Barratt sees return to full year profit July 14, 2011 BARRATT Developments, one of the UK’s largest house builders, said it would return to full-year profit despite market conditions remaining tough. The firm predicted a full-year pre-tax profit of £40m before exceptional items, after a loss of £33m in 2010, meeting market expectations. In its trading statement ahead of its annual results due September, the [...]
First time buyer market may ease July 14, 2011 WITH the Bank of England keeping interest rates at the record low of 0.5 per cent, the outlook should be good for those looking to buy a home. But with renting in London costing 50 per cent more than the rest of the country and banks requiring higher and higher deposits, the picture for those [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 11, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES INSURERS TO FUND POLICE TEAM IN FRAUD CRACKDOWN Insurers are to spend £8.2m funding a specialist police unit that will be dedicated to cracking down on the growing problem of insurance fraud, which costs an estimated £2bn a year. A new unit of 35 specialist fraud detectives and police support staff will be [...]
House market stuck in a rut July 11, 2011 WEAK supply and demand has left the UK housing market in a “stalemate” despite a pick-up in mortgage lending, new data suggests. Demand failed to rise in June while the recent growth in new instructions to market properties ground to a halt, according to the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). [...]
PROPERTY NEWS July 7, 2011 LONDONERS LOVE NORTH AND SOUTH WEST BOROUGHS North and south west boroughs dominate London’s top ten development hotspots, according to research from CB Richard Ellis. Although Kensington and Chelsea has predictably topped the table of London’s residential favourites, the new research reveals that good development prospects are not limited to central locations. Jennet Siebrits of [...]
Optimism of housebuilders is misguided July 5, 2011 PERSIMMON tried to sound an upbeat note yesterday, insisting it expected the housing market to pick up over the rest of the year. We don’t share the housebuilder’s optimism. House prices have been moving sideways for the past six months and mortgage lending remains tight. Would-be first-time buyers, unable to find the 20 per cent [...]
THE TIPSTER July 3, 2011 A REPORT from the US Department of Agriculture at the end of last week, flagging a marked increase in the amount of corn being sown by farmers, sent prices tumbling. A good harvest will certainly take the pressure off food supplies and in turn the prices being charged globally, but some will simply see this [...]
Confidence returns as Taylor Wimpey sees demand pushing up its forecasts June 30, 2011 PENT-UP demand and tight supply will prop up the UK housing market well into 2012, British housebuilder Taylor Wimpey predicted after it reported stronger margins and said it sees full-year profit forecasts being nudged higher. “Overall, we expect it [full-year pretax profit] to be slightly better than the market is currently expecting,” chief executive Pete [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING June 29, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES BRITISH LAND TO BUY RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX IN THE CITY British Land is in advanced talks to buy a City of London residential complex, in its first acquisition under a strategy to focus on the booming market for prime homes in the capital. The UK’s second-largest property company has agreed to buy Wardrobe Court [...]
Lenders slash mortgage rates to the lowest levels on record June 27, 2011 MORTGAGE interest rates have plummeted to an historic low, as lenders expect the Bank of England to persist with its loose monetary policy. Both tracker and fixed rate mortgages have slipped to their cheapest levels since 1988, when the website Moneyfacts began collecting the data. “An imminent rise in the Bank base rate now appears [...]