Seaside & Spa Town Progress

Sales continue apace at Westcliff - our restoration of 5 Grade 2 listed grand Victorian houses located 300 feet above sea level in Weston super Mare (see www.westcliffvillas.co.uk )
Half of  the project has now been sold with 2 new homes vacant and available for immediate occupation, 4 under construction and 7 yet to be started.
Prices remain firm.
Most purchasers have realised that the house price decline in the UK is over and that the only way is up!
Spring is in the air early and our ever optimistic agents Hobbs and Webb are delighted to have new product to offer.
Our 11 apartment scheme in Bath ( see www.moravianplace.co.uk )will be ready in 3 months. Four homes have already been sold off plan - again a sign of life in what otherwise might seem like a quiet period of the year. With over 50,000 hits a month on the Moravian Place Rightmove site we know that there is plenty of interest. We have just appointed Whitely Helyar in Bath to finish the final 7 sales off.
27th January 2012

The abolition of Stamp Duty for the Over 60s?

Having spent the last 10 years designing and building new homes for “downsizers” I was interested to hear the item on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning posing the question: “Should people over the age of 60 be encouraged to move into smaller homes to help tackle the housing shortage?”

Knowing what a challenge it is for folk to make the break from a family home in which the children have all grown up, I have also witnessed the release enjoyed by those who have come to terms with the fact that the children have all left! Oh, and by the way, when the children left they didn’t take all their belongings with them and so their rooms are still crammed with school mementoes, clothes they will never wear again and much besides. Shrines to their youth!

“I wish we had done it 10 years ago” said one of our early residents at Pittville Place in Cheltenham (see www.pittvilleplace.com) “Our new home is generously proportioned - so we don’t feel that we are moving from an Old Rectory and squeezing our lives into a shoe-box. But now we only have 2 bedrooms – one for us and one for guests”. Another purchaser who, with his wife, had become enslaved to a beautiful but large garden explained the release that he now felt at being able to “lock up and leave” at the week-ends.

These days, of course, barriers preventing a “downsizing” move are not inconsiderable. My own parents in law, having recently moved to be closer to my wife and me as they now approach their eighties would be the first to admit that, when they first contemplated moving earlier this year, they had not reckoned with the sleepless nights that the move would entail. Having said that, following endless trips to the sale-room and the dump to off load the non essential contents of their old home there is no question that, in their new home, conveniently located in anticipation of the time when they eventually will no longer be able to drive, they are convinced that the logic of their choice was overwhelming.

Anything that the government can do to encourage a trend that would free up larger family homes for those who have yet to rear their families and enable those who own them to unburden themselves to enjoy much deserved retirement must be encouraged. Abolishing stamp duty for the over 60s would be a great start! 

Advertising

John Wanamaker, a US department store owner who died in 1922 is famously quoted as having said that “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”. A century and a half later we are much more advanced. The back office of any website can tell you who is clicking and where they are clicking from. For example, our Westcliff, Weston super Mare website (see www.westcliffvillas.co.uk ) analysis tells us that the majority of interest is local. The next highest batch of visitors comes from the London area and the third highest batch of visitors comes from Southampton! Why Southampton? We don’t know!

Our project can also be visited at Rightmove (see:  www.rightmove.co.uk  and enter the postcode BS23 2ER). Fascinatingly, the UK’ s premier property site can tell us a lot about who is visiting. The variation in numbers of visitors from one week to the next appears to follow national trends (for example traffic is always up immediately after Christmas) and the site also enables us to compare the performance of our own properties with others in the same market.

If online advertising is so effective why are we still erecting signboards, advertising on poster sites and in magazines and newspapers? Surely these nineteenth century marketing options are anachronistic in our twenty first century age of the information super highway? Traditional advertising is certainly more expensive than the online alternatives, we cannot measure its effectiveness and it is slow and cumbersome when we want to make changes. Research tells us that the vast majority of house hunters these days turn first to the internet before hitting the road or doing the rounds of estate agents. Why then do we continue to line the pockets of media companies and estate agents? Is it fear of what might happen if we stopped advertising? Why don’t we, as developers, have the confidence to sell without agents?

Like John Wanamaker, we still don’t have all of the answers. We do know that, expensive and cumbersome as it is, we still want to advertise. We feel uncomfortable with the concept of online advertising only. We have the research at our fingertips, the willingness to invest in new development and yet we still need our agents.

Perhaps the  answer is simple. People read newspapers. We flick through the property pages whether we are buying or not. Agents are people who provide a service. They are accessible and they know what they are doing as they do it for a living!

So, as with many things in life, whilst progress has brought us more choice it has not necessarily brought with it the simplicity we purport to seek – or the complete answer to a nineteenth century dilemma!

Commitment - the key to success

So, the ten-year Tropicana saga continues and the latest developer to try and make a go of it bites the dust.

This was not the only headline-grabbing property story in Weston-super-Mare this week. Apparently Urban Splash’s architects are still limbering up – three years after having won an architectural competition for the redevelopment of Birnbeck Pier. They, too, are victims of an uncertain property market.

What three ingredients do both of these laudable and ambitious projects, designed to capitalise upon the enduring attraction of Weston-super-Mare, lack which prevents them from proceeding?

Perhaps the first is “Commitment”. Without the full commitment of a financial partner no development can succeed.

Perhaps the second is also ‘Commitment’. Without a market committed to the developer’s vision no development can succeed.

Perhaps the final component is also ‘Commitment’. Without the backing of the local authority no development can succeed.

So, thanks to our bank, our buyers and North Somerset Council, Westcliff  continues to progress success-wards. Thank heavens for ‘Commitment’.

The human aspect of property restoration

There are 2 aspects to property restoration which are particularly satisfying. The first, of course, is the process of restoration itself – changing an un-loved old building into one of high quality once more. The second aspect is human.

Of the visitors to Westcliff who have expressed interest (and delight!) in our restoration project we have been privileged to meet a number of folk who have a soft spot for the place. Of course, we have been privileged to meet with many members of the Westcliff Old Girls Association. Their stories and recollections have amused and enlightened our contractors.

We have also been privileged to meet many of the students who attended Weston College have gone off to forge careers in art and design.

Occasionally we have been graced with inspections from people who actually lived at Westcliff – one who was even born at High Cleve!

Others have a special connection with the place – former policemen, couples who courted in Prince Consort Gardens, local hoteliers who remember the “Booze Cruise” ferries from Cardiff in the days when Welsh pubs were shut on Sundays and the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers playing at the Royal Pier Hotel in July ’63.

One old girl with whom we have been in contact for longer than most, has been particularly helpful to us. Her photographs of the school, her friends and herself are evocative of a time of learning and fun at Westcliff. Her latest news is that her uncle, Squadron Leader John Rowland, has written a book which will be published in March through Pen and Sword Books. The book is entitled “Return Flights in War and Peace” and promises to be a fascinating read!

Professional Advisers - what price loyalty?

What price the loyalty of a professional adviser? Whilst many professionals may have seen a reduction in the amount of work available in the slacker property markets of the last 3 years, how many chosen to stand by their long standing clients? Is loyalty in the property field between client and professional a one-way street?

The answer, in my admittedly limited experience, is that two types of professional have emerged since the property market somewhat lost the plot in 2007:  those who take a long-term view - and those who do not! I look forward to long relationships with those professionals who know the value of a good honest relationship with a client and I thank the Lord for these tough times! How else would I have been able to determine real trusted advisers from the rest?

Empty Rates

Empty Rates are now going to be payable on properties with a rateable value of less than £18,000. In this sector, which is the province of the Small and Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) and start-ups, are we going to see landlords nurturing small vacant properties and being penalised for keeping property empty and waiting? Or are we more likely see the rendering of small commercial properties incapable of beneficial occupation to avoid the payment of empty rates? Perhaps we will even see a trend away from the provision of this type of space in favour of a change of use. Beware the SMEs and start ups who may find that, as a result of short-sighted budgetary measures, the supply of suitable space to run a business at affordable prices becomes strangled.