Is £2bn enough to fix the housing market? October 11, 2016 Last week the government announced plans for a £2bn accelerated construction fund that will be used to guarantee housing schemes, including deals to purchase homes that do not sell. The guarantee, which will be achieved by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) directly selling any ‘government purchased homes’ on the market, to the private rented [...]
Housebuilders and domestically-focused stocks hit by fears of hard Brexit October 10, 2016 The aftershocks of sterling's flash crash last week are still being felt in the City with domestic stocks suffering in trading today. When markets opened in Asia on Friday, the pound fell six per cent in two minutes, a plunge thought to have been caused by automatic trading systems responding to comments by French President Francois [...]
Here’s what the Monopoly board of 2016 looks like October 10, 2016 When Monopoly was created in 1935, the price tag for a Mayfair property was just £400 – but house prices have changed a lot since then. So if the Monopoly board was drawn up now, what would it look like? The cheapest parts of the board are still the same, but the average price on [...]
Help solve the housing crisis by leaving your house to your grandchildren, urges housing minister October 10, 2016 Housing minister Gavin Barwell has said parents should leave their property and money to their grandchildren instead of their children. Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference, Barwell said his mother will be leaving her £700,000 Croydon home to her grandchildren rather than him and his brother. Barwell said such generosity from grandparents [...]
Knight Frank’s chairman calls for a reversal of changes to stamp duty tax October 10, 2016 Chairman of the estate agents Knight Frank has called on the UK government to reverse changes to stamp duty taxes. Former Chancellor George Osborne increased the rate of stamp duty of second homes, a change that came into effect at the beginning of April, leading many buy to let landlords to flee the property market. [...]
Knight Frank reports 20 per cent drop in exchanges since the EU referendum October 10, 2016 Estate agent Knight Frank said today it experienced a 20 per cent fall in the number of exchanges on its high-end UK houses since the EU referendum. In its results for the year, Knight Frank reported profit before tax fell by 4.7 per cent, from £160.1m last year to £152.6m this year. Turnover increased four per cent [...]
These are the 10 most and least affordable London boroughs for buyers on an average annual wage October 8, 2016 London may have fallen out of the UK's top three regions for house price growth, but gaining a foothold on the capital's property ladder is still out of the range of many first-time buyers – and is unlikely to change anytime soon. The average London house price is 14 times higher than the average annual wage [...]
Focus On Earl’s Court: Around 7,500 new homes and a brand new high street coming to west London by 2033 October 7, 2016 Best known for its (closed) Exhibition Centre, Earl’s Court is not the sort of place you’d expect to attract million-pound investment. But it’s currently undergoing its biggest upheaval in over a century and this west London outpost is set to be a very different place in a couple of decades. The last huge change in [...]
Opinion: the Chancellor’s housing plans need to cater to everyone’s needs, including downsizers October 7, 2016 Earlier this week, the government announced two major housing initiatives; a £3bn Home Building Fund to help smaller developers enter the market, and a £2bn Accelerated Construction Programme, which aims to get houses built quickly on public land. There was no mention of extending Help to Buy mortgage guarantees (due to end soon) or of [...]
CEO of Johns & Co has just launched a custom furnishing business for busy – and overseas – landlords October 7, 2016 In this bustling metropolis of ours, some of us are landlords, some of us are renters and some of us are both. It’s complicated. Now both can benefit from an innovative new scheme that allows tenants to have input in how their flat looks, and lets landlords divorce themselves from the aesthetic side of things [...]