General Election 2015: Labour bids to woo first time buyers with stamp duty pause April 27, 2015 Labour will today announce that it would scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers on properties worth up to £300,000, for the first three years it is in government. The move is seen as a bid to win over younger voters and pull ahead of the Conservatives, as polls continue to show the two parties neck-and-neck [...]
General Election 2015: Rent controls pledged by Labour to woo “generation rent” April 26, 2015 Ed Miliband is seeking to woo a generation of voters priced out of the property market with a promise to stop landlords making significant increases to rents. The Labour leader has pledged to cap rent rises at no more than the rate of inflation over the term of a three-year tenancy if elected at the [...]
London house prices: Kensington and Chelsea is now growing more slowly than Bristol April 24, 2015 London has lost its housing crown: for the first time since 2005, central London price growth is being outpaced by cities across the UK. According to data from HomeTrack, the triple-threat of electoral uncertainty, mansion tax fears and affordability issues have conspired to slow growth in the country’s most-valuable areas. Boroughs such as Chelsea and [...]
Mortgage lending lull ends as March registers upturn as General Election uncertainty fails to make slow demand April 23, 2015 Mortgage lending has picked up in March following a slow start to 2015, data released yesterday by the Council for Mortgage Lenders (CML) show. Gross mortgage lending reached £16.5bn, 21 per cent higher than in February and seven per cent higher than March last year. Lending remains below levels seen last summer and is far [...]
London house prices: Could the General Election outcome send the wealthy packing? April 23, 2015 London has a unique property market. Prime and emerging-prime areas of London are driven by people who move to larger and “better” located properties not because they really need to, but because they want to. Nothing soothes a burgeoning ego more than an SW3 postcode. Political rhetoric aimed at plundering this – apparently under-taxed – [...]
General Election 2015: David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg on how they’re going to solve the housing crisis (and which is their favourite room) April 23, 2015 House prices are too high and there aren't enough homes on the market, a new – not altogether surprising – study has suggested. But with an election just days away, property search giant Rightmove, which conducted the research, decided to take it to the leaders of each party to see what they're going to do [...]
UK house prices: Is this the return of the first-time buyer? April 23, 2015 As UK house prices have risen, so has the story of the death of the first-time buyer. New data suggests this despair may have come too soon, however. A third of people feel better placed to move home than they did 12 months ago, despite wage growth lagging far behind house price inflation. The figures [...]
General Election 2015: How Tony Blair presided over the biggest rise in UK house prices in history April 22, 2015 There's no easy way to say this, but Tony Blair, rather than the likes of Margaret Thatcher or David Cameron, was the Prime Minister who presided over the highest-ever rise in property prices, it turns out. Research from Knight Frank suggests house prices rose a staggering 211.3 per cent during Blair's premiership – higher than [...]
UK house prices: Buyer interest surges in March despite looming General Election April 22, 2015 Home buyer demand surged in the UK during March, as almost 22 per cent more people were hunting for houses than in the previous month. The uncertainty around next month's General Election was expected to dampen demand in the market, but the figures show healthy interest – in line with seasonal trends in a non-election [...]
London house prices: Havering, Croydon and Bromley are London’s Help to Buy hotspots April 22, 2015 This month is the second anniversary of the launch of Help to Buy, the scheme which allows cash-strapped house buyers to borrow 95 per cent mortgages. The scheme may be one of the government's most controversial policies, but it has also been one of its most popular. In fact, new research suggests that, as of [...]