Latest News March/April 2011
As we look forward to bring Spring, Easter and Royal Wedding, work load has continued to improve over the first part of the year with a particular increase in building survey and HomeBuyers enquiries and commissions.
At the end of March, Tom Appleby will become a Consultant to the firm and Elizabeth Appleby will retire as our Book Keeper/Administrator.
We wish them both well in retirement and we are told that the ‘free time’ will be eaten up by the demands of the garden. It is anticipated that regular vegetable boxes will be delivered
State of the Market
Despite the firms seeing a increase in the level of business for survey and valuation instructions the latest RICS Survey (January 2011) still indicates a flat market with little sign of movement in either direction. The market in this regard remains particularly fragile.
The impact of changes to Government spending has yet to affect the public sector fully and such effect will roll out over the later part of 2011/early 2012.
With the budget due upon us and the Government indicating ‘policies for growth’ is hoped that this will assist in stimulating the economy to offset the down turn in the public sector.
The principle difficulty that Agents are reporting is a lack of supply of new properties to stimulate buyer demand.
We have noticed a rise in offers being made for reprocessed properties but that these offers are generally at a very low level. Whilst this may appear positive in the short term in markets where there are significant numbers of repossessed properties, this does tend to draw buyers away from non re-possessed properties and tends to drake down values of those in an effort to achieve sales.