Swap Surrey for Cheshire: why the North West s property market is soaring
Lower house prices and easy commuting, plus more working from home, have made the North West s rural pockets a popular option with buyers
3 May 2021 • 5:00am
This grand five-bedroom house in Clitheroe, Lancashire, has a separate annexe, plus four reception rooms, a large garden and views over Pendle Hill. It is £1.2m with Fine & Country
Often overlooked or stereotyped, the North West is now soaring in popularity with buyers looking for country homes, making it one of the hottest property markets in the country.
As more people are able to stretch their commutes by working from home for some or all of the week, many are now looking to the area to take advantage of significant house price differences.
Lieutenant Colonel Cattermull, Iraq, 2003
Credit: Jay Williams
After 30 years of service in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Germany and Bangladesh, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Cattermull, 56, is returning home.
With the wish finally to settle down, he and his wife, Jane, had planned to raise money from the sale of a flat in London and a second house in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and buy their “forever family home” for £700,000.
But despite strong demand from buyers, they cannot sell either.
“The Putney flat is currently unsellable because of the cladding crisis following the Grenfell fire. And because of the pandemic we are unable to ask the tenant in our Shropshire rental property to leave for at least another six months,” Lt Col Cattermull said.
Banks force accidental landlords to evict tenants
Temporary consent to let permits are expiring and leaseholders cannot remortgage
Accidental landlords who own homes with cladding are being forced to evict their tenants and move into their flats, as their “consent to let” permits expire.
Lenders typically allow for properties to be let without a buy-to-let mortgage for 12 months or to the end of the term. Now, many of these are coming to an end and lenders have told leaseholders they must either move in themselves, or switch to a buy-to-let mortgage. But this is impossible without an external wall safety (EWS1) form, which banks need to lend on a property with cladding.
House prices surge at fastest pace in 17 years
The average cost of a home in Britain has hit a record high of £238,831
30 April 2021 • 8:57am
House prices have surged at the fastest pace in more than 17 years, as the extension of the stamp duty holiday reignited the property market.
Prices jumped 2.1pc month-on-month in April, the biggest monthly rise since February 2004, to a record average price of £238,831, according to lender Nationwide.
House prices bounced back from a dip in March, with Nationwide reporting an annual increase in values of 7.1pc, close to December’s six-year high of 7.3pc.
Nationwide’s Robert Gardner said: “Just as expectations of the end of the stamp duty holiday led to a slowdown in house price growth in March, so the extension of the stamp duty holiday in the Budget prompted a reacceleration in April.” Buyer demand was widely expected to collapse when the stamp duty holiday finished, but the scheme was extended in March to September
Property sales doubled in the first three months of 2021
There are signs the imbalance between supply and demand will start to ease soon
27 April 2021 • 6:00am
Frenzied demand has fuelled twice as many property sales in the first months of this year, as the market became the busiest in decades.
So far this year £149bn worth of homes have been sold, according to property website Zoopla. The figure is double that recorded in the same period in 2019 and 2020.
One in every 50 homes was sold in the year to April, compared to one in every 100 during the same period in 2020.
Soaring buyer demand, which is up 27.5pc in the year to date compared to the 2020 average, is being exacerbated by a drought of properties on the market. Zoopla found that the number of homes listed for sale in the year to date is 19pc lower than the 2020 average, despite the market closure during the first lockdown.