Kings Residential

As The BBC confirms its move to MediaCity in Salford, investors say that they are tooling up for renewed activity in the busy Manchester property market.

Salford was recently described as the fifth most desired address for middle-class househunters looking for an affordable home in Greater Manchester. This is in support of the City Councils desire to see “a fifth of all new homes to be affordable so that first-time buyers and key workers can get onto the property ladder”.

The most commonly built new homes are apartments, which are especially popular in central Salford, where the city rubs should shoulders with Manchester. The ongoing refurbishment of Salford’s transport infrastructure has made it a desirable area for commuters interested in working in and around the Manchester and Salford area.

With MediaCity as the cornerstone of Salford’s 20 year redevelopment plan investors are moving fast to secure early opportunities that will encourage both social and economical growth for Salford.

Share This

The ‘Tonight’ team ran a programme entitled “Britains Biggest House Price Falls”.  The programme concentrated on the potential for the market to fall significantly and featured those interviewees’s with an ultra pessimistic outlook.

Jonathan Welford from Kings Residential appeared briefly on the programme. After giving up 5 hours of Jonathan’s time he appeared for around 30 seconds to point out the views from Manchester’s Beetham Tower. His moderate prediction of the future of house prices clearly hit the editting room floor.

Share This

BBC’s Watchdog aired a feature on letting agents on the 9th January 2008. They had numberous complaints about unfair letting agency charges. They featured one particular agent - Foxtons in London because they charge a renewal commission every time they renew a tenancy agreement. Now, if there is some work to be done then this is fair enough but the fee needs to reflect the work performed.  They also named a few agents who charge smaller fees in the range £25 to £150 which would seem proportionate. The programme then went on to state that Kings Residential do not charge a renewal commission at all.

 Our fee structure on a managed property is 50% of the first month’s rent for the tenant find plus 10% of the rent that we collect. When a tenancy renews we do not charge a letting fee again. In our opinion this would be a bit rude. However, we do manage the tenancy for the duration of their occupancy and we do collect a monthly management commission from this. This is totally reasonable in our opinion. In return for this commission we collect the rent, chase arrears, serve legal notices, attend repossession hearings if necessary, look after maintenance issues, carry out inspections, perform rent reviews, and pro-actively manage the tenancy to encourage a lengthy occupancy from the tenant. When the tenant does decide to leave we  pro-actively market the property to minimise the void period between tenants. However, we have only found the tenant once so we only charge the tenant find once per tenant. Of course when a tenant leaves and we find a different tenant we charge the fee again.

Share This

In such a competitive market, searches for useful information about buying, selling or renting property are often diluted with spammy sites.

To help sift through some of this and get to the useful informative sites and blog posts about property, I’ve compiles a list of the best I’ve found.

• Up My Street - facts about where you live in England and Wales, including property prices, top GCSE and A-Level schools, Council Tax rates, crime rates.
• Land Registry - This is the Government run website which holds specific information about property is available from here for a fee. But they also show statistics on house prices for districts. You can for example compare the rise of house prices in Stockport to Cheshire.
• Share To Buy - They have some great information if you’re planning to buy a house with someone. They also have an outline for a contract to use if you’re buying with someone.
• First Rung Now - This has mortgage and property advice for first time buyers.
• Mortgage comparisons - MoneySupermarket and Motley Fool offer price comparisons from various lenders, but you can often get impartial advice from a mortgage advisor.

If you have any suggestions you would like to add, please add a comment and I’ll review, and update this list if appropriate.

Share This