Repossessed Property News

First-time homebuyers (February 09, 2008)

First-time homebuyers

If there is a recession, who will benefit in the property market? And will amateur property developers, who, thanks to Sarah Beeny and Kirstie Allsopp's television programmes, have been nurturing nauseating dreams of squeezing vast profits from cheap and cheerless accommodation, come hideously unstuck?

"First of all," says Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, "I don't accept there is going to be a recession." But he concedes there is a slowdown in the property market and that first-time buyers are already benefiting from it. "The amateur buy-to-let investor is finding that funds are not as readily available, and is also more cautious about assuming rent will pay their outlay," he says. "So their numbers are reducing and the poor old first-time buyers are getting a better deal because they are more likely to buy the properties that were being taken from their grasp by amateur developers." Bolton King says two years ago only 8% of properties were bought by first-time buyers. "That was the lowest level, and down from 25-33% when I first started in this game. But now it's back to 13% and I can only see that proportion increasing during 2008."

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