In Case You Missed It…… String of deaths leaves Britain’s most expensive house up for sale

PropertySurveying.co.uk

In our monthly newsletter, we highlighted a story concerning Britain’s most expensive home. A vast mansion in London with 45 bedrooms, a £300m price tag and a macabre past…

Read the rest of the article by clicking here

Five ways to help sell your home in a difficult market

A number of well peddled clichés surround the selling of a home, but some points slip under the radar. We expose five things you should address before selling your home, maximising its attractiveness to choosy buyers in a difficult market…

To see the rest of the article, and read inside tips from UK Chartered Surveyors, click here.

Wind Farms Revealed Officially to Reduce Property Prices

Property Surveying – The Valuation Agency Office (VAO), a subsidiery of Revenue & Customs, has recently revealed that it has down-graded council tax bands for a number of homes situated near clusters of wind farms. The reason is that the values of these homes have been forced markedly down by the presence of the turbines, in some cases, for example at Fullabrook Down in North Devon, by as much as a quarter of the total value even as far as 650 yards away from the installation.

A Halifax survey, however, found that the most prolific reducer of value is actualy noisy neighbours, with 17 per cent of homeowners affected by this issue to the tune of an average £31,000 reduction.

For advice on your property’s value, find your local surveyor here.

Lloyds TSB research shows £48,000 extra to live in a spa town

Spa towns like Ilkley in West Yorkshire, which boasted the highest premium of all, Boston Spa in Lincolnshire and Bath in North Somerset, have been shown to have signficantly higher house prices.

The report by Lloyds TSB indicated the spa town house prices were around 27% or £48,123 higher than neighbouring towns, averaging at £275,397 last year. Spa town homes now cost typically 8.3 times gross annual earnings.

Have your say on the August riots

Inside Housing is offering the chance to win £100 in Marks & Spencer vouchers in exchange for your views on the riots.

Shortly after the riots swept England in August, Inside Housing, the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation launched ‘The Riot Report’ to find out what steps can be taken to help prevent a repeat of the violence. Now they want to know what housing professionals, who work for social landlords operating in areas that experienced riots, think caused the disturbances. What would they like their organisations to do to address the underlying problems?

Have your say here.

Chartered Surveyor Help ?

An interesting article explaining some of the ways an Independent Chartered Surveyor may be able to help you has been written by a member of the propertysurveying.co.uk team.  This lists the work undertaken from building surveys to valuation work as well as the less common party wall, expert witness, retrospective valuations and other related work undertaken by multi discipline professional independent chartered surveyors. Read more here