News.Scotland.Org

June, 9

Its time to honour some of the most glitzy building projects of Scotland, which are been short-listed for a top award. It was known that the 54 schemes nominated for the prestigious annual Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors award includes four Scottish projects.

Those prominent building which have marked the presence of Scotland is, A-Kelvingrove Art Gallery Museum in Glasgow, the £450 million Quatermile project to covert a 19 acre hospital site in the capital, Eden Court Theatre and Cinema in Inverness and last but not the least the forestry commission office in the Highland city, all are the projects selected for the award.

Though this is a moment of pride for Scots but still few of the known architects in Scotland shares a mix response, few are a bit disappointing, as out for 54 only 4 buildings have been selected. According to them Scotland holds many quality projects and many new project are still taking shape amidst all this architectural growth, such a less number is really a set back. The Chief Executive of Scotland’s design watchdog Architecture and Design Scotland, Sebastian Tombs said, “These are all quality projects and a good indicator of the diversity on offer in Scotland

April, 25

Homelessness has struck the buzzing capital city Edinburgh badly with a significant shortage of homes for people. The scarcity of homes is such that it has been forecasted that Edinburgh would need an additional 12,000 homes over the next ten years. In such an adverse situation people are left with no options other than to choose for temporary accommodation options rather than having their own dwelling.

The main reason for this growing shortage for houses in the capital is the slow rate of construction of new homes which makes the situation more severe. It was known that the housing association of Edinburgh builds some 500 new homes every year which is not sufficient to meet the requirements.

If we look into the core of the issue we can find that among all other cities Edinburgh is the place which has the major shortage for homes. Another reason for this problem is inadequate investments for building new homes. The government should make sure that sooner or later this problem has to be tackled or else this stigma will ruin the cities treasured glory.

Scotland, Feb 15: The steep rise in the property market over the last few months have come to an end as according to the new Scottish House Price Monitor from Lloyds TSB Scotland. Figures show that after the three month long surge leading to 31 January 2008 the quarterly index has witnessed a fall of 1.6%. The fall is first of its kind over the period of last seven years.

While Dundee, Edinburgh and the south west region other than Glasgow, remain uninterrupted by the slide in the property price and they also showed a small rise. Despite the quarterly figure house prices retained their annual increase. Aberdeen registered 30% increase, along with the northern region other than the city, registered steep rise in the last two quarters. The house prices rose by 20%, in Edinburgh and Glasgow it raised by 18% and 5% respectively.

The Chief economist at Lloyds TSB Scotland, Professor Donald MacRae said: “This is the first quarterly fall in the average house price in Scotland for seven years. All the major cities and the areas outside continue to show an annual underlying price hike. After years of sensible adjustment the price gains over the inflation rate.”

The head of campaigns, James Jopling opined that regardless of the rise several people can’t able to afford the average price of £163,000. It will take much higher prices to make buying the price more affordable again. Initiatives have to be taken to provide more affordable homes to be specific rented homes to encourage buyers in the uncertain economic climate prevailing in Scotland.

Scotland, Feb 2: The real estate sector is undergoing a huge growth as the desire for a better quality life attracts people to the north of Scotland. The prices of the houses in the Highlands have undergone a rapid increase than any other areas in Scotland as according to the new statistics.

According to bank of Scotland the cost of a home in the region has experienced a three fold rise since 1997 by 221% as against Edinburgh that experience 201% growth during the same period. The survey has identified East Renfrewshire as the most expensive place in Scotland to buy a property. In the year 2007 the average price of a house in the Highlands was £173,081 it experienced a three fold increase as compared to the rates 10 years ago.

While commenting on this the manager of Highland Solicitors Property Centre, Sarah Woodcock said: “In the Highlands particularly around Inverness, we have seen an unbelievable growth with business opening flourishing in the area and lots of people are eager to settle in Inverness. High quality of life, modern lifestyle and opening to outdoors are some of the attracting features of Inverness. Some people are showing tendency to sell their property down south to settle in Highlands to get more for their money.”

Although the house price is high in the north of the border when compared to the other parts of the UK it is lower. As a contradiction to that five out of 10 least expensive areas in the UK were also in Scotland. House prices were expected to increase in Scotland in the year 2008.

Scotland, Jan 5: According to the new figure the house prices in Scotland is far greater than the UK average. The average price of the property in Scotland is rated at £151,178 this marked an increase of 1.8 percent on the third quarter of 2007 as against the average quarterly rise of 1 per cent in the UK. As according to the National Building Society the annual change was calculated as 6.9 percent.

The average cost of property in London is rated at £303,739 and is considered as the costliest followed by outer metropolitan areas at £259,160, Northern Ireland at £224,816. Homes located in the north of England are considered as the cheapest at an average of £133,202 followed by Scotland at £151,178, Yorkshire and Humberside.

A Bank of England report revealed that the number of home loans has witnessed a three year low during the month of November. In total 83,000 new home loans were approved for people for the purpose of buying property in November, this was the lowest figure since January 2005. It is for the fifth consecutive month and the loan rates for the houses have fallen.

According to Vicky Redwood, an economist at Global Insight: “The decrease in the number of housing loans is a bad news the number of loan approvals have dropped from 89,000 to 83,000 in November it is the lowest level in the past three years. The Bank of England’s survey shows that the bankers expect to tighten the allocation of loans further in first quarter and it is expected to pave the way for further reduction in the approvals.”

While commenting on this the UK and European economist at Global Insight, Howard Archer said: “The reduction in the number of housing loans during November shed light on to the fact that housing market activity is on a descending mode this is because of the increase in the house prices and the tightening lending practices as a result of credit crunch.”

He also expressed his hope that the house prices will decrease at least by 3 percent during the year 2008.

Scotland, Dec 4: The way of living differs from person to person. In the period of fast paced lifestyle the way in which we use and maintain the house differs a lot. Many researches spread light on to this fact. A recent research gave a clear picture about the Scottish people’s way of living.

The survey in this regard was conducted by Clydesdale bank as part of their quarterly House buyers Survey. People of Scotland are eager to buy more space for their home and are not showing interest in using that in a proper way they used to fill it with useless items.

More than half of the sample, 53 per cent, taken for survey admitted that their car is parked outside because of the space deficient in the garage. While 28 per cent of the sample answered that there is at least one room in their house that remains unused other than for dumping unwanted items.

Several house buyers in Scotland declared that they are using their spare rooms only for the purpose of dry laundry and they had their meals in the dining rooms once in a blue moon. Two third of the samples taken for this survey required at least one spare bedroom. Other than this 57 percent of the house buyers, more than half are obliged towards the square footage while purchasing a new home.

The survey conducted by the Clydesdale bank is an eye opener in recognizing the lifestyle of Scottish people and their concept of house and its maintenance.

November, 21

A sudden decline has been noticed in the new houses been built in Scotland, as per the figures the rates at which these houses are taking shape has shown steep fall in last year. It is seen that the difficulties which builders face to grab the planning permission and other legal formalities in order to move further is one of the main reason for making the process slow. With the growing number of population and demand for more and more houses, it is predicted that in coming years about 270,000 new houses would be needed.

The graph shows that there was a 9 percent fall in the number of new houses built last year, if we look at the present rate at which these new houses are taking shape, one would feel a need to exhilarate this current trend. According to the Community minister Stewart Maxwell the number of houses built last year was inadequate; he backed for radical housing reform, to curb this problem. “To control the situation we have proposed a national goal to increase new housing supply to 35,000 a year by the middle of the next decade” he said.

Even the private builders have informed that there is a great demand for new houses in the market, but the government is not providing the adequate land for building these homes. This lack of supply of land is making the work slow, along with this, poor planning system and other infrastructural problems has made the situation worse.

All these statistics and graphs shows how adverse are the situations, and sudden action is needed to seek out this in efficiency. Now it’s the time for the government to take some positive measures to meet the demand and give the Scottish people their dream home.

October, 25

Its cashing times for those husbands whose wives elopes with any other man, as the husband can get a compensation on behalf of the loss of their wives by the person who fled their spouse. Such instances are becoming a common sight in our society when a wife elopes with her boss or colleague. In such cases as per the US law the spurned spouse has the right to get the sum of money as compensation by a lawsuit. This alienation of affection is making the life of such person with whom the wife elopes.

Now it is asked to the US Supreme Court to reduce the damages a man should pay to the husband whose wife ran off with him. In one of such instance in Mississippi a business man paid £55,000 in punitive damages to the spurned spouse. It is known that Mississippi is the only seven US states which still entertain lawsuits by people who claim loss of their wife, as a law rooted in the antiquated notion of a woman as her husband’s property. This law on one side has given some relaxation to the spurned husband but on the other hand has made the person with whom the wife elopes restless.

According to the Mississippi court such suits is for the protection of the love, society, companionship and comfort which is the foundation of a marriage. And hope next time such instance occurs then it would be more calculative before it happens.

Do Estate Agents Have It To Easy?Do estate agents and solicitors have an easy life? I recently added a property section to our Scotland site. I wanted to see what response we would get and how effective our site would be for very competitive search terms like Properties for sale in Scotland.

After about 1 week the site started to perform incredibly well, and our site has achieved a high ranking on many property key words for Scotland. The property section of our site being Properties for sale in Scotland

We have also added the major cities, Edinburgh properties and Glasgow properties for sale. Now that we had achieved positioning on the search engines and traffic was hitting our property section, this I thought,  would be the easy bit, adding properties…. How wrong was I!  I’ve been involved with the Internet for almost 10 years and I have never witnessed such a poor response from any industry.

I proceeded to build a very exhaustive list of solicitors and estate agents in Scotland and contacted them all by email. Of course I would expect a poor response 1st time round to an email campaign, but at least I was expecting a response. Not one person has responded to my email and when I called I was told by several estate agent they would think about it. The email offered was allowing agents to add their customers properties for FREE for 2007 to our property section.

So where did I go wrong? I know the site gets good traffic, I know we appear on the major search engines and I am pretty sure that the site is easy to navigate. So is it possible that all solicitors and estate agents in Scotland have enough business without having to be aggressive? Is it they don’t understand why it’s important to have as many good internet channels as possible to market properties? Or is it because they don’t really have much in the way of competition?
So maybe it is about time the Sellers actually missed out the middle man and go direct!!! Why pay between 1 to 3% commission to agents who cannot be bother to understand and get good at the internet. How many solicitors websites have you come across which are appalling, bad photos, bad navigation and not up to date. I say “power to the people!!!” start marketing your homes direct. The travel industry learnt this years ago, people want to book direct with hotels, they don’t want to go through agent, so why is selling your house any different? Of course there is the legal aspect, but a solicitor can still do that part of the process, just don’t allow them to sell your house and make money without really having to work for it.

The advantages of going direct and selling through the internet:

• You can save your self a small fortune. With the average house price above £180,000 in the UK now and the average solicitor fee being 2%, they are making £3600 per sale.
• You can deal with buyers direct, my own personnel property experience has proved the more involved I am in buying or selling a property the better outcome has been. When you deal direct with buyers you can get a real feel for people’s opinion about your property. It also give buyers an opportunity to find out how much you really want…
• You are in total control of the sale of your property.
• You can be very flexible about arranging viewings.

The disadvantages of selling direct:

• Confidence, if you are not in a rush to sell then you can take your time and get the right deal, however if you need to sell straight away you may sell to cheaply.
• All marketing costs are yours and these normally have to be paid up front (although these costs can still be much cheaper than a solicitor doing it).
• You will still need a solicitor to deal with the legal issues, deeds etc.

There are several websites which can help advise you on how to sell your property, so if you are up for the challenge and want to save some money why not give it a go and sell your own property.