How To Sell / Buy UK Property In The Credit Crunch
What will property buying and selling be like in Hebden Bridge after the credit crunch is over?
Lessons are being learned. In particular, the banks and other financial institutions in the UK are going to find themselves operating their business plans with a keener eye on one number in particular. The banks are also going to be keeping an eye on that self same number as it relates to their clients, both business customers and individuals. What number is that ?Leverage, or gearing.Leverage is the ratio between the amount of debt with which a business operates and the amount of equity with which it operates.
For example, if a business was running business operations partly with borrowed money say in the form of a bank loan to the tune of £300,000 and partly with share capital to the tune of £100,000, it would be operating business activities at the gearing ratio of 4. (The total amount of operating capital is four times the amount of equity deployed in the business)The analogy with the bicycle is a good one.
A bicycle is a system and so is a business enterprise a system and so is the buying of a house with a mortgage a system. If for example, the cog at the pedals has a circumference four times that of the small cog at the rear wheel, then for every complete turn of the pedals there will be four turns of the rear wheel ! That is what makes cycling such a thrill – you get to leverage, or gear, your body energy.When a bicycle starts off from rest on a level road the cyclist will initially have the bike in low gear and then go up the gears as speed is gathered – and the building of a business is just like that. The ratio of debt to equity initially starts off low and then builds. But just as with in cycling the cyclist will eventually encounter a change in circumstances, for example a steep hill or a depletion in body energy, so too the business system or property purchase will sometimes encounter external or internal circumstances or eventualities that make the going that bit harder. If the cyclist in seeing the hill approaching progressively changes down with the gears a stalling will be prevented and forward motion albeit more slowly can be maintained. But in the business system or in the property purchase with a mortgage system the act of changing down gears to enable the business owner to keep going forward is the reducing of the debt to equity ratio and it is called deleveraging.At the individual level, this means that banks are not going to be approving mortgages at the same loan-to-value ratio as in pre credit crunch times because they perceive that the incline of the road could be changing unfavorably. In plain language they are afraid of falling house prices having the effect if INCREASING the loan to value ratio for the mortgage case and so exposing themselves to greater risk.
The deleveraging of property purchases will become the norm and so house buyers will have to put up a higher deposit in funding their property than formerly.This will no doubt have the greatest impact on the first time buyer market. And from the sellers perspective there will be fewer buyers out there with the ability to buy.It would be a very gloomy prospect indeed for property buyers and sellers in Glasgow and Central Scotland if it were not for the fact there is one particular estate agent in that part of the UK with an ability to come up with clever ways of getting a deal to go through even though there is credit crunch lending criteria being applied.