Hello again folks, and thank you in advance for reading my blog. Sometimes I need to say things that may not be so positive or easy to hear, but they must be told. Speaking the truth is not always easy, and truth speakers are sometimes not the bearer of good news. This is indeed the case now. This blog covers what you should expect from the property market in the next few months.

Last week most of the high street banks pulled their lower rates mortgage deals from the table, and before the Bank of England announced a general interest rate rise to 5%, the lenders had already put their borrowing rates up to over 6% now, with the average (75% loan to value, 25% deposit) being at 6.44%.

If you are looking at a house purchase of around £250,000 with a deposit of £50,000 (20%), the average variable repayment is now well over £1,500 a month. This, of course, is harming the housing market already. Buyers are getting cold feet on properties that they agreed to purchase a few months ago and are already re-evaluating the cost implications and how much of their income will now be swallowed up by mortgage payments, let alone the fact that we are still in a cost-of-living crisis with inflation hovering just below 9%.

The more mature people out there (no, I am not being ageist) that have been through this process before will not necessarily be the ones that are worrying about mortgages as they may well have either paid them off or have a lot less borrowed. Still, younger buyers or first-time buyers will be reconsidering their options.

When the property market finds itself in this position, we find ourselves in shark-infested waters. This is when some of the less scrupulous agents out there start resorting to less respectable methods to keep their available stock levels high.

Now, this is where other agents will protest, but we have been here before, and we’ve seen it before, and we know the warning signs to look out for.

1. Has an agent given you a surprisingly high valuation that you weren’t expecting – This is what we in the trade call buying an instruction; the agent knows full well that your property has no chance of achieving this price but also knows that if they can persuade you that they can achieve the impossible than they stand more of a chance of gaining your business.
2. Has the agent offered you a generous low fee – again, any proper business person knows full well that all companies are facing increased costs for absolutely everything that they pay for, from electricity to phone calls, petrol, paper, envelopes, websites, staff wages, photocopiers, membership to recognised bodies to the tea boat in the office, so if they are offering meagre fees, you know that they are not anticipating selling your property, just using you to make their property stock look better than their competitions and make other potential sellers want to use them.
3. How quickly do they ask you to reduce your price after coming to the market – On one of the property portals that we use, there is a tab that shows us which agents are bringing the asking prices of their properties down (Price Reductions), here in Plymouth there are the usual suspects. Still, there is always that special one that must rely on price reductions consistently to try and gain any credible interest in their stock of properties; quite often, though, this has the opposite effect and will deter potential buyers from putting in offers as it can come across as negative marketing. If you keep seeing properties that are dropping in price, do you ask the same question as me? What is wrong with it that it needs to keep coming down in price?
4. Multiple Agent Listing – This is where you feel you have no choice but to list your house with more than one estate agent. If your agent recommends listing your property jointly with a specific agent, maybe this is not the right thing to do. As with the previous point, buyers will question the necessity for your property to be advertised with more than one agent when if you chose the right agent, then your property could have gone under offer already.

There are obviously some exceptions to these general guidelines, but any good, proper, qualified agent should have already factored in these shifts in the market; they should also know what is expected in the coming months and have worked out and planned around this for selling your house.

If the agent reacts to the market, they must be more proactive.

The last thing that any seller wants to be is chasing a down-turning market, as this usually leads them to achieve a much lower selling price than they could have if they planned the marketing price by the changing state of the market. This is a clear case of age and experience, combined with qualified and regulated service, winning against youth and enthusiasm, usually married with the more corporate companies (or companies who try to emulate corporates) who rarely keep / pay for their more experienced staff, as this invariably cost them much more in staff wages.

As usual, I will end this blog positively; last week, we achieved marvellous sales levels across all different market price ranges. We regularly call our clients and let them know what is happening to the property market so that we can change/amend their marketing ahead of the competition and still achieve the best possible outcomes. Cross Keys Estates prides itself on the honesty and integrity of the advice given to our clients by all of our staff, and this is why we are a multi-award winning company with over 1,500 5 star ***** reviews on www.allagents.co.uk from our clients, making us the best estate agent and the best-letting agent in Plymouth for many years in a row now.

If you would like to pop into our friendly office for a chat or call us on the phone (01752 500018) for any help or advice or to book a valuation on your property, please rest assured that you will be in the best possible hands in this industry.

Hello again folks and thank you in advance for continuing to read my blogs. I always try to find topics that are of general interest to everyone but it does get difficult sometimes to write about some of the topics as they are not always the most riveting of subjects. That being said, let’s talk about insulation (yawn, yawn and another yawn).

We have all seen the adverts on the television with regards to all forms of property insulation. They all claim to be great investments in your property that will, in the end, save you money and add value to your property, THIS IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE, in fact quite the opposite, some forms of insulation can in fact damage your property, down value your property and quite possibly make you property un-mortgageable.

The first form of insulation is the external type that is attached to the outside of your property. If your property is listed this will not be an option for you. There are some forms of this external insulation that are subject to EWS1.

An EWS1 certificate is an External Wall System Fire Review certificate. They come into play when a leaseholder is buying or selling or re-mortgaging an apartment in a multi-storey multi-occupied residential building. It is not a building safety certificate or a legal requirement. It is a mortgage valuation tool  –  An EWS1 survey is only required if: buildings over 6-storeys where there is cladding, curtain wall glazing or vertically stacked balconies. buildings of 5 or 6-storeys where there is a significant amount of cladding (25% plus of the whole of one elevation).

As with anything in life, these issues are here for the greater good, but seem to have a huge negative impact for home owners that fall into this category, as their properties are either un-mortgageable or they usually have to bare a huge cost to have this cladding removed. Not all forms of insulation are covered by this “Lenders Law” but there really is a large amount out there that fall prey to this new condition for lending.

The other adverts that are becoming increasingly irritating are the ones for “Spray Foam” loft insulation. The claims that they can add value to your home by reducing your heating bills are FALSE, they might well indeed reduce your heating bill whilst you are living at the property but the negatives far outweigh the small financial gain.

The installation process for this spray foam seems to be very easy but even if your roof has a physical membrane between the rafters and the roof tiles, spraying this expanding foam shifts and lifts the tiles and allows for water ingress as the foam itself is not waterproof.

Secondly, again we look at mortgage lenders, applying this spray foam insulation renders your property un-mortgageable. The foam itself also forms a barrier to the roof timbers and has led to some of these timbers beginning to rot due to the moisture that either comes in through the newly formed gaps in the tiles or comes from the foam solution itself. Currently, there are many hundreds of cases going through the law courts for these very reasons and also now include cases where it has been proven that the fumes given off by some types of this foam insulation materials can be seriously hazardous to your health.

A claims management company (CMC) is in the process of helping with more than 500 claims from homeowners to get refunds for inappropriately installed spray foam installation. This law firm, which helps recover money paid for mis-sold home improvements, said it is helping people on a no-win-no-fee basis who have had mortgage offers withdrawn and lost sales after surveyors spotted spray foam insulation.

The chief executive of this law firm said homeowners think they have done the right thing by opting for spray foam insulation in the roof, as it is often sold as saving more energy than traditional ways to insulate the home. He also said “Spray foam insulation is the cancer of home improvements”.

There are several hundred claims for homeowners who have been refused equity release, mortgages or that have had mortgage offers (AIP, Agreement In Principle) retracted after the surveyors spotted spray foam insulation in the loft areas.

There may be as many as 250,000 homes with spray foam insulation in the loft, and the guidance being offered is to adopt a highly cautious approach. The final recommendation is the removal of the spray foam in almost every case.

Now I am guessing that after reading this you may be feeling very conflicted about how to insulate your property but if you ask me, the original, tried and tested, way is to use the rolls of insulation that you can buy from your local DIY stores. Loft insulation is typically sold in batts or rolls, made from mineral wool, fibreglass, or sheep’s wool. All three of these products are non-flammable, requiring a high temperature to melt. Mineral wool, sometimes sold as rock wool, will only melt at temperatures hotter than a house fire, making it safe to use.

The only reason that I am writing this blog is because, here, at Cross Keys Estates, we have had a few properties that have fallen foul to this new negative and we just want to bring it to our clients’ and friends’ attention alike.

Hello everyone, it’s been a few months since my last blog and lots of things have changed. I finally got married and luckily just before I turned fifty. We won the “Best Estates Agent & the Best Letting Agent” in Plymouth again for the fifth year on the run. We’ve refurbished our Stoke Office to a brilliant standard that puts us right at the forefront of our industry and back in the heart of Stoke Village, but probably the best change for everyone is the change of seasons since spring is here again, banishing the long, cold and dark evening to history for another year at least.

Looking at spring makes me want to be back out in my garden again, which is where I find my solace and calm, pottering around, seeing the shoots of new growth on the plants that I have planted over the last two years, primroses coming up, daffodils in flower, camellias budding and colours beginning to come through all the greenery and also looking forward to getting back to the garden centres to see what I can buy for the garden this year.

People often think that being an estate agent is either boring or very exciting and not much in between, but let me tell you this, there is nothing that we love more than being right in the middle of this and right in the middle of the community. I bet you didn’t know that Cross Keys Estates sponsor a community garden in Stoke. We are extremely proud to be the sponsor of The Rectory Community Garden and love seeing the locals finally get to enjoy this piece of ground that has been overgrown for so many years.

Jill & Rob moved to the area after Cross Keys Estates sold their previous property over 10 years ago. Since becoming residents, Jill & Rob have helped sort out lots of community events and now enjoy looking after the community garden along with other resident volunteers. Jill has also joined “The Gardening Club” a Facebook page that I set up during the second Covid 19 lockdown as I got frustrated with all the other pages that were online, my thoughts were, people simply can’t get angry when looking at fabulous gardens and beautiful plants and I was right. We now have nearly 1,500 members, not only from Plymouth but now from all around the world.

Now that we have our fantastic new shop front in our Stoke office, it seems that refreshing the village is catching on. The old toilet block that was by the entrance to Mount Pleasant Recreation Ground (The Blockhouse) have finally been demolished. It has been a very long time in the making as the toilets were due to be demolished nearly 20 years ago. In their place will be a spanking new garden. I must admit that I am more than a little excited that we will finally have something beautiful to look out on to instead of an old toilet block that was never used, just simply abused or used as a fly tipping area.

So, with gardens and gardening as my theme to this blog, I want to move on to the importance of all outside spaces when it comes to your properties and putting it on the market.

If the Covid pandemic taught us anything, it taught us the value of outside spaces and how much we really do need them. I think a lot of people underestimated how much we love our parks and green spaces until we were not allowed to use them. Now they have become more important than ever, and every spare inch of outside space should be cherished and used.

I have been out valuing so many properties since the new year, some apartments, some terraced houses and some magnificent, detached properties, the one thing that was in common with nearly all of them was how fantastic their outdoor spaces were. Balconies with pots and baskets, waterfront properties with terraces brimming over with coastal climbing plants, terraced houses with stunning courtyards and even some growing their own veg in raised boxes to detached residences with wrap around gardens and beautiful floral borders. No matter what size property or what size outside space you have, there is no reason not to make it beautiful with plants, this will definitely add to the saleability and also, it’s desirability to more buyers.

If you are looking to sell your property and want to know if now is the right time to consider putting it on the market, give Cross Keys Estates a call and see if our truly professional, premier service and competitive fees are what you have been looking for.