The Cullen Team is Growing

Cullen are pleased to announce the appointment of two new members of staff to join the existing team to help ensure the company can deliver a premier service to it's Landlords and tenants.

Alexa Wilson has joined to take up a new post of Reception/Property Administrator and will be the first point of contact for all incoming enquiries to the office. Alexa has worked in the Edinburgh property sector for seven years and has experience in both the letting and estate agency elements of the property industry.


Hana Petrie has also joined the Cullen ranks to increase the maintenance department and is also an experienced property professional. Hana has a building and estate management degree which will be put to good use as the maintenance dept continues to provide a first class service for both Landlords and Tenants.

They have both received a warm welcome from the rest of the Cullen team who wish them well in their respective new roles.

Are First Time Buyers poised to kick start the housing market?

The implosion of the mortgage market in the UK following the worldwide economic downturn after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 has meant that potential first time buyers have not been able to buy their first property due to the high deposit levels demanded by the lenders.


The lenders were as uncertain of the future economic trends as the rest of us so increased the deposit levels required to safeguard their own equity in a mortgaged property to ensure they’d get their money back if everything went wrong.

However, we now seem to have reached a plateau, or more accurately a plain, where everyone accepts that the economy will be flat for the next year or so, but is unlikely to collapse, and the slow growth will commence thereafter. Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England has predicted this scenario in his recently released quarterly bulletin.

The lenders appear to have gained comfort from this and are now offering mortgages with much lower deposit levels, particularly to first time buyers. For example Lloyds TSB now have a product at 95% Loan to Value, at an interest rate of 3.94%, fixed until January 2015, with an arrangement fee of £1,094.00. (source: moneysupermarket.com)

On a property valued at, say, £150,000.00 the repayments on an interest only basis on the above mortgage would be £468.00 per month.

Most first time buyers who are renting because they can’t afford to buy are paying more than this for a rental property anyway and so they now have a motive to purchase instead. They have also been saying that they could afford the mortgage payments each month but few had saved the £60,000.00 (40% of £150,000.00) for the deposit being asked for by the lenders until just recently.

If the bottom end of the property market starts moving again then prices will start to rise again slightly and it will create a natural market stimulation upwards into the housing market as well.
If this is the case, then rents may adjust back down slightly in the smaller property sector of the rental market but the offset for landlords would be a return to some capital growth once again, albeit slowly for the next couple of years yet.

National Landlord Day

Cullen Property enjoyed another fantastic day taking part in exhibiting at the National Landlord Day at Dynamic Earth, organised by the Scottish Association of Landlords.

There were around 400 landlords attending the day, which featured guest speakers discussing the upcoming Tenancy Deposit Scheme, tax improvements for landlords, and the future of the lettings market in Scotland.

There were also a number of different exhibitors for landlords to meet and discuss services with, such as Jobs in Lettings, Bank of Scotland, TC Young, Alan Boswell Group and Fire Prevention Works Ltd, to name a few.

Cullen Property have attended the past four National Landlord Day's.  The aim of the event is to bring together landlords in Scotland, for them to meet similar individuals and discuss the ups and downs of letting a property in Scotland. 

We will be uploading photos shortly to let you see how it went.