The role of the letting agent is a varied one, but until yesterday I was unaware that my 'coat of may colours' (name the musical), sported a badge saying 'pest control'. I was also unaware that cats were considered 'vermin' by certain members of the community. I am not myself a cat person but I think that I would find it a little excessive to ring up a lettings agency demanding the immediate demise of...
August 2013
This was the question posed to Faisal Islam, the economics editor of Channel 4 News. It was posed by the chief executive of a leading European bank. His answer was some spectacularly erudite but wholly over-complicated one involving, 'security-collateralised debt obligations" (sic) but was very much the wrong one; as he happily admits in his column in The Observer (Sunday 18 August 2013). The correct...
When I was in school (approved), one of my more notable reports commented how, "Gareth sets himself increasingly low standards that he often fails to achieve..." (sic) . The same could be levelled at the marketing departments of various corporate estate agents. An experienced, local independent estate agent - and in fairness, there is more than one in Cwmbran- will tell you that there are three...
In classical mythology, man's destiny is determined by the three Fates who decide the what, the how much and the ''that's it, lights out". In real life, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos (the all-girl group from Aberdare...) get a day off when it comes to real estate. I have just got back in from a valuation where the buyers paid too much for it, have spent too much on it and now won't get their money...
Isn't it comforting to know that good news breeds further glad tidings... Not only do we read about becoming buy-to-let millionaires overnight, pregnant pandas and Katie Price's affirmation that you can be a great rugby player (take a bow, Danny Cipriani) but be lacking in other departments, giving us some hope that there is a God, we are also told that the Spanish property market is just about to boom...
Mark Carney the new Governor of the Bank of England, has broken new ground by becoming the first in his role to set out a plan in relation to interest rates. Earlier this week, following a meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) it was announced that interest rates would be kept at 0.5% until the level of employment fell below 7% (it is currently 7.8%). Added to this, it was announced yesterday...
Here we are again on a Friday being told by another survey from a property-orientated institution (on this particular occasion, the Nationwide), that house prices are rising at the fastest rate for three years. In fairness to the chief economist of the UK's biggest building society he does point out that the annual figure has been boosted by a downturn in July 2012 which meant that the comparison was...
If only it were that easy. So trumpeted the headline in a recent article in a national newspaper. What the 'property expert' whose name was attributed to the article was promoting was the American and Australian practice of selling houses through an "open house" event. What this entails is the agent marketing the property holding an open 'day' (in real time this is usually a couple of...
