Property News 2015 Property Eye Highlights @onthemarketblog

High profile online estateagents continued growth was a key highlight, in 2015 L to R CEO and founder emoov Russel Quirk CEO easyproperty.com Rob Ellice, Michael and Kenny Bruce purplebricks.com Tepilo founder Sarah Beeny and CEO and founder ,Sarah Peach of iamtheagent.com [other notable new entrants include upestates.co.uk, settled.co.uk ,thehomecloud.co.uk]

Mayor of London Boris Johnson focused on housing in annual 2015 Christmas message

January

The number of properties for sale are close to historic lows, says the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics).The professional body says new properties being listed have fallen for 10 of the last 12 months.Despite this it said house price growth slipped to its slowest pace since May 2013 as the number of buyers fell.

Common Floor India's Largest Property Search Portal receives extra round of funding from google capital

February

Ill fated property website, and slated by many industry analysts launches with a whimper, I'm not going to mention what a disastrous project, it's become.

UK house prices fell in February for the first time in five months, according to research by Nationwide.Average house prices fell 0.1% from £188,446 in January to £187,964, said the UK's second biggest mortgage lender.

March

Nearly half a million UK households are still in negative equity - meaning their homes are worth less than the mortgages on them, figures show.

There is wide regional variation, with 41% of borrowers in Northern Ireland - 68,000 homeowners - in negative equity at the end of 2013, the figures from mortgage group HML show,In north-east England and Cumbria the figure is 16%.But in London, where house prices have surged, only 1% are in negative equity.

April

Nine billion pounds of taxpayers' money goes to private landlords every year in housing benefit.And the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that at least £3bn of that money is spent on poor quality accommodation annually.That's a lot of public money. And some private landlords are getting rich at our expense while, in some areas, 70% of privately rented homes don't meet the government's decent homes standard.Despite the huge amounts at stake, councils across the country have little control over where housing benefit ends up. And some unscrupulous landlords are taking the cash while exploiting vulnerable tenants

Shares in the UK's second largest online property website Zoopla jump after it agrees to buy price comparison site uSwitch. Zoopla - the second biggest UK online property site after Rightmove - will pay up to £190m for uSwitch.It said the combination of the two businesses would give consumers the ability to research, find and manage their homes on a single platform.

May

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, complained that housebuilding in the UK was half that of his native Canada, despite the UK having a population twice the size. The consequences have been rocketing prices in London, the South East and some other parts of the country. How did it become so hard to build houses.

State Opening of Parliament : David Cameron's flagship policy of giving 1.3 million housing association tenants in England the right to buy their homes at a discount was covered in the Queen's Speech.

Landlords are earning £5.6bn a year by renting out unsafe homes which fail to meet legal standards, a report says.The Citizens Advice study says 740,000 households in England live in privately rented homes which present a severe threat to tenants' health from problems like severe damp and rat infestations.Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: "Rogue landlords are putting profits before safety."

Elon Musk Debuts the Tesla Powerwall ,a home battery that charges using electricity generated from solar panels a technology Wall mounted, rechargeable lithium ion battery

June

Mortgage experts are predicting a "gentle recovery" in activity in the UK housing market as new figures show lending rose slightly.Gross mortgage lending rose by 2% in May compared with April to £16.2bn, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).This, and economic indicators, signalled a "limited" increase in activity in the coming months, it said.However, it pointed out that lending was 3% lower than in May last year.

July

The UK housing market "is beginning to hot up again" as mortgage approvals rose by 8% in a year, a banking body has said.The number of mortgages approved for house purchases increased to 44,488 in June, the British Bankers' Association (BBA) said.This was 5,000 more approvals than the average of the previous six months.

High Street estate agents in London caught on camera in money laundering sting using undercover reporters trying to buy mansions worth between £3million and £15million fuelling London's property bubble.

New measures to help people buy and build houses will feature in this week's Budget, the government has said.

David Cameron announced plans to build discounted homes for first-time buyers under 40 and use public land for homes.The measures - including a plan announced before the election to extend the Right to Buy scheme to housing association tenants - form part of the Housing Bill.
Inheritance tax on homes worth up to £1m will also end, it was confirmed.

August

Top Chef Tony Singh sells house with the help of tech company Periscope,According to the city’s leading property portal ESPC, viewings of Mr Singh’s five-bedroomed home have tripled since it was streamed on Periscope.Traditional high street agent in cambridgeshire also trials live streaming using the tech start up periscope and is impressed how technology boosted attention

Google has unveiled a new green global product, Project Sunroof, which aims to make it easier for people to install solar panels in their homes.

Online agency easyProperty launches its residential sales service this month, ahead of schedule - surprising many within the industry , its lettings section was launched in 2014

September

More senior management leave Countrywide plc which began in May with departures of Bob Scarff, managing director of high street agency estate agency, and Nick Dunning, group commercial director involved in the lettings side.

Bank of England concerns over Property buy-to-let boom December 2015.

SouFun, operator of China’s biggest real estate portal and known as Fang.com in China, has secured $US400 million from private equity firms IDG Capital and Carlyle Group

October

eMoov celebrate its successful crowdfunding campaign after raising £2,615,530, more than two and half times its target.

eMoov begin offering live video streaming of property viewings to make virtually visiting properties a real option for potential buyers. So house sellers can use the camera to show people around their house, live, or pre-recorded.

Nest Labs, Inc. architect of the thoughtful home, has announced a number of updates to the Works with Nest program, making it the most comprehensive platform for developers building connected home products .

Historic Housing and Planning Bill legislation introduced in under Housing Minster Brandon Lewis MP transforming generation rent into generation buy.measures include new starter homes , affordable housing , right to buy .pay to stay , planning reforms on brownfield sites , councils given more local planning power , rogue landlords fined or banned , along with a whole draft of measures to address housing shortage.

Riba Stirling Prize
A girls' secondary school in south London has won the Riba Stirling Prize, the UK's leading architecture award.

Section 21
New legislation within the landlords and lettings industry, becomes legal notice of eviction to tenants, cannot validly be served in the first four months of a tenancy.Newer time frames for service and a change from process to evidence come into effect.

High Court has ruled that Uber is not breaking the law in London, as the technology does not constitute a taximeter.

November

The Bank of England, in its quarterly inflation review, surprised some observers by forecasting that inflation will probably fall even lower, and stay there for longer.

The Bank's governor, Mark Carney, forecast that the main measure of inflation might fall below 1% in the coming six months, and that it might also not rise back above the official target level of 2% for another two years.

Buy-to-let landlords and people buying second homes will soon have to pay more in stamp duty, Chancellor of the exchequer announces in autumn statement.

Connells group traditional high street estate agent acquires Hatched one of the original startups of the online estate agency model.

GRAND DESIGNS: RIBA HOUSE OF THE YEAR awarded to Flint House

easyproperty.com online estate agents, part of the easy group brand , become the first online estate agency the UK to incorporate clicktopurchase®, an agent-operated transactional platform for buying and selling property online. It provides the facility for a legally binding private treaty exchange of contracts to be conducted electronically as part of the sales process

To all readers of @onthemarketblog

Wishing You All a

~Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year~

December

UK Government encourages online real estate agents and Fintech startups A better deal: boosting competition to bring down bills for families and firms

Cop21 takes place in Paris , with a Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction to speed up and scale up the sector’s huge potential to reduce its emissions and literally build greater climate resilience into future cities and infrastructure.

High profile buy-to-let property millionaires Judith & Fergus Wilson sell remaining property portfolio for £250m and retire .