09 April 2024
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From the uptick in house sales in January to a house price rise the first time in over a year in February, it feels like the housing market is experiencing the green shoots of recovery. While there isn’t the surety of a bumper year ahead, there are reports of a steady increase in buyer and seller confidence. Where buyers have been holding back and sellers fearful of stagnating, this year’s optimism sees more buyer enquiries and stock on the market, alongside a positive trajectory on the number of mortgages approved. The question remains – how can estate agents capitalise on this positive position and deliver some upward momentum?
Keith Stacey, Managing Director of renowned Oxfordshire estate agent group Breckon & Breckon took the bold step of introducing super-sized 75” display screens from InTouch Display at the front of its most recent agency opening in Bicester. A believer in the power of the high street to draw in potential vendors and buyers, and placing the agency in an excellent position to capitalise on the current market position, Stacey commented “This large format non-touch display screen has been transformative, we have witnessed people being stopped in their tracks. In fact, passersby were compelled to call in to the office to say how impactful it is.” He added “Seeing the power of the screen and its ability to really showcase our properties and services along with other helpful community information such as local community events, it was a no-brainer to add them into our other locations in Abingdon, Summertown, Oxford City and Woodstock.
Steve Blackaller, Sales Manager from digital display experts, Intouch appreciates Stacey’s willingness to digitise his window to drive forward the delivery of his brand. He commented “These large-format displays offer an immersive, big and bold screen which allows the agent to put their brand front and centre in the community. It instantly highlights expertise and gives the opportunity to become the authoritative voice for your local catchment.” Blackaller added “For vendors, the ultra-high bright, sunlight readable screens really put their property up in lights, transforming its delivery to buyers”
Digitising your window, not only elevates your presence but offers a 24/7 conversation with the high street. As market confidence increases and more buyers emerge, using better technology eases pressure on agents and allows you to effortlessly exceed expectations. Stakeholders feel that you are “always-on” and vitally, putting them one-step ahead of the game.
InTouch provide software and hardware with incredible flexibility. It’s not a “one size fits all” solution. From fully managed software, updated in “real time” by InTouch to offer a hassle-free window solution, to a software management CRM that gives more control to the agent, there is a fully flexible solution to fit. The screens also integrate with all CRM providers; there’s no need for USB sticks or any other time-consuming, antiquated updates.
Using the right technology to maximum effect, minimises admin, unlocking more time for agents. The system takes away the hassle and cost of having to manually update LED window pockets. Using the mirror-casting function, you can also log-in, see what’s on screen and update it remotely. For those agencies with multiple offices, one person can create playlists for all screens, ensuring brand and message consistency.
Gaining listings as competition intensifies requires more than an ability to present a property. These large format 75” screens place an impressive billboard in your window for high visibility promotional material. That’s where InTouch’s complementary graphic design service is an integral part of the offering. At no extra cost, InTouch provide a regular stream of “on-brand” bespoke messaging to speak directly to your community. Successfully used by its customer base, the service promotes each agency’s distinct USPs and informs of community events to give you that “ever-present” position in the back of a potential seller’s mind.
The typically south-facing high street positions which are favoured by estate agents for the warmth and light they bring into the office, can be at odds with digitising your window. That’s why the superior build quality of InTouch products includes 4K ultra-high bright screens that are readable, even in direct sunlight, by far exceeding the competition.
To request a demo or discuss how you can benefit from an Intouch digital screen solution, contact Steve Blackaller at info@intouchdisplay.co.uk or call 01934 670 014 www.intouchdisplay.co.uk.
UK house prices declined for the first time in six months in March, data published by the mortgage lender Halifax showed Friday.
House prices dropped 1.0 percent on a monthly basis in March, in contrast to the 0.3 percent rise in February. This was the first decrease since September. Prices were expected to climb 0.3 percent.
On a yearly basis, house price growth eased to 0.3 percent from 1.6 percent in the prior month. Prices were expected to climb 1.5 percent.
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A typical house now costs GBP 288,430, which was around GBP 2,900 less than last month.
Despite the fall, house prices have shown surprising resilience in the face of significantly higher borrowing costs, Halifax Mortgages Director Kim Kinnaird said.
Affordability continues to be a challenge for prospective buyers, while existing homeowners on cheaper fixed-term deals are yet to feel the effect of higher interest rates. Accordingly, the housing market has not adjusted fully.
Kinnaird said the underlying demand is positive and as rental costs are rising at record rates, home ownership continues to be an attractive option.
However, Kinnaird added that the housing market remains sensitive to the scale and pace of interest rate changes, and with only a modest improvement in affordability on the horizon, this will likely limit the scope for significant house price increases this year.
UK house prices declined unexpectedly in March as higher interest rates continue to damp affordability, data published by the Nationwide Building Society revealed Tuesday.
The house price index posted a monthly fall of 0.2 percent in March, in contrast to the 0.7 percent rise in February and confounding the forecast of 0.3 percent gain.
House prices dropped for the first time in three months.
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However, on a yearly basis, house price inflation advanced to 1.6 percent from 1.2 percent a month ago.
Nationwide Chief Economist Robert Gardner said mortgage approvals was about 15 percent below pre-pandemic levels, largely reflecting the impact of higher interest rates on affordability.
However, consumer sentiment is improving amid easing cost-of-living pressures, Gardner observed. There were reports of pickup in new buyer enquiries and new instructions to sell in recent months.
Housing affordability is improving, albeit gradually with income growth continuing to outpace house price growth by a healthy margin, he noted.
“If these trends are maintained, activity is likely to gain momentum, though the pace of the recovery is still likely to be heavily influenced by the trajectory of interest rates,” said Gardner.
Data today showed that house prices increased 1.1 percent in the first quarter from the previous three months.
Muscat: The Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (Opaz) has awarded a consortium of an Omani and a Saudi companies a tender to provide consulting services (design and supervision of infrastructure facilities) for the first phase of Al Dhahirah Governorate’s Integrated Economic Zone.
The first phase of the project has an area of 20 square kilometres, of which 6.5 square kilometres will be implemented as a preliminary phase that includes a land port to be managed and operated by Asyad Group provided that the remaining part of the zone’s lands be developed for future expansions to keep pace with requirements of all economic sectors.
Eng. Yahya Khamis Al Zedjali, Adviser to OPAZ Chairman for Planning, said that the tender’s tasks include detailed designs for infrastructure facilities, the preparation of tender documents for construction works and the supervision, completion, operation and delivery of the project.
The tender also includes the supervision of the land port, road networks, electricity and communication services, water and irrigation networks, a sewage network, a gas network, solid waste management, administrative buildings and landscaping works.
The Integrated Economic Zone in Al Dhahirah Governorate is located about 20 kilometres from the Rub-el-Khali border crossing to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The zone is also about 100 kilometres away from the Ibri Industrial City project.
Engineer Yahya added: The establishment of the zone was motivated by several goals, including optimising the advantages of its strategic border location with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, boosting intra-regional trade between the two nations, bolstering development initiatives and economic diversification, opening up new markets for the Omani economy as well as the Gulf economy, and reaping the benefits of the competitive elements.
The B.C. government provided a $250,000 grant for the plane to ‘protect and preserve’ it
The Hawaii Martin Mars, famous for putting out fires with a single flyover, will find its new home at North Saanich’s BC Aviation Museum in the fall.
“You can see the DNA of the Mars story runs through this Island,” said Richard Mosdell, Save the Mars project lead.
The 60-by-36-metre Martin Mars will fly down the east coast of the Island before it arrives at the Victoria Airport for its final resting place.
“It is going to do plane yoga around all the buildings, across the airport runway in the middle of the night,” he said.
On Thursday (March 28), the B.C. government provided a $250,000 grant to “protect and preserve” the plane that had been instrumental in protecting the forests of the West Coast. The water bomber’s final flight to the Saanich Inlet beside Victoria International Airport from Coulson Aviation Tanker Base on Sproat Lake in Port Alberni is expected to take place in October 2024.
Initially, the plane was used to carry troops over the Pacific Islands to the Korean War, before finding its next role as a water bomber.
“It dropped a massive amount of water, more water than has ever been dropped before. And then they retired in 2015.”
Mosdell said he had fallen in love with the plane and that seeing the plane overhead always gave him a sense of safety.
“My dad and I connected over our love of this aircraft.”
The water bomber was the biggest operational flying boat in the world, according to the museum’s president Steve Nichol.
“It is now obsolete, and it needed a new home – and the BC Aviation Musem will provide that new home,” he said.
Although the exhibit is not yet open to the public, Nichol said it will be accessible at its new location, allowing people to see the Hawaii Martin Mars up close.
The plane, Mosdell said, is the same size as a Boeing 747, and many groups have tried to bring it to the museum but have found it too difficult.
“The best puzzles in the world to figure out are the hardest. And we figured it out.”
READ MORE: Historic B.C. Martin Mars water bomber will fly one last time
Brookfield Properties is selling 777 South Figueroa Tower, formerly one of its trophy office towers in Downtown Los Angeles, for about half of the outstanding debt on the property.
South Korea-based investment firm Consus Asset Management is in a deal to buy the 1 million-square-foot tower for about $145 million, according to reports from Bloomberg and Real Estate Alert, which cited unidentified sources. Brookfield did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If the deal closes at that price, it will come out to about $145 per square foot, in line with other Downtown L.A. office trades in the last year.
Brookfield defaulted on $319 million in loans tied to the 52-story tower last year, after rising interest rates squeezed profits from the building. The firm put the property up for sale in the fall.
Sources previously told TRD that Brookfield had received at least 15 offers on the tower, which is about 52 percent leased.
Brookfield’s sale serves as another marker for office landlords and brokers in Downtown L.A., suggesting the submarket — severely hit by remote work, high office vacancies and loan defaults — is close to bottoming out.
In December, Carolwood, run by Adam Rubin and Andrew Shanfeld, bought the 1.1 million-square-foot AON Center at 707 Wilshire Boulevard for $147.8 million, or about $134 per square foot.
That sale was technically a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure and relieved the seller, Shorenstein Properties, of its unpaid debt on the tower.
Brookfield has defaulted on a total of $1.1 billion in debt tied to Downtown L.A. office towers since last February. Two other Brookfield-owned buildings Downtown, the Gas Company Tower and EY Plaza, are both in court-appointed receiverships.
“It’s just regular business. It’s small and not relevant to the overall business,” Brookfield Asset Management CEO Bruce Flatt said of the defaults last year.
There’s a widely held belief that real estate prices will, inevitably, only rise higher and higher. There are, however, long periods when that maxim is decidedly not the case.
Toronto is a prime example. After a surge in the 1980s, the Toronto market peaked in 1989 and didn’t regain that high until 2002 – more than a decade later. A 1995 peak in Vancouver was the high-water mark until eight years later. In the United States, it took a decade after the 2006 peak before that level was seen again.
Each example is different yet each shares central elements, from burst bubbles after manias to the gyration of interest rates and economic woes. What’s clear is real estate can go sideways for a long time, even if everyone believes the natural direction is up.
As Canada works to build a path to housing affordability, the most important thing is new supply – a lot of new homes. But just as important is changing the culture, the mindset that prices are destined to escalate.
Housing has long been expensive but the situation is now extreme. Five years ago, about 60 per cent of households could afford a condo. Last year, it was less than half. And that’s for a condo.
After many years of dizzying gains in the price to buy or rent a home, it’s become widely clear that higher and higher isn’t ideal and comes with many costs.
How to restore some semblance of affordability has shot to the centre of the political debate. This week, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., which has called for millions of new homes, held a conference on the question in Ottawa. The Globe on Wednesday illuminated how we got here in a series of charts, from record-low rental vacancies to the way-too-long time it takes to get new housing approved and built.
Many new homes are needed, yes. As this space showed last week, a burst of construction in booming Austin, Tex., has helped reduce the price to rent.
The shift in entrenched philosophy is also necessary. We need to rein in the housing market mindset that up is good, so pervasive in North America.
The mentality leads to speculation, starting with many families betting on the ever-rising value of their home as a pot of retirement savings. Generation Squeeze, an advocacy group for younger Canadians, puts it this way: “break the addiction to high home values.”
The celebration of higher home prices is deeply ingrained. Ownership in Canada peaked in 2011 at almost seven out of 10 households. Almost all political leaders own their homes and many are landlords. That’s the reason that as things started spinning out of control in the 2010s, blame was first cast on factors such as foreigners or investor speculation without grappling with the real problem: not enough housing.
In each example of real estate markets going sideways for a long time, Toronto, Vancouver, the U.S., it was always considered bad news. The Wall Street Journal lamented Austin’s shift from “America’s hottest housing market” to “running in reverse.”
The bigger goal is to rein in prices, bring them closer to people’s incomes.
The Teranet-National Bank house price index shows the price of housing rose 4.2 per cent annually from 2000 to this year, excluding inflation. Household incomes, according to Statistics Canada, rose by far less, about 1.2 per cent a year from 2000 through 2021.
The goal of a steady surge of new supply would be to establish a lasting buyer’s market. Critics of new supply will often say it won’t ease prices but big housing investors specifically warn shareholders that “competition for residents” and an “oversupply” of homes will affect the prices they charge.
Instead of hoping and cheering prices will someday soon recoup and exceed previous highs, the target has to shift to an extended, and welcome, period of nominal gains. If home prices this century had risen at only the rate of inflation, they would be less than half of what they are – and at levels last seen in 2006. Beyond a return to affordability, a market that offered such nominal returns is what would undercut and eventually end housing speculation.
Decades of culture and policy got us here. It will take time to restore affordability. It will take time to change the culture. But as Canada sets the initial foundations to allow for many more new homes, it is starting on the path to affordability.
NAVASOTA, Texas (KBTX) – On Monday, the city of Navasota finalized the purchase of land that will serve as the new home for the Navasota Fire Department.
Along Spur 515 behind the Circle T Truck Stop, is the new location for Navasota Fire Department’s fire station. The land may not look like much right now, but the city says this will be an ideal spot for the fire department to serve the growing community.
Jason Weeks, Navasota’s city manager, says the Navasota Fire Department has been in their current fire station for 30 years. He says an upgrade has been on the city’s radar for a while and a larger space was a top priority.
“The current location is not a bad location. Ideally, we’d find a new location that’s not too far from the location that will also serve our growth,” said Weeks. “Four acres is a lot more than what we currently have so we’re gonna have the opportunity to make the station what it really needs to be.”
The new fire station is a much-needed upgrade. Since Highway 249 was constructed, the City of Navasota says they’ve seen exponential growth, increasing the number of residents the fire department serves.
The Navasota Fire Chief, Jason Katkoski, says the fire department used to respond to about 300 calls per year 30 years ago. Now, that number is 2,000 per year.
“With the growth we’re seeing and the future growth we are projecting, and how the city is sprawling, we felt like that was a good location we could get to all of it quicker,” said Katkoski. “We’ve outgrown the current location and station. It was originally built as primarily a volunteer fire department and as we started expanding into more of a career department, the station just wasn’t conducive to house people there on a 24 hour basis.”
Katkoski says it has been fun to watch the growth over the last 30 years.
“Right now, here in the City of Navasota, we have a lot of growth happening, and it’s fun to see all this activity going on, it’s exciting as a resident and as a staff member,” said Katkoski.
As the population grows, more calls come in.
“Our fire department does not only serve our residents of Navasota, but also we go out into the county. We have an agreement with Grimes County to service Grimes County, so right now, if you look at the big picture, we service over 30,000 residents,” said Weeks.
The city manager says they’re expecting the city’s population to double in the next 10 to 15 years.
“We have a lot of growth, we have a lot of new housing coming along on the west side of town and now it’s spurring on the east side of town,” said Weeks.
Weeks says building this new station is the first step in the right direction because it will equip the fire department to better serve the community.
“We’re just excited for the fire department, our fire department needed a new home location,” said Weeks.
The city says the next step is to finalize the design for the new station. They’re expecting that to take around six months to a year. After the design is finalized, the city will look over what construction will look like.
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Newry City Park plans have taken a significant step forward with the appointment of an Integrated Consultancy Team.
Tetra Tech has been appointed by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, and as the Integrated Consultancy Team their role will be to take the project through detailed design, planning approval, contractor appointment and delivery on site through to completion by May 2027.
The 15-Acre development at the Albert Basin site will provide a world class park for the residents of Newry.
The project provides a significant space for the community and aims to improve the health, fitness and wellbeing of residents, whilst increasing the number of visitors to Newry.
The appointment was enabled after the Council’s Outline Business Case (OBC) for the park was approved by the Department for Communities and a Contract for Funding issued in December last year.
This opened access to £16.2 million from the Executive’s Complementary fund through the Department for Communities. The Council is also underwriting £2.4 million to deliver a 15-acre City Park as part of Phase One.
A temporary community space at the Newry City Park site also opened officially in December following an award of £220,000 from the Department for Communities.
The funding allowed an upgrade of part of the Albert Basin site for temporary community use while work progresses on Newry City Park.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Chairperson, Cllr Valerie Harte, said: “The appointment of an Integrated Consultancy Team is a landmark phase of the project that will see detailed survey and design work getting underway at the Albert Basin site.
“I would like to thank everyone involved in the work leading up to and during this procurement process, enabling us to attract the highest calibre of talent to match the ambition we have for Newry City Park. I and many other residents were excited by the recently released concept designs and I look forward to Tetra Tech progressing this vision and undertaking the detailed work required to bring Newry City Park to life.”
Co-chairs of the Newry City Centre Regeneration Programme Board, Councillor Declan Murphy and Councillor Cllr Doire Finn, said in a statement: “We congratulate Tetra Tech on the appointment to a project that is at the heart of our ambitious regeneration plans for Newry City Centre. Thank you to everyone who has contributed towards getting the project to this milestone, including community representatives who sit on the Newry City Park Stakeholder Group for their ongoing engagement.”
Darren Price, Associate Director of Project Management at Tetra Tech, said: “We are delighted to be appointed as the Integrated Consultancy Team. Tetra Tech recognises the potential of the Albert Basin location and looks forward to bringing its expertise and experience on board to the Newry City Park project, which has the potential to reinvigorate the city centre as part of a wider transformation of Newry.”
In September 2023 the Council released new visuals for Phase One of the park development, a Newry City Centre Regeneration project, incorporating changing places facilities, an inclusive play park, a sensory garden, an outdoor event space, water and urban sports areas, a plaza area for artisan markets and pop-up vending locations. These are complemented by green space, woodland areas, walking, cycling and running paths, with the park also upgrading links to Victoria Lock and the Greenway.
Main image: At the site of the planned 15-acre Newry City Park are (from left): Michael Graham, Director of Planning, Tetra Tech; Co-chair of the Newry City Centre Regeneration Programme Board, Cllr Declan Murphy; Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Chairperson, Cllr Valerie Harte; Darren Price, Associate Director of Project Management, Tetra Tech; Marie Ward, Chief Executive, NMDDC; Gerard Murray, Director, Regional Development, Department for Communities, and Paul Tamati, Assistant Director of Leisure and Sport. Tetra Tech has been appointed by Newry, Mourne and Down District Council as the Integrated Consultancy Team. Their role will be to take the project through detailed design, planning approval, contractor appointment and delivery on site.
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