Buyers from France and Italy made up 9% and 5% respectively, with the remainder a mixture of overseas buyers from the Middle East, Far East, and Australia. Of these, 53% were owner/occupiers whilst 47% were investing in buy-to-let property.
Jo Eccles, Managing Director of Sourcing Property, comments: “People are often of the view that buying agents, especially those in London, largely act for the super rich overseas buyer, however, we have a strong British client base, the majority of which are owner occupiers (78%). Of these, 13% were first-time buyers and 12% were buying for children, an increasing trend. Our clients also work across a diverse range of industries, with 50% in banking and financial services and the rest divided across industries including insurance, fashion, recruitment, government, property and law.
We saw a lot of sealed bids in the first half of 2014; and in four out of five sealed bids we entered, we were bidding against other buying agents. Unrepresented buyers often didn't even get a look in. In the final six months of the year, the market became very price sensitive and where the asking price was too high, many buyers and tenants refused to even bid as they didn't want to deal with unmotivated sellers and landlords. On the whole, prices remained fairly flat, with the exception of trophy homes, where some buyers were prepared to pay up to 15% to 20% premium to secure something rare.”
When it comes to rentals and relocations, Sourcing Property has seen a 26% growth on 2013, with the highest majority of relocations from the US at 46% with 36% from Europe and 18% from within the UK. These included employees from CBRE, Lulu Lemon, JP Morgan and RBC.
Jo adds: “We are in talks with a number of large corporations to handle their employee relocations, and we expect this growth to continue as companies, especially tech, digital, media and finance, increase their relocation numbers, and many would-be-buyers opt to rent instead. We have partnered with a superb settling in and education consultants as part of this growth.”
