UK house prices: First-time buyers £27,000 better off than renters – and more than £50,000 more privileged in London February 17, 2018 Britons are pouring thousands of pounds in the pockets of landlords each year by renting their home rather than buying it. UK first-time buyers are an average of £27,000 better off than renters over a mortgage term, Halifax said today. And in London, the savings are even greater. Homeowners in the capital save an average [...]
Property legal Q&A: My London property is owned by an offshore company; are my details in the public domain? February 16, 2018 Not yet but soon they will be. For a number of years the government has mooted the idea of creating a public register of beneficial ownership of UK residential property, but the exact timetable as to when this register is to come into force has never been clear until very recently. Last month the [...]
Vote of confidence? This Japanese bank just signed for a huge new office in the City February 13, 2018 A Japanese banking giant has given a vote of confidence to the capital by signing for a vast new office space at the redeveloped Broadgate scheme on Liverpool Street. The European arm of Sumitomo Mitsui will take 161,000 sq ft at 100 Liverpool Street, part of the Broadgate development. The lender will take the first [...]
London house prices set to fall again this year as buyers struggle to save for a deposit February 8, 2018 London house prices look set to fall again this year as would-be homeowners struggle to save for a deposit. Chartered surveys expect house prices to fall in London over the next 12 months, according to a survey released this morning by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). Last year, Nationwide recorded a 0.5 per [...]
Focus On Vauxhall: Donald Trump might not be keen on it, but international investors dig these skyscrapers south of the river February 2, 2018 Vauxhall got dragged through the mud by no less a figure than the President of the United States recently. The US Embassy’s much touted move to the “off location” was supposedly the reason behind Donald Trump’s cancelled visit to the UK, even though the new building has its own moat. Clearly, tech behemoth Apple didn’t [...]
House prices in UK cities are now less affordable than any time in the last 10 years February 2, 2018 Buying a house in UK cities has reached its least affordable in a decade, new research has shown, after the gap between house prices and average earnings widened further. The average worker in must now spend seven times their earnings to buy a house in a city, figures by Lloyds Bank showed, up from 6.9 [...]
Property of the Week: The former Johnson family home has been done up and is now on the market for £11.25m February 1, 2018 Looking for a home that’s fit for a foreign secretary? This five storey Victorian townhouse on Regent’s Park Road was the childhood home of Boris, Rachel and a whole host of Johnsons, including jungle-botherer and father of the thatched brood, Stanley. 60 Regent's Park Road, Primrose Hill, £11.25m Legend has it that he lived in [...]
Overseas investment in London offices hit record levels in 2017 after the Walkie Talkie and Cheesegrater sales January 31, 2018 The sales of two of London's most iconic skyscrapers pushed overseas investors' interests in central London offices to record levels last year, as buyers from the far East flocked to the capital. Figures by CBRE showed investment in central London offices swelled by 26 per cent to £16.4bn last year, after £3.5bn was invested in [...]
Sorry, homeowners: London is now officially a “buyer’s market” January 30, 2018 London’s housing market is at a critical point, new figures have revealed, with heavy discounting by homeowners desperate to sell their properties tipping the capital into a buyer’s market. The average home in London is now sold at four per cent below its original asking price, up from just 0.5 per cent in 2014, the [...]
Legal Q&A: I intend to extend the lease of my flat and read the price payable for an extension is 15 times the current ground rent? Is this correct? January 26, 2018 There is a popular myth that the price for a lease term extension is simply a multiple of the passing ground rent under the terms of the lease. Unfortunately, the price payable for a lease term extension is not as straightforward. Pursuant to the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Land Act 1993 (the Act) [...]