Skipton building society aims product at renters who cannot save enough for a deposit
A leading lender plans to launch a 100% mortgage aimed at would-be first-time buyers who cannot save for a deposit, the first since the 2008 financial crisis.
Standard home loans where the borrower does not have to put down a deposit used to be fairly commonplace but the last was axed in the wake of the financial crisis.
Nationwide expert hails ‘tentative signs of a recovery’ as buyers’ confidence improves
UK house prices rose by 0.5% in April after seven months of declines, according to Nationwide building society.
The modest increase took the average price of a home to £260,441 last month, from £257,122 in March. Compared with April last year, prices were down 2.7%, after a 3.1% annual decline in March.
Continue reading...Boss of Grosvenor, which owns swathes of Mayfair and Belgravia, warns of ‘more pain’ for commercial property market
The Duke of Westminster’s property company, which owns swathes of London’s exclusive Mayfair and Belgravia districts, has paid out a £50m dividend despite falling profits.
The boss of Grosvenor, the duke’s £11.5bn property empire, warned of a period of stagflation and that UK interest rates and inflation could stay high for longer than expected, resulting in “more pain” for the commercial property market.
Continue reading...Average of £224,963 for homes with one or two bedrooms is 2% higher than a year ago, says Rightmove
Those people hoping to get on to the UK housing ladder are facing record asking prices, as calm returns to the sector after last autumn’s mini-budget spooked the markets.
Rightmove, the property portal, reports that the average asking price of properties popular with first-time buyers – those with one or two bedrooms – has hit a record price of £224,963 in the last month. That is 2% higher than a year ago, even though higher mortgage rates have made homes less affordable.
Continue reading...Denham Place in Buckinghamshire, which once housed M’s office, being sold by multimillionaire Mike Jatania
A 13-bedroom grade-I listed stately home that featured in the James Bond films Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun has been put up for sale with a price tag of £75m – which would make it one of the most expensive properties ever sold outside London.
Denham Place, which is set in 17 hectares (43 acres) of Buckinghamshire parkland designed by the 18th-century landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown, is being sold by the multimillionaire cosmetics tycoon Mike Jatania.
Continue reading...Sadiq Khan describes figures from City Hall analysis as a scandal, with London the worst affected region
Private landlords in England are earning £1.6bn a year in housing benefit in return for providing “non-decent” homes, in what Sadiq Khan has described as a scandal.
The capital is the worst affected region, with £500m in welfare money going on privately rented homes that are in a state of disrepair, cold, damp, lacking modern facilities or do not meet health and safety standards, according to City Hall analysis.
Continue reading...Rics monthly poll shows new buyer inquiries in UK are flat as volume of agreed sales falls further
UK house prices are expected to continue to fall despite surveyors’ expectations that the housing market will stabilise over the next 12 months, a study has shown.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (Rics) monthly survey, which measures the proportion of surveyors reporting new buyer inquiries against those saying they fell, found the net balance was -29% in March, almost flat on the -30% recorded in February.
Continue reading...Average cost of property in Devon town reached £1,244,025 last year, driven by second home owners
“Don’t hate me,” said Theo Spink of the view from her office on Tuesday afternoon, “but the sun is shining, there’s a gentle breeze, people are arriving for Easter, eating ice-cream. It’s all rather charming.”
If the town of Salcombe, situated on the neck of a narrow estuary in south Devon, sounds idyllic, that is because “it really, really is”, she said. “When the sun shines, you could be in the Mediterranean. It is that beautiful.”
Continue reading...Council tax and planning changes aim to make housing more affordable for those on local incomes
Radical measures giving councils in Wales a raft of extra powers designed to stop second homes hollowing out communities, especially in coastal and rural areas, have come into force.
Local authorities across Wales are using the powers to increase the amount of council tax that second home owners must pay and will also be able to bring in changes to planning rules to make it harder for houses and flats to be snapped up as holiday boltholes.
Continue reading...Experts say developers deterred by changes to planning system brought in by successive Tory governments
Planning applications in England have fallen to their lowest level in at least 16 years, according to figures published this week by the levelling up department that highlight the scale of the country’s housing crisis.
Local authorities received fewer applications to build new buildings or improve old ones in 2022 than at any point since before 2006, the earliest year for which the government provides statistics.
Continue reading...Average monthly cost of owning 3-bed home is £500 a year less than renting, but the gap is narrowing
Homeowners in the UK are nearly £500 better off a year than renters, according to new research from Halifax.
The average monthly cost of owning a three-bed home for first-time buyers is now £971, which is £42 lower than the average cost of renting an equivalent property, the mortgage lender said. Renters pay on average £1,013 each month – 4% more.
Continue reading...Rics data for February shows improvement in new buyer inquiries and sales
The UK housing market remains in decline but there are some signs of stabilisation, with an improvement in new buyer inquiries and sales last month, according to surveyors.
Many told the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) that a return of optimism, and lower than expected interest rates, had given the housing market some hope for the coming months after a sluggish start to the year.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of borrowers had their loans sold on to providers at which they were unable to switch
The UK government made a £2.4bn “profit” when it pushed tens of thousands of mortgage borrowers “into poverty” after selling their loans on to new lenders, the campaigner Martin Lewis has claimed.
The MoneySavingExpert founder was speaking at the launch of a report, which he funded, into the plight of “mortgage prisoners”: a group of borrowers caught up in the fallout from the 2007-08 financial crisis.
Continue reading...Returning home was once seen as something shameful but new research finds a benefit
Moving back into the parental home as an adult was once seen by many youngsters as a retrograde step and even something to be ashamed of. Now, a new study suggests that such a move actually improves the mental health of these “boomerang adults”, thanks in no small part to a stressful and increasingly expensive rental market.
The findings of of the first study in the UK to look at the mental health impact of moving home on the adult children surprised demographers at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), who were expecting to find it had the opposite effect on wellbeing.
Continue reading...Further slowdown likely amid interest rate rise and cost of living crisis, says surveyors’ body Rics
Property sales and house prices continued to decline across the UK in January, while new buyer demand and fresh listings were also down, surveyors have reported.
A net balance of -47% for new buyer inquiries was reported, down from -40% in December, according to the latest monthly snapshot from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). The January return marked the ninth successive negative monthly reading for new buyer inquiries.
Continue reading...New government register shows how offshore jurisdictions used for ownership of nearly 200 properties including hotels and country estates
The royal families of Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar own more than £1bn of UK property via offshore jurisdictions, such as Jersey and the British Virgin Islands, the Guardian can reveal.
Nearly 200 properties, including hotels, London mansions and country estates, belong to a few small but super-rich dynasties, according to analysis of a new government register that reveals who is behind offshore companies that own UK property.
Continue reading...Bill payers stand to collectively save billions if minimum standard raised to a C rating, research suggests
Raising the minimum standard of energy efficiency to a C rating for privately rented homes would save bill payers about £570 a year, research has found.
This would amount to annual savings totalling £1.75bn across the UK, according to the thinktank E3G in a report called Cutting Energy Bills and Raising Standards for Private Renters.
Continue reading...Figure of £281,272 comes as property values drop by 1.5% in December, after 2.4% decline in November
The average UK house price fell for the fourth month in a row in December, according to Halifax, with experts expecting a further slowdown amid a long recession.
Property values decreased by 1.5% in December, the lender’s monthly index revealed, after a 2.4% drop in November, a 0.4% decrease in October and a 0.1% dip in September.
Continue reading...Annual growth rate cools in December and average price of property drops to £262,068, says Nationwide
Property prices in the UK fell for the fourth month in a row in December, the longest run of declines since 2008, according to Nationwide.
Annual house price growth also slowed sharply as the year drew to a close, to the lowest rate since mid-2020, with all regions of the country affected, according to the building society’s monthly survey.
Continue reading...The slowdown is expected to intensify with price declines between 5% and 12%
The housing market will cool sharply next year after a bumpy 2022, industry experts are predicting, as the UK contends with recession and higher mortgage rates.
As the cost of living crisis has intensified amid soaring inflation and as interest rates have increased, house prices have already started falling month-on-month. The average house price dropped 2.3% in November from October – the most since the start of the financial crash in 2008 – according to Halifax.
Continue reading...