Free hot tickets for Landlord & Buy to Let Show at London Olympia 5th & 6th March 2010

Get free tickets to the hottest show in town!

ATTENTION Landlords! This London buy-to-let event spread over 2 days is one of the biggest dates in the diary. Sponsored by LandlordZONE and featuring free seminars and a 'Landlords Clinic' hosted by leading property experts. So if you're a novice or professional landlord looking for 'the smart way to rent' call the ticket hotline on 0800 321 3028, check out who's coming and roll up, roll up for free tickets to the hottest show in town!

Property wanted everywhere as Fed reports a national housing shortage

Despite green shoots of recovery, The UK housing market is facing a shortfall of affordable housing. According to the National Housing Federation or Fed, the economic downturn has led to a 30% decline in new builds over the last two years. Figures from Fed suggest Britain needs about million new homes to be built.


For millions of people the housing problem and growing financial problems is compounded by the lack of availability of cheap mortgage deals which paints a rather more desperate outlook for the UK housing market.

What's Happening to UK Commercial Property Prices - Ups & Downs

At the height of the UK commercial property boom many analysts believed their was only one way property prices would go and that's up! So many of the big property firms embarked on a debt-fuelled acquisition drive, buying up large stakes in landmark developments.

Since the July 2007 peak, plummeting commercial property prices left many investors nursing a massive hangover! With huge losses investors have been trying to quickly offload their stakes to balance their books. It's a firesale as commercial property giants like Land Securities take a £115m hit offloading it's 33.3pc stake in landmark developments like Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre for £210m (reportedly worth £325m at it's peak) to reduce the risk in their portfolio.

Last month Britain's third largest DIY retailer Focus was trying to do a deal with landlords who include Property giants British Land and Land Securities to stave off  administration and trade through a recession hit high street (saving almost 5000 jobs).

"RBS, Lloyds sell repossessed properties to subsidiaries to avoid billions of losses" reads the headline in THE Times 24/08/09

The commercial property market is beginning to pick up as demand for office space picks up. However  their is genuine concern over the rising number of cut price discount shops popping up where big names close down in "recession hit high streets" - (source Mail on Sunday 16/08/09)

Presumably the same analysts who didn't see this coming now predict that "UK commercial values are poised to 'go positive' for the first time in 25 months and rents are falling less rapidly" - (source Mail on Sunday 06/09/09)

So what's happening to UK commercial property prices, is it a good time to buy/ sell?
According to Daily Mail columnist, Richard Dyson "No one can say whether UK commercial property has reached the bottom, but it's decidedly cheaper today that as its July 2007 high" - (source Mail on Sunday 06/09/09)

Squatting Laws or Adverse Possession ...

Squatting involves occupying an empty, abandoned or otherwise unoccupied property, that the squatter doesn't own or rent. If they can sit tight for 10 years adverse possession, the squatter will be entitled to apply to the Land Registry to be registered as proprietor.

I Googled the phrase "Squatting Laws forum" this afternoon and 47,500 pages we're returned. The majority of sites on page#1 are tips for squatters, squatters rights, advisory service for squatters and even one site promoting 'squatting tips' to drive houseprices down!

So what can homeowners do to protect against squatters?

The number of empty homes in the UK outweighs the number of council and housing association homes for rent so it's not surprising this is becoming more common. So what can you do to protect your property against these house invaders?

• Read Squatter's Rights/ adverse possession, courtesy of LandlordZONE
• Read how to prevent squatters (Page 1), courtesy of forums.MoneySavingsExpert.com
• Read a squatters viewpoint, courtesy of BBC Inside Out
• Read Squatters rights, courtesy of forums.Gumtree.com
  
• Read Removing Squatters Quickly, courtesy of LandlordZONE
• Read the laws on squatting, courtesy of Shelter
  

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Low property VALS or valuations are set to cost borrowers £000's

Low property VALS or valuations will probably end up costing borrowers thousand's of pounds this year by edging them out of best-buy re-mortgage deals on the market!

The cynic in me believes lenders might be intentionally undervaluing properties, so they can edge borrows towards higher mortgage rate deals at re-mortgage time. The feeling amongst our estate agents is that borrowers need to realistic about their properties VAL when shopping around for a re-mortgage deal.

Do the maths! Did you know many borrowers still confuse 'the asking price' with 'the actual properties value'? To help borrows we've published links to free VAL calculators, Land Registry figures and more on our free property information page. The crucial figure is the LTV or loan-to-valuation percentage. Read our post 'Lloyds cut mortgage rate, but the fall in high LTV mortgages mean bigger deposits'.

To get the best possible property VAL, ask your lender for an internal VAL or better still, commission your own property VAL as many lenders do a drive-by VAL or a simple desktop VAL based on average figures in your postcode area which will skew the property valuation