Ronke Lawal's Page

Happy New Homes Week

As the whole nation prepares to spend the next week enthusiastically celebrating the wonderful world of new homes, we thought this might be a good opportunity to take stock of the market and cross some optimistic fingers that we might all be headed in the right direction at last.

It can’t go unmentioned that the start of New Homes Week, September 12th, is two years to the day since the board of Northern Rock first asked the Bank of England for a “liquidity support facility” (a sub, to you and me), due to its exposure to bad debt in the American sub-prime mortgage market. Within a few days worried savers had withdrawn £2 billion from Northern Rock and in February of the following year the bank was privatised.

If we can see this event as the start of the enormous downturn we’ve all been enduring these last two years, perhaps it’s not too early to look back over more recent months and ask whether we aren’t starting to climb our way out of trouble: there aren’t many green shoots around yet, but are we starting to lay down their roots?

Housebuilder Magazine for one has found some fairly substantial reasons to be cheerful. Obviously there’s a vested interest here, but even considering the source, the news is significant nonetheless. Reported recently alongside a “reservation surge for Bovis”, a “sales boost for Taylor Wimpey” and a “reservations boost” for both Miller and Galliford Try, were the results of an online poll carried out by the magazine, according to which 86% of respondents believed the market had bottomed out.

For a less biased but still really rather positive view, we might look at the most recent figures posted by the Land Registry’s house price index, which recorded a month on month house price rise for August of 1.7%. Across the country the year on year movement is still in negative figures, but the performance in August has begun to chip away at this, and in Wales the average house price has even had a year on year increase, of 3.1%.

Elsewhere, the Nationwide has also reported a rise in prices, for the fourth consecutive month. The lender has recorded a 3.2% rise in the average sale price over the first 8 months of 2009 and highlights the quarter on quarter rise of 3.3% seen for August as the highest increase since February 2007.

So, we might not be all the way there yet, but good things do appear to be happening at last. A heady mix of low prices (an average of 17% down on January 2008’s peak), cheap - albeit still difficult to come by- credit, realistic valuations from private sellers, pent up demand and under supply seems to be doing the trick.

See you next time!!

CAPTAIN KICKBACK

Future of Gaming: games bigger than films!

It was with great interest today that I viewed on YouTube the longest advert I’ve ever seen for a game. It wasn’t a walkthrough video, nor the developers talking about how they created it. It was in fact a 14 minute and 11 second epic film, setting the scene for the upcoming Assassins Creed II [...]

Gambling Best Prices Facts

Last season William Hill customers enjoyed more top prices than any other leading bookmaker. This season is no different. The price comparison was taken from the Racing Post (Saturdays) 09/08/08 – 03/10/09 (Tuesdays) 11/08/09 – 06/10/09 comparing team prices covering domestic and cup fixtures and World Cup and friendlies. Oggs has reviewed many of these and [...]

Drama as London Poker Season ends

Some of the world’s top poker players ended London’s three week poker fest in dramatic style this week. It was Peter Eastgate and Aaron Gustavson in the London leg of the European Poker League Tour and Daniel Negreanu and Barry Shulman in the final of the World Series of Poker Europe. Celebrity players were in attendance [...]

Real Players Review and Vote Their Favourite Casino Into Top Ten

Online casino review websites, of which there are plenty, offer two types of casino review; some offer biased and over praising narratives and others like Oggs.com tell it plain and straight, good points and bad. Oggs’s sister site Casinotabs.com has taken the review process one step further and now ranks best online casinos by a [...]

Bookies Open A Book On Books

Book World’s Super Thursday, Man Booker Prize, Nobel Literature all available at the Bookies! This is Book Week, or perhaps Bookies Week, or more closer to the point a week that encompasses three of the largest events in the Book calendar each year and for the first time is being covered by British Bookmakers. Today is the [...]