Look4aProperty Blog

One of the UK’s leading property and finance experts has warned the Government’s second big bank bailout could flounder without more direct action.

Aaron Turner, founder of www.look4aproperty.com warned without new financial products on the market, this latest bailout may well not work.

“A lot of the loans that the banks have made in recent months have been to overseas companies, which means the British taxpayer is effectively bailing them out,” says Turner.

“While this new £200bn bailout might help, its impact is in danger of being limited. I have been calling on the Government to appoint a lending ‘tsar’ to force the banks to start lending for weeks, and I still think it would be the best solution.

“If the Government really wants to help homeowners and SMEs, they need to take on the position of the board of directors because they are effectively nationalised banks. They need to get new financial products out – within days they would start to see recovery.”

Turner adds that the housing market is still suffering, in spite of housing minister Margaret Beckett’s claims of an ‘upturn’.

“We are not seeing a universal pickup in the housing market,” he says.

“There will be pockets where it will happen but those are in isolated areas.

“Looking at the most recent data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, there were 47,000 mortgages agreed in November – in a normal market there will be over 100,000. I don’t think it is picking up and I don’t think it will do until there is action taken to get more products out on the market.”

In December, Dragon’s Den entrepreneur James Caan was made chairman of www.look4aproperty.com after taking a 25 percent stake in the company.

Two of the UK’s leading property tycoons have called on Gordon Brown to appoint a Lending Tsar to get the economy moving.

Dragon’s Den entrepreneur James Caan and his business partner at www.look4aproperty.com Aaron Turner say the government could use its new found influence with the banks far more effectively to kick-start borrowing.

The British taxpayer owns 58 percent of HBOS and will own 43 percent of the Lloyds Banking Group when the takeover is completed on January 19th. Caan and Turner believe this entitles the government a place on the board of both companies – something which should be used to rescue the flagging economy.

“The British public now owns a majority stake in two of the country’s biggest banking groups,” says Turner.

“With billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money invested in these banks, the public deserves to have a say in how they are run. The government needs to appoint a Lending Tsar to make sure that the banks operate in the best interests of the customers and the British public.”

James Caan snaps up the chance to bring ‘new deal’ to the UK housing market.

One on the UK’s highest profile businessmen has been appointed chairman of a leading property website, www.look4aproperty.com. James Caan says the move is a clear sign of his confidence in the UK housing market.

“This is the first stage in a number of initiatives we will be launching in 2009 through www.look4aproperty.com,” says Caan.

James Caan

Through the investment arm of his business empire – Hamilton Bradshaw – Caan has secured a 25 per cent stake in the look4aproperty.com site for an undisclosed sum which was founded by one of the country’s most successful young entrepreneurs, Aaron Turner.

Caan and Turner now plan to announce a series of new products to kick-start the struggling UK housing market in the New Year.

“I see this investment as an important move in the face of the current recession,” says Caan.

“Aaron Turner is one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs in the country and I am delighted to be working with him.”

Caan, famous for his role as one of the ‘Dragons’ in BBC show The Dragons Den, believes that Turner is one of the only innovative players in the property market.
“I invest in people,” says Caan. “I have been watching Aaron Turner’s career very closely and he represents one of those exciting and innovative entrepreneurs which this country needs.”

Aaron Turner first made his mark in the business world and on TV screens when he was chosen by Billionaire John Caudwell to run part of his Phones4U business in 2001. At the time the appointment made Turner one of the youngest Managing Directors in the country.

ENDS

About www.look4aproperty.com and Aaron Turner

Before setting up www.look4aproperty.com, Aaron Turner worked for 12 months as a ‘young MD’ for The Caudwell Group. The Caudwell Group is the parent company of several other major businesses, including Phones 4U and 20:20 Mobile Group. During Turner’s time at the company he was the subject of a BBC documentary for The Money Programme.

In 2004 he set up www.look4aproperty.com.

www.look4aproperty.com allows potential buyers or tenants to search for the right home for them, using properties submitted by estate agents up and down the country. It features properties both in the UK and abroad and has more than 100,000 properties listed in London alone.

Unlike similar sites, www.look4aproperty.com is not tied to, owned or affiliated with any estate agency company, or any other property company or media group.
For further information about www.look4aproperty.com, or to arrange an interview with Aaron Turner, please contact Alex Valk at Results PR on 020 7953 7529, or email [email protected].

One in three small businesses are still struggling to get affordable credit from British banks, despite the Government’s £500 billion bailout.

The Federation of Small Businesses’ (FSB) poll of over 5,000 members shows that 30 percent of small businesses have seen an increase in the cost of new or existing finance in the last two months.

Shoppers gather around a shop called the Credit Crunch Corner in Salisbury, England. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

FSB Chairman John Wright said: “With trade down and invoices increasingly being paid late, small businesses are having to turn to their banks for credit to tide them over. But, despite the Government’s £500 billion bailout, the banks still do not seem to be lending to small businesses.

“These figures show that with nowhere to turn, small businesses are having to consider cutting jobs and maybe even closing down. This would be a disaster for millions of employees as well as the economy as a whole.”

The figures also portray a disheartening situation for small businesses with almost two thirds (60 percent) reporting that trade had decreased in the last two months and forty percent are being paid later for services and supplies. This has led to more than a third (35 percent) considering reducing employee numbers, 36 percent considering cutting staff working hours, 41 percent contemplating curbing future hiring and 39 percent even thinking about closing down.

Mr. Wright went on to say: “The FSB will be urging the Government and the banks at today”s meeting to be more proactive and amenable in their lending practices. With interest rates down, it is more important than ever that the Government”s Small Business Finance Scheme is put in place. The onus will now be on the banks and their branch managers to stop their Scrooge-like tactics and open their pockets to small businesses.”

Aaron Turner, CEO of leading property search website, www.look4aproperty.com, commented: “The Government needs to force the banks to start lending—otherwise what is the point in having bailed them out with taxpayers’ money? The Government now holds a controlling share in a number of high street banks now. So why is it appointing itself to non-executive roles. My advice – get on the board and start making things happen!”

A two per cent base rate is fine but the Government needs to go the extra mile to have any hope of kick-starting the UK housing market.

Firstly, people need to start spending. This rate cut is not going to make that happen.

Money Lane

I detect a change of mindset in the past six months. People are terrified about losing their jobs. Any money consumers can claw back through rate cuts is going to be saved for a rainy day – and many of us are expecting a downpour in 2009.

People are still not going to start spending because they are worried about losing their jobs. If you are scared of losing your job you are not going to go on a spending spree.

Thousands of jobs have been lost in the UK recently. Even government agencies like HMRC are making reundancies. If people get bonuses this year they will be hoarding them away, not spending them and until the job losses slow or stop I can’t see that people will want to spend their money.

The Government needs to stop pussyfooting around. All these measures are at arm’s length and policies need to be more direct. The only way to kick start the housing market is to scrap stamp duty for one year, and to get the banks to start lending.

It needs to force the banks to start lending – otherwise what is the point in having bailed them out with taxpayers’ money?

Aaron Turner

The Government now holds a controlling share in a number of High Street banks. So why is it appointing itself to non-executive roles? My advice – Get on the board and start making things happen!

The Next Steps – what Gordon Brown and his Chancellor should do now:

::Kill stamp duty for at least a year immediately – the housing market will come back to life overnight

:: Make things happen with the banks – no more token gestures – start lending to the consumer, small businesses and to each other

:: Job security is the overriding need amongst consumers so redeploy people in government agencies rather than make them redundant as this is contributing to the problem even more – people think if even the Government is laying off then things must be really bad.

Until confidence returns, the economy will keep sliding – the Government needs to address the fundamentals rather than just tinker.

Aaron Turner, CEO Look4aProperty

Extra cash for mortgage-holders from last week’s interest rate cut will do almost nothing for the UK’s flagging economy.

Instead of stimulating spending, millions of borrowers will become savers not spenders as panic over job security sets in.

That’s according to Aaron Turner, housing market analyst and founder of www.look4aproperty.com.

“People aren’t taking the money they will save on their mortgages and spending it,” says Turner.

Turner says the UK is finally waking up to the importance of saving but this comes at the wrong time in the economic cycle. “What the UK needs is spending right now,” he says.

“We have been speaking to borrowers all week and asking them for their take on rate movements. The overwhelming feeling is any cut will not lead to much needed spending to stimulate the flagging economy.”

Turner predicts despite the UK having the lowest interest rate for more than 50 years the struggling retailers will not feel any benefit – which means Christmas in the high street is heading for disaster.

And figures due out this week from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) will show further doom and gloom in Britain’s plummeting economy.

“People are worried about their jobs and are putting any money they will save back into the banks. I think right now people won’t be spending a lot this Christmas.”

Turner adds interest rate cuts alone will not be enough to kick-start the economy, and that job security was the key to getting people to spend again.

“You only get people spending when they have got faith in their jobs. But you have only got to look at the high street and shops like Next and Marks & Spencer to see it’s a bloodbath out there.”

The hidden homeowners who’re next in line to feel a surge in the housing slump.

Home repossessions will rocket in the run up to Christmas and the New Year – and it will be Britain’s middle classes who will feel the crunch as they default on their monthly payments.

This is despite calls for lenders to ‘go easy’ on struggling families in the current economic climate.

The ticking time-bomb of self-certification mortgages – those given to the self-employed – is the next to explode, according to property expert Aaron Turner.

“These mortgages – known as Alt A – are one up from sub-prime, the riskiest category” says Turner, who’s also the owner of www.look4aproperty.com, one of Britain’s top online property websites.

“These ‘self cert’ mortgages account for nearly three million loans in this country and we’re seeing the first signs that repossessions are beginning to affect professional people”.

The latest Land Registry figures due out tomorrow (Tuesday, 28th October) are expected to show another significant fall in average house prices in England and Wales during September.

The previous month saw the average house price go down by 4.6% to £174,493.

Concern that ‘self cert’ was being used as a way for people to borrow beyond their means prompted the FSA – which regulates the mortgage lending business – to clamp down on their use in recent years.  However, for many home owners these measures may be too late.

Rising prices, vanishing bonuses, the threat of redundancy and a need to cut back on expenditure are all taking their toll on the more affluent sector of society.

“It means that some people who were relatively well off this time last year will inevitably be really struggling and the inflated salaries they said were earning to get their mortgages will come to haunt them in the form of home repossession” said Mr Turner.

Look4aProperty.com is delighted to announce the launch of its Premier Agent Membership Scheme (PAMS). The scheme has been launched to satisfy the growing demand from UK estate agents to create a seriously credible alternative to rightmove plc.

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It has been interesting watching the growth of Look4aProperty.com since its launch in February 2006. A well built website with simple and easy to use navigation has been well received within the online “technical community” as well as with Estate Agents and Property Seekers in the UK. An initial trickle of properties coming onto the website has developed into a very robust portfolio – it claims to advertise in excess of 100,000 UK properties already.

In a move into the ever-growing Overseas Property sector, Look4aProperty.com has now launched its new overseas property “channel”. The new overseas property search function contains properties from all around the globe including Spain, France and United States. Within just two weeks Look4aProperty has managed to encourage estate agents to add over 15,000 properties, of which over 5,000 properties are in Spain alone. Within just one week this is a significant chunk of the Overseas Property advertised on the other major UK property portals.

As per the UK properties, maps are provided (courtesy of Google) displaying the location of each property in a given location. Website users can also choose to specify prices in GBP, USD or EUR as required which is a unique but very useful feature for Overseas Users who may not be used to dealing in British Pounds.

Look4aProperty.com view the launch of the Overseas “channel” as the final item of main functionality required to complete the planned Phase 1 of the website. According to CEO Aaron Turner they are now developing “…new and exciting products which will revolutionise the UK property portal market and how people search for properties in the UK and overseas.”

Look4aProperty.com founder Aaron Turner was not however forthcoming when asked about new products in development. “Everyone at Look4aProperty.com is delighted to have finally launched our overseas section. Our 20 strong development team has been working on this new channel for over 6 months. We had planned to launch this new product before Christmas 2006 but some unforeseen technical issues prevented us from bringing it to the market at this time despite being under some pressure from the market to release this product on time. Clearly the large overseas agents and developers have been waiting for a new player to enter the Overseas Property portal marketplace and we have been stunned by the level of response from advertisers so far.”

Turner continued, “We see the launch of our overseas section as now completing the launch of Look4aProperty.com. 2006 was an exciting year for us but anyone thinking about launching a national UK and overseas property portal really needs to understand just how difficult it is to launch into this space now. The other large players are very established, all having been online prior to the year 2000 and all are owned by large media companies or are public companies. Breaking into this space is tough however, we have reached all of our objectives set for 2006 and are extremely excited about 2007. By year-end we plan on making Look4aProperty.com a household name. We have some extremely exciting products to bring to the market over the next couple of years; we can’t wait for it to happen. We also have a £100m 5 year marketing budget which will blow our competitors out of the water. Watch this space.”

For Press enquires please contact:

Andrew Bowles on 08712 77 08 32

We are pleased to announce the launch of our new Google Maps powered property search feature. You can now access a map view of your chosen property results by clicking upon the new “Plot Results on a Map” tab found at the top of the property results page. Users can then choose to zoom in and out of the map as required to view the properties in a chosen location. A satellite map view and hybrid view (a combination of the satellite and conventional map view) are also available helping Users to better research the locality of any chosen property.

View an example of the new Map Results page.

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