here.

For independent articles on overseas property click here.

For advice on purchasing in the UK click here.

For news on the UK property market click here.

For new releases and product updates from UK agents click here.

For a selection of property exhibitions featuring UK property click here.

Distressed Sales at Property Auctions

Auctions are the order of the day. Where ever you go in the world people are very keen to find properties using them. Are they correct in thinking that they'll pick up some wonderful bargains at them? Sometimes, but it's an awful lot more work than you might initially have entertained.

If you're prepared to put in the work and suffer the frustration involved, however, you might well unearth a gem. Be careful though, the success of auctions is based on people getting competitive and 'not wanting to let that property go for the sake of a few thousand'. And it works. You can see people getting caught up in the whole process and paying way more for properties than they are actually worth.

In this time of economic instability there are property auctions running across the world from Spain and the UK to the US. They are relatively new to the Spanish market, you can see an example here, but in the UK and US they are pretty commonplace. One company specialising in such sales in the UK is Pugh & Co. There is some info on Florida auctions here.

In Ireland we're more used to seeing auctions when people wish to sell 'unique' properties. At one stage a few years ago every property in Ireland seemed to have been 'unique' as most of them seemed to be selling at auction. Not now though, this fad seems to have passed and we're back to having only truly 'unique' properties in our auction rooms, usually sold individually.

In the UK and US the selling of hundreds, if not thousands, of lots at a single auction is far more common-place. Throw in a property slump and the numbers of properties involved rise significantly. That is where we're at today.

There is currently a lot of interest in the Florida market, our mother-site, www.OverseasCafe.com, calculates that it is now top of our search listings, beating France & the UK to the top spot. Most of the interest seems to be in what is termed 'distressed sales', basically people who are selling because they either can't afford to complete a purchase or can't afford to keep up mortgage payments on a property they've already bought.

As they say on Hill Street Blues "Let's be careful out there", just because a property is being sold cheap at an auction does not mean that it is worth the price or that it is value for money. By its very nature much of the property that comes to auction is rubbish. Rich people with high spec properties are far seldom found in need of the cash to pay their mortgages than poor folk, so it is inevitably property belong the latter category that is normally found at auction. Much of it is poorly built, in poor locations and comes with a lot of baggage. If you're going to buy property at auction you need to do an awful lot of ground work to ensure that what you are bidding on is actually worth what you intend to pay for it.

You will often find that properties that are actually worth investing in achieve unrealistic prices at auction because professional investors will know that they are worth money and there will be a lot of interest in them. The professional investors stop bidding once a realistic price has been passed and unfortunate 'mug' investors get caught up in the whole competitive auction process and end up paying over the odds for the property.
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For a listing of property in Florida click here.

For a listing of Florida Estate Agents click here.

For a listing of Exhibitions showcasing Florida Property click here.

Register now to receive our informative newsletter, save searches and tailor your OverseasCafe.com experience to your own needs.