Property prices fall 3pc December 13, 2010 ASKING prices for homes in England and Wales have fallen three per cent over the past month to stand just 0.4 per cent higher than a year ago, due to economic uncertainty and low mortgage approvals, according to property website Rightmove. December’s fall follows a 3.2 per cent decline in November, with further drops possible [...]
500,000 households in negative equity December 12, 2010 CLOSE to half a million British households could be facing negative equity, according to survey released today by the Bank of England. Between four and five per cent of mortgage holders owe more than the value of their properties, it was revealed in the Bank’s final quarterly bulletin of this year. There are 11.4m mortgages in [...]
Irish banks will offer to restructure December 8, 2010 NATIONALISED lenders Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide Building Society will submit a joint restructuring plan to the European Commission proposing they be merged and run down over time. The plan, which must be completed by the end of March, was one of the demands the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank made as a [...]
Bellway profit rises by 20pc December 7, 2010 British housebuilder Bellway said home reservations for the four months to November end were above its expectations, putting it on course for a 20 per cent increase in first-half pre-tax profit. “The decline in consumer confidence appears to have levelled out and people are still committing to purchase even at this time of year,” the [...]
Standard Life in £42m deal for Focus Solutions December 7, 2010 Standard Life has agreed to buy financial software company Focus Solutions Group for £42m, in a deal the insurer said would boost its customer services. Standard Life said that it was offering 140 pence in cash for each Focus Solutions share, representing a premium of around 9.8 per cent to Focus Solution’s closing share price [...]
Home-builders ramp up incentives to lure hard-up first-time buyers December 2, 2010 HOME-BUILDERS have always offered buyers deals, but some are more valuable than others. Take, for example, the West Bromwich Building Society’s offer in 2004 of a free Rover car worth over £7,000 – a year before the car-maker went into administration. The downturn has left house-builders with new-builds sitting empty all over the country, and [...]
House prices down 3.9 per cent on June December 1, 2010 HOUSE prices fell by another 0.3 per cent in November, mortgage-lender Nationwide announced yesterday. The news follows an even sharper drop in the previous month, as prices fell 0.7 per cent on September. Prices have either fallen or stagnated since June, according to Nationwide’s statistics. The average house price in the UK is now £163,398, [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING November 25, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES AIRLINE FINANCING RIFT DEEPENS Ryanair and Emirates have taken the unusual step of joining forces with eight other airlines as a multibillion-dollar row over aircraft financing starts to split the world’s largest airlines into two rival camps. The Irish budget airline and Dubai’s Emirates normally shun industry alliances. But yesterday they revealed they [...]
Paragon sees lending return as rents rise November 24, 2010 UK SPECIALIST mortgage lender Paragon Group said yesterday it expected lending to increase as a result of higher demand in the private rented sector as it reported higher-than-expected full-year results. The lender said profit before tax stood at £71.8m for the year to 30 September 2010, up almost 25 per cent from £54.3m the previous [...]
Nationwide says house price slump unlikely November 23, 2010 Nationwide Building Society, Britain’s second-biggest mortgage lender, reported a 26 per cent jump in first-half profit, and said it did not expect big house price falls despite signs of property market weakness. Nationwide, which publishes a closely watched monthly house price survey, said major price falls were unlikely in 2011 because continued low interest rates [...]