Belfasttelegraph.co.uk > Woman > House & Home

Cash bonus to purchase a home

Javascript is needed to use most of these tools:

Print
Text size

By Helen Carson
Thursday Sep 27 2007

Northern Ireland developers are paying stamp duty and mortgage costs for buyers in a bid to kick start the flagging property market, the Telegraph can reveal today.

With house prices at an all-time high - despite a recent drop of 8% - and investors and first-time buyers priced out, builders are prepared to dig deep to sell new homes.

The number of first-time buyers has fallen by 17.5% in one year. The most recent figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders have shown there were 9,700 first-time buyers in 2005, but this number fell to 8,000 in 2006.

Fewer people took out mortgages in the province between these two years with first-time buyers bearing the brunt of the spiralling house prices.

But developers are now offering incentives to appeal to beleaguered first-time buyers here. Armoy Homes, for example, is currently offering a three-fold package of incentives which includes all its properties sold as a "turnkey package" with stamp duty paid and up to £600 a month paid straight into a buyer's bank account towards a mortgage over 24 months.

Heather Ewart, manager at Armoy Homes Property Services, said: "There isn't a catch. With the market slowing down we realised we had to do something."

Ms Ewart admits, however, with a six-week turnaround period from sale to completion it is a good opportunity for first-time buyers or investors.

And the strategy has worked with Armoy taking a dozen bookings for some of its properties in Cloughmills, Ballymoney and Castlerow recently.

Another local developer, Hagan Homes, is also paying stamp duty for buyers at its Linen Lane development in Bangor.

Henry Campbell, sales executive at Hagan Homes, said they are specifically targeting first-time buyers: "When people come to buy a property, very often they do not realise the costs involved and we want to do our best to eliminate some of those, especially for first-time buyers."

Again, buyers will not have to pay stamp duty.

The homes here are also turnkey standard which means kitchens, bathrooms, blinds, carpets and floor tiles are included too.

Gillian Campbell, of Gillian Campbell Estates, the selling agent for Linen Lane, said: "With virtually no properties for sale under £125,000 - the stamp duty threshold - more first-time buyers have to pay this and it is automatically charged at 1%. And this is not something they can pay out of their mortgage, it is real cash out of their pocket."

And with just 10% of properties in Northern Ireland selling for between £100,000-£150,000, according to University of Ulster statistics, Ms Campbell added: "The stamp duty threshold has not kept pace with house prices in Northern Ireland."

Prof Alastair Adair, one of the authors of the University of Ulster's House Price Index, said: "This could indicate developers are not selling houses in the numbers they anticipated."

He said, however: "This is positive news for first-time buyers who were at the sharp edge of the market last year. The market appears to be correcting itself.

"This will be welcome news for government, which says affordable housing is a priority for first-time buyers. This message seems to be getting out to developers who are responding to this in a positive way."

And home-owners with property on the market are feeling the pinch with many having to drop their asking price by up to £10,000 in a bid to sell.

Growing uncertainty in the housing market is also being fuelled by the ongoing Northern Rock situation. The financial institution was forced to call in the Bank of England as lender of last resort earlier this month amid meltdown in the wholesale money markets, on which it relies for most of its funding.

The news caused a run on the bank by savers worried that the bank would collapse.

Javascript is needed to use most of these tools:

Print
Text size

Just Married - Readers' Pictures

Horoscopes

Love and Sex

Young Italians are reviving the once popular pastime of car sex

Irene Alison reports on a recessionary recreation.

Debrett's guide to divorcing with good manners

Breaking up may be hard to do, but now it needn't be impolite. Jonathan Owen and Paige Long report.

Just Married

Just married: Philip and Alison Cosgrove

Philip and Alison Cosgrove, from Newtownabbey, fell in love after meeting on a dating website. Philip (44), a baker, and Alison (37), a health trust research manager, had their first date in August 2010.

Just married: Gillian and Mark Allison

Mark Allison married the love of his life Gillian on his 40th birthday. Gillian (33), a transport manager from Lisburn, first met Mark, from Antrim, four years ago when he worked as a lorry driver.

Independent Woman

Navigation