Forbes Estates Published by Paul Forbes · August 11 at 12:01 PM ·  * The new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has said he is considering stamp duty reform during his premiership * Changes to stamp duty can have a big impact on cooling or stimulating the level of activity in the UK housing market. Measures he has aired publicly […]

Looking back at the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day landing a few months ago, it reminded me of the huge changes that have happened to Chorley and more specifically the local property market since WW2. Back in 1946, the average wage in Chorley was just over £5 a week and to buy an average car […]

Whenever people sell their homes with us at Forbes Estate Agents one of the questions which nearly always comes up from them is – How do I respond to offers? Below is our five point advice on what you need to consider when deciding whether it’s an offer too good to refuse. An accurately priced […]

Improving the energy efficiency of Britain’s 27.2 million homes, which are responsible for more than a quarter of the country’s CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, is seen as key to tackling the issues of climate change, fuel poverty and our country’s energy security. This is particularly important as in June the Government announced they […]

Buying or selling a property can sometimes be stressful. It can even cause you sleepless nights. At Forbes Estate Agents we do all we can to insulate our clients from any unnecessary stress. Our years of experience in helping people to move homes means there’s hardly anything we’ve not come across and dealt with successfully […]

The average homeowner in the UK moves every 20.2 years… That average in the 1970’s and 80’s was around every 10 to 11 years; in the 1990’s it increased to the mid-teens (in terms of years) and in the early part of the Millennium, it dropped again to the low teens. When we had the […]

Would it surprise you to know that in some parts of Chorley, predominantly prosperous areas with high proportions of mature residents, the housing crisis is not one of supply so much as dispersal of that supply? Theoretically, in Chorley there are more than enough bedrooms for everyone – it’s just they are disproportionately spread among […]

One of the key factors of the health of the local property market is the number of properties for sale at any one time. The issue with housing is that when demand goes up, unlike with a confectionary bar factory, who can add a couple of hours overtime to increase supply/production to satisfy demand, it […]

We received a call recently from a retired gentleman who had lived in the same house for more than 40 years. He was relocating to be closer to his family and was selling his property for the first time and unsure what to ask agents. The advice we gave him is what we share with […]

Nationally, the number of new homes created in 2018 was 222,194, the highest since 1989. Yet since 2002, the average number of properties built in the UK has only been 146,700 per year. You would think, seeing all the new homes sites around, you could ask are we building too many houses, especially off the […]