MORTGAGE providers lent about £123m. less last year compared to 2008, latest figures have revealed.
The lack of lending has been described as the main contributor to last year’s slowing housing market.
More than £319m. was lent last year, down from about £442m. in 2008, according to Unusualities of Guernsey’s year-end conveyance figures.
This latest drop represented a massive dip in lending from 2007, when more than £743m. was lent to property purchasers or owners.
Pierre Blampied (pictured), a director of Savills Private Finance (Channel Islands), said there had been considerable pessimism within the market during the last few years.
However, he believed this had reduced going into 2010.
‘The market during 2009 was held back due to the lack of mortgage funding being available and the withdrawal of the 95% loan-to-value mortgage,’ he said.
‘This is purely the reason for the lack of activity as house prices are today still at all-time highs.’
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Article posted on 6th January, 2010 - 11.30am
26 Article Comments
Mr Blampied shows himself as a naive vested interest. The number of house sales are down because sellers think their houses are worth more than the buyers do. House prices are at an all time high (which is very bad news for most Guernsey people, so please stop saying it as though it is a good thing) because nobody with any intelligence is spending so much money on such poor quality housing. The end of the line has been reached.
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Yes you are right inbreda, The houses are poor quality for the price that they are being sold for,i paid 650k for my house and still had to do and spend a lot just to bring it up to the right standard.MY brother who is local moved away and now owns a estate agents in the uk said that houses in guernsey are over priced.OK yes it is a very nice place to live but that is no excuse for what locals have to pay to get a decent house that is of poor quality.
I think ppl just get greedy here i konow of a few that when they have had there house valued to sell they have put 100 + K on top and the estate agents have gone along with it-some locals have no choice but to leave the island just to get on the property ladder. sad
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coco
The October Halifax house price index gave the average price of a house in the UK as £165,528
My niece ( twice removed )would be very grateful if you could find her a building plot under 200K in the island
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coco
I think you will find people are greedy where ever you go, its just whether you can get away with it or not.
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Ray
Finding a plot for under 200k in GSY is the day pigs will fly.
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coco
That’s one of the main reasons that a fully built house is so expensive. Land is scarce , although you wouldn’t think so by the number of delapidated vineries still around.When will the relevant States Committee admit that growing tomatoes will never return to the old days levels
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Ray
Oh come on- to build a house to the standard that most are built to dose not warrent the amount they sell for blelieve me i know because i have a few friends in the trade and i know how much profit they make.
As for all the run down vineries-well i agree with you on that subject the states need to wake up,,, but i do know to take a glass hs down costs a lot of money
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coco
stop moaning if you can afford to pay £650,000 for a house life must be sweet. Talk about losing touch with reality.
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Good call Kevin….it’s those who can’t afford to buy a one bedroom flat that we should be concerned about.
Incidentally, I saw a plot of land at the top of Le Villocq Lane with a dilapidated house (i.e. a burned out shell with no roof) for sale at £600,000! Unbelievable.
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Excuse me.it is not just first time buyers this effects.What i can afford comes down to hard work and i can tell you that i am in touch with reality and it was hard to get what i have got. But did i moan,No i just got on with it.
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coco
Well done for putting in the hard work to get your house.
But on another note will you be selling (if you do)at a lower than market price?
and what is wrong with the standard of houses built over here? ofcourse it depends on the people doing the building but generally the standards are pretty good.
Its all market forces i`m afraid.
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i am in this house for life now and if i was to sell it would be sold at market price.What i would not do is market it for more than it is worth like some do.
The standard of some houses over here for what they are being sold for is disgusting. You should take a look around then judge for yourself.
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coco – the problem we now have is that on an island where culturally property ownership is a must have, many hardworking people cannot even get onto the property ladder. One could argue that they have got something to legitimately moan about.
Incidentally I don’t personally subscribe to that cultural philosophy. My wife and I were property owners, we sold last year and now live in rental. For us the benefits outweigh the negatives.
Still, it seems to me that we have a choice to either control the market, change the culture or accept that a lot of disgruntled locals will up and leave because they can’t buy a property….
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coco
First you say that the standard of most of the buildings do not warrent what they sell for, then you say that only some are. So we`ve gone from most to some?. How much is to much? or is it just your opinion?. If some are asking way over the top which agree with you on, then i`m sure the market will make the correction which i know is somthing that does happen a lot.
Whwn you say the standard of the properties do you mean older ones or new builds?
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bcb why dont you go and have a look around at some of the houses on the market old and new from low to high and how much it would cost to do MOST of them up and then how much you would get at the end of it, and then you might understand where i am coming from.
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coco
I do understand where you are coming from. But i still dont understand what you mean by your statement that the standard they are built to and the price being asked. Are you suggesting that most are built to a poor atandard? which i can tell you they are not.
We cant do much about the market and the effects it has on house prices but that is no different in most countries. I dont need to look around as i am in the building trade myself so i can see what the standard of most buildings are built to. There is some shocking work that goes on over here but i wont go into the causes of that as i think you probably know your self.
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bcb exactly like you said there is some shocking work.
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coco
It’s been a long day and it’s getting late so I hope my calculations are wrong.
There is a builder free plot on offer in 12/1/10 Press at 428K. If you were lucky enough to be able to put down 28K and ONLY borrow 400K the Court and Advocate fees alone would come to over 19K.
At 4.99% over 25years the 300 monthly payments at £2,336 per month would come to £700,800 but at least you would own a builder free plot!
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Ray then add the cost of the build + finishing you are now over a million. Have you got a house that would sell for what has been invested
no if the plot is not sat in a very nice part of guernsey
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Coco, I can see what you are saying, but its market forces that have pushed our housing prices to ridiculous levels not greed, the builders know this, so charge accordingly for their work also.
Some of the work I have seen over here, equated with the price charged for said work is nothing more than daylight robbery.
The value of the bricks and mortar, and the quality of the work and the house unfortunately have very little to do with house prices on Guernsey, its all about location, size of plot, and above all, being on Guernsey where the average wage is higher than most, crime is much lower than most, and jobs available for all (even now).
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isn’t it about time someone made some sort of small-minded anti-immigrant comment.
that’s normally the way of these debates and this one looks like an open door!!
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guern exile
Yeah. Bloody Gerry builders !
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I think that the thing you have to look at here is, if a property is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. When I was working as a mortgage adviser (btw i am in no way connected to the industry any more) my key advise was, how much do you want to pay for it, or how much do you want it. I recently bought a house for £312k, it was marketed at £320, when it was bought 4 years ago it was bought at £215,000, did i feel aggreived at having to pay so much more then 4 years ago, yes a little, did I think it was worth paying £320k for, no, £312k-yes as a maximum, compared with other properties I saw in that price range and with similar facilites it was the best and I wanted it – but not for more then I wanted to pay for it.
The market forces are moved by consumers. Coco, is your house really and truly worth what you paid for it? if you answer yes, great, if you think not then you are feeding the same market forces that you are complaining about.
As for builders work – its like with everything, investigate, get quotes, ask for references and in guernsey the best tool is word of mouth. There is a list of builders i wouldnt touch with a barge pole – and there are builders I would trust to run with a project unsupervised. Which would you use on the single biggest investment of your life???
If no one bought any property for a year, those prices would drop as sellers would still want to sell and so would be forced into dropping the price.
Estate agents dont help when valuations can have swings of upto £100k or as was the case with the property I purchased £50k – £25k either side of the marketed price. But even if an estate agent agrees a price – the seller can ignore and do what they want – that is the way it works – but a surveyor still has to value it for the mortgage company so they are also at fault.
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Can i have the names of the trustworthy builders please.Aunt GP
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Unfortunately the high cost of Housing in the island is due to full employment and market forces, cheap housing is usually found in areas where there is no work and high un-employment rates, that is still true in large parts of the UK and rural France.
The other problem we have is shortage of land so you can’t build your way out of it either. Guernsey will always be a very attractive place to live and that is reflected in the demand and cost of housing. The States has done what it can since 1949 to protect access to local homes for local people by having the local market housing laws. Over the last 3 years or so the Housing department working together with the Guernsey Housing Association has introduced a new tenure of housing through the partial ownership/ shared equity scheme, in order to give people the chance of getting on the housing ladder and we hope to make a lot more accommodation under this scheme available in the months and years to come. It is difficult to get on the housing ladder but it is a fallacy that home ownership has ever been easy, it wasn’t all that long ago when people with mortgages were paying 17 ½ % interest rates it has been in single figures for some considerable time now.
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coco
Word of mouth is best. Surely you must know someone who knows a good builder? there are plenty good ones about.
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