via bbc.co.uk
Word is, no real movement for a couple of years, lot of people find it hard to afford, especially in London. Sharing a unit is an idea we just became aware of.
Friday 31 December 2010
BBC News - Petrol duty and VAT rises to add to fuel price pain
via bbc.co.uk
Well, they get you coming and going it seems, vat goes up on Jan 4.
It's the system here.
Thursday 30 December 2010
House prices fluctuations are becoming a yo-yo affair | Money | guardian.co.uk
via guardian.co.uk
2011 definitely looks to be interesting, hopefully we will see some kind of movement towards recovery, but not expecting miracles.
Wednesday 29 December 2010
BBC News - UK government borrowing hits record high
via bbc.co.uk
You know the borrowing, is just a bigger scale than an average person who borrows on his credit card, it means somewhere along the line, there was less comming in, than was going out. Didn't Mr. Mcawber say something about this?
BBC News - Jobless total 'will reach 2.7 million'
via bbc.co.uk
Here is a good question, do you know anyone that actually "makes" something?
Most jobs seem to be service type jobs, people are stressed, you have to hold on to what you have. It is just that we are not in a boom cycle right now.
Question is, what is the cause?
Tuesday 28 December 2010
Our Property gives free house prices from Land Registry data - OurProperty.co.uk
26th November 2010
October sold price data now available
New Land Registry and Registers of Scotland data has been added to the site today, bringing the size of our sold price database to over 17.4 million. You can now search for sales up to the 31st October 2010.
Read more news articles...
BBC News - What does 2011 have in store?
Our relationship with technology may help us cope with the difficult economic times, says Tamar Kasriel, founder of Futureal consumer trends consultants.
She says that the real impact of the spending cuts will only be seen in 2011, for example when your local playground closes down, but people will respond as consumers by becoming even savvier.
"We're going to see a lot more location-specific interaction between retailers and consumers, and it's going to have a real impact on the way we shop."
Examples include mobile phone apps which can offer discounted deals at retailers in your vicinity, and apps which allow you to scan the barcode of any product and then tells you the cheapest stockist.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote Fran Walton FuturologistWhile we used to be a cash-rich, time-poor society, this is no longer the case, hence the increasing number of people who cook from scratch as opposed to buying ready-meals. ”
Ms Kasriel says: "The majority of us haven't done this yet, but by this time next year you could imagine that there will be a name coined for somebody who scans barcodes in one shop to see if it is cheaper elsewhere."
Retailers will respond, she thinks, by adopting "pricing 2.0". Simply put, this means they will be moving towards tailoring their pricing to each consumer.
Fran Walton, director of The Futures Company, agrees that brands will need to work harder to retain customer loyalty.
via bbc.co.uk
Monday 27 December 2010
BBC News - Pay freeze or cut for many in 2011, says BCC
via bbc.co.uk
More than half of UK companies plan to freeze or cut their employees' pay in 2011, according to a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC).
While 45% of firms surveyed said they would give their staff a pay rise, 49% said they would freeze salaries, while 6% said they planned to reduce wages.
Sunday 26 December 2010
UK mortgages home: mortgage calculator, rates & lenders list
Welcome to Mortgages.co.uk, your comprehensive online UK mortgage portal. We have over 3,700 pages of information, news, questions & answers and glossary sections, with separate areas for remortgages, buy to let, commercial mortgages, international mortgages, inheritance tax and how to make a will.
Read our guide for homeowners 2010. Mortgages.co.uk has now launched a dedicated mortgage service for Scotland.
For an international mortgage or overseas mortgage for investment properties or holiday homes in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Caribbean, Cyprus, Florida, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain and the USA.
To make an enquiry please click here.
You may also wish to start by using our interest rate calculator service, or by comparing products on offer from different lenders.
If you would like Mortgages.co.uk to put you in touch with a regulated adviser call
0845 1080 505.8 out of 10 people in the UK are paying too much for their mortgage. Find out if YOU are one of them, and get a FREE, no obligation quote.
Do you have mortgage protection insurance? Why not get a free quote for Accident, Sickness & Unemployment cover, and SAVE up to 33% compared to high street lenders. Cover starts at just £3.95 per £100.00 of benefit, with cover from day one. You can apply online and get the first three months of cover FREE.
We also have directory of UK mortgage brokers (updated 2010), or you can let us do the work for you by filling in our simple, no obligation one minute enquiry form.
via mortgages.co.uk
Useful links for everything mortgages
Why interest rate rises won't instantly hike mortgages - This is Money Blog
Why interest rate rises won't instantly hike mortgages
Boe2011_203x150 The jury is still out on whether interest rates will rise in 2011 - fears are certainly elevated given that inflation has risen for several months and is at 3.3%. It should be below 2%.
An interesting view is put forward today from Simon Ward, an economist at Henderson and author of the moneymovesmarkets blog.
Saturday 25 December 2010
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Tuesday 21 December 2010
Property prices: What to expect - news and predictions | This is Money
House prices: What next?
This is Money | Last updated:
17 December 2010, 11:47am
What's the latest?
Commentary by property editor Simon LambertIt's been gloomy on the property front for some months, with reports showing prices falling on a monthly basis again and estate agents recording a further slump in sales, as the gap between what sellers want and what buyers will pay looks tough to bridge.
Despite this, a joint forecast from leading economic analysts and estate agents says house prices will rise next year as the Bank of England puts a prop under the property market.
The property market will inch ahead in both London and the rest of England and Wales, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research and estate agents Chesterton Humberts.
The rock bottom base rate being kept on hold at 0.5% throughout 2011 and a fresh dose of quantitative easing will bolster the market, with London prices rising by 1.2% and the rest of England & Wales seeing a 0.8% increase.
But with the Bank of England suggesting the official consumer prices index (CPI) inflation figure will remain above the 2% target throughout next year, the forecast means that house prices will fall in value next year in real terms as they fail to keep pace with inflation.
Source: CEBR Chesteron Humberts forecast December 2010The latest Rics report, a closely watched barometer of sentiment in the market, said 44% more of its member estate agents recorded falling rather than rising prices last month.
Agents' expectations for house prices over the next three months remain downbeat, with 41% more expecting prices to fall than rise. But sales expectations were more upbeat, with 6% more predicting sales to increase rather than decrease over the next three months.
Expert views: What next for house prices?
• The CEBR believes house prices will rise 1.2% in London next year and 0.8% elsewhere in England & Wales
• Rightmove says asking prices will slip in 2011 - predicting a 5% fall over the year
• Howard Archer, chief UK economist at analysts IHS Global Insight, suggests prices will be 10% lower than their mid 2010 levels by the end of 2011.
However, economists and property watchers agree that the effects of a slowdown will be felt differently across the UK and a 2008-style all out crash is less likely than a period of stagnation.
The threat of spending cuts and public sector cutbacks is more likely to affect areas outside London and the South East and hit them harder. Meanwhile, in the more buoyant capital and commuter areas, good properties in desirable locations are likely to prove most resilient.
Vote: What will happen to house prices in the next year? (Oct 2010)
ROUND-UP: LATEST HOUSE PRICES INDICES AND PREDICTIONS
Index Most recent Average House Price Monthly change Annual Change Link to report Peak Halifax Nov 10 £164,708 -0.1% -0.7% Full report £199,612 (Aug 07) Nationwide Nov 10 ££163,398 -0.3% +0.4% Full report £186,044 (Oct 07) Land Registry Oct-10 £165,505 -0.8% +3.4% Full report £184,493 (Jan 08) Hometrack Nov-10 n/a -0.8% 0% Full report n/a Rightmove (asking prices) Nov-10 £229,379 -3.2% +1.3% Full report £241,642 (Oct 07) Department of Communities Oct-10 £209,466 -0.1% +5.5% Full report £220,291 (Oct 07) LSL Acadametrics (formerly FT) Nov-10 £224,758 +0.2% +5.9% Full report £231,804(Feb 08) The headwinds facing the market
The big potential stumbling blocks for the property market.
• Interest-only mortgage crackdown
• Lenders warn of a new mortgage crunch
Lenders are making it tougher to take out cheap interest-only loans, which have helped prop up the property market. This is a reduction in credit and will exert downward pressure on prices. (Read the full analysis)
The second problem is a fresh mortgage crunch. When the Special Liquidity Scheme runs out, starting in 2012, lenders say they will face a £300bn shortfall.
What next for house prices?
A rise in the number of homes for sale and a cooling in demand as economic uncertainty returns has pushed down prices. On the flipside, mortgage rates for those with a 25% deposit look good, while rates for those with 15% and 10% deposits are improving. This could deliver another slice of buyers for whom property looks affordable.
Add in a fresh dose of quantitative easing and borrowers could find 2011 gets easier. Counterbalancing this though is the effect of spending cuts filtering through the economy.
The property market is precariously balanced. On a fundamental level prices should not be rising with the problems that remain in the economy, and the market will continue to struggle given woeful economic problems the country faces.
However, in some high demand areas, property prices have all but regained their 2007 peak and in some places surpassed this level.
So should you buy? The answer should be based on how long you plan to own the property (whether as home or investment), whether it personally suits you and most importantly whether you can afford it.
Buyers preparing to take the plunge should bear these factors in mind and ensure they can take the hit of future interest rate rises.
- Simon Lambert, assistant editor
What they said: The property predictions for 2010
• Rics: house prices will rise in 2010
• Halifax: house prices will not rise in 2010
• Property to stall agree economist and agents
• Capital Economics: House prices need 'five years to recover'
• Fitch: House prices will fall another 20%
• Nouriel Roubini: More bank woes, more house price falls
• Jones Lang LaSalle: Property to fall as 'irrational' rally ends
• E&Y ITEM Club: House prices 'will fall again next year'
- House price tables, charts and graphs
MONEY BLOG: POSTS ON HOUSE PRICES
Anatomy of a house price slump: how it happened
The party finally came to a sticky end for UK property prices in 2008. After a decade long boom, the market peaked in late summer / autumn 2007, and then prices tumbled as banks beat a hasty retreat from easy lending.
House price falls accelerated through 2008 and property market activity hit record lows in late 2008 and early 2009. Since then activity has improved and stabilised, but although a shortage of property means some areas look buoyant, in reality transactions are running at almost half of what is considered normal.
The property market's performance in 2008 was worse than almost all of the gloomiest predictions made for the year.
Of the major reports, the gloomiest picture was painted by the Halifax. Its index showed the average property losing a greater percentage of its value in just 12 months than during the whole peak to trough period of the 1990s crash.
In December 2007, the Halifax index said the average home was worth £197,074, a year later this had fallen to £159,896 ' a drop of 18.9%. At the peak before the 1990s crash, Halifax's figures show the average home was worth £70,247, in May 1989. Six years later, property prices bottomed out, in July 1995, at £60,965. This was a peak to trough loss of 13.2%.
Due to the way it compiles its figures, by comparing a three month average with the same period a year earlier, Halifax's official figure showed prices falling 16.2% in 2008. However, this still represented a record fall ' the previous most rapid annual decline being -8.3% in December 1992.
The Land Registry's report showed property prices falling by 13.5% over the year, with the average home in England and Wales worth £158,946 ' a similar value to October 2005. Even in the supposedly robust London market, the average home lost 12.9%, or £45,585, to end 2008 worth £307,071 ' a similar value to November/December 2006.
The smallest fall registered by a major house price index for 2008 was Hometrack's (8.7%), while the FT Academetrics study, which claims to improve on other studies methods, said prices fell 10.4% over the year.
- Tools: House price crash calculator
How the property market was hammered?
While property price statistics for 2008 and early 2009 paint a fairly bleak picture, they do not fully reflect the devastation wreaked so rapidly.
In a little over a year, a booming property market became desolate, with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reporting its agents selling less than one property per week of the year.
A perfect storm hit the UK property market in 2008. With property prices having risen by 200% in the ten years to December 2007, according to the Land Registry, property was in a bubble.
Many economists had predicted that this bubble was ripe for bursting, but after showing signs of a slowdown in 2005, the market sped up again and the average price peaked between August 2007 (Halifax: £199,612) and January 2008 (Land Registry: £184,784).
The pin that burst the bubble was the credit crunch. The sub-prime crisis that had been brewing in the United States erupted in the summer of 2007, and as the year continued, the residential mortgage-backed securities market that had driven massive growth in credit for homeloans essentially ceased to exist.
These allowed lenders to sell packaged residential mortgages to a special purpose vehicle, which then issued debt to investors, lured by strong returns from a supposedly liquid and low risk investment.
According to the interim report by Sir James Crosby, commissioned by the Treasury, between 2000 and 2007, the total amount outstanding of UK residential mortgage backed securities and covered bonds rose from £13bn to £257bn. The report said that by 2006 mortgage-backed security funding accounted for two-thirds of new net mortgage lending in the UK.
In July 2007 this market came to an 'abrupt halt', according to Crosby. This brought about the collapse of Northern Rock in the UK, problems for banks such as Bradford & Bingley that had fuelled the buy-to-let boom and major issues for all mortgage players. In February 2008, Northern Rock was nationalised and American bank Bear Stearns, which had specialised in the fancy finance that fuelled the mortgage boom, collapsed. It was the final sign that the party was over.
Banks fearful of huge losses began to dramatically cut back on mortgage lending and a vicious circle began. The more banks cut back on lending and raised deposits, the fewer homebuyers could secure finance, the more property prices fell and banks became more fearful and cut back further on lending.
The mortgage crunch and property prices
Mortgages are the key to the property market. The vast majority of buyers cannot purchase a property without a homeloan and the price, availability and restrictions imposed on these have the biggest impact on their ability to buy a home.
The dramatic slump in property prices in 2008 and early 2009 came as lenders turned off the mortgage taps. Lenders suffered a lack of funding, with the mortgage backed securities market that accounted for two thirds of new lending suddenly seizing up. Meanwhile, banks were also hit by a crisis of confidence, as they looked over the Atlantic and saw the devastation wreaked in America heading for the UK.
Mortgage rates rose, deposits were hiked and reports abounded of lenders pulling mortgages at the eleventh hour. Mortgages for home purchases dived by 49% in 2008, to just 516,000, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. This was the smallest number since 1974 and represented a third less than the 723,000 approved in 1991 ' the lowest level of the 1990s slump.
The Bank of England's monthly figures have also shown mortgage activity drying up. The number of mortgages for homebuyers hit a record low of 27,000 in November 2008, rising to around 31,000 to 32,000 in December and January 2009.
In September 2007, just before the downward spiral began Bank of England figures showed mortgage approvals for homebuyers of 102,000 ' significant at that time as this was the lowest level for two years. The level of mortgage activity for home purchases in the first half of 2009, was about 60% below that figure and economists say approvals need to be at at least 70,000 to 80,000 per month for prices to stabilise.
The property slump unpicked
• Analysis: House price crash myths: True or false?
• House price tables and graphs
• Calculator: House price crash calculator
• Property prices: Look up house prices in your road
• The property market near you - what's really happening?
• House price forecasts: Will your home sell in 2009?
• Property prices: News, analysis and what's next
Confidence, the property market and property prices
A crucial driver of property prices, as with that of any asset, is confidence. The public's confidence in property, shares and banks is at a serious low. Compounding the problem of a lack of confidence in these economic cornerstones is the uncertainty surrounding jobs as the recession bites. Redundancies and cut backs have led to a record rise in unemployment, with more people out of work than any time in the last 15 years.
If the property market manages to stage a recovery in the next 12 months, it will be against all odds, given the severe recessionary backdrop and slump in confidence. Bargain hunters may be searching for a first home, a bigger property or an investment, but the number of people actively willing to commit to buying will remain depleted until the economy improves.
Council of Mortgage Lenders, monthly mortgage completions April 2009
Inflation and paying off your home
One of the effects of the rapid inflation in property prices since the early 1980s is that it paid off a generation's mortgages.
Those who bought a home in the 1980s to early 1990s, and then held on through double-digit interest rates and the 1990s crash, have emerged with properties that have risen to be worth five to ten times their mortgage.
The average UK property cost £30,898 in 1983, according to Halifax, and £198,500 in September 2007 ' an increase of 542%. Even allowing for the current slump that property was worth £160,327 in February 2009, an increase of 419%. For a similar effect to be delivered to a modern day homebuyer, the cost of the average property would need to stand at £832,097 in 2035.
In 1983 the average wage according to the Office of National Statistics was £7,700, today the most comparable measure stands at £24,900, an increase of 223%. If both property and salary inflation are sustained at the same long-term rate, the average wage by 2031 will be £80,500 and the home will cost 10.3 times more. This compares to the average home costing four times the average wage in 1983 and 8.5 times the average wage (£23,300) at the peak of the Halifax index in August 2007.
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• What next for house prices?
• What next for mortgage rates?
The positive side - demand and supply and property prices?
Pessimists would have you believe that property in the UK is doomed, but this ignores the fact that housing is not stocks and shares.
Owning a home is an emotional desire, a must-have aspiration for most Britons, and the demand for property in Britain remains high. Prices may have fallen by 20%, but many potential buyers see this as a good purchasing opportunity.
The shortgage of supply of property in the UK compared to demand has arguably been exaggerated by developers and the Government, but decent sized family homes in popular areas are typically in short supply.
Government development targets and planning guidelines have focused on quantity rather than quality. Target-led development has encouraged major scheme developers to concentrate on flats and small properties in order to deliver the most homes at the cheapest price.
A report by the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit the government's independent housing experts said that an undersupply of larger homes pushes up the cost of all properties and exacerbates house price inflation problems.
House price crash: Not everyone is upset
While the rapid fall in property prices has brought tough times for those who have seen equity slashed, fallen into negative equity or even had their homes repossessed, there are others who are pleased that prices are falling.
Lower property prices are a boon to first-time buyers and those moving up the property ladder, but only if they can raise the substantial deposit needed to take advantage. Research from Halifax showed homes were more affordable than the 25-year average in the first three months of 2009, but the average buyer would need to raise a £50,000 deposit.
Meanwhile, those who predicted a slump and have actively agitated for a house price crash are also pleased. Property prices are an emotive subject and forums such as housepricecrash.co.uk, have rounded up news, data and opinion and benefited from the UK's fascination with property, whether it's value is going up or down.
Other stories:
House price tables: Who says what?
How to sell your home in a buyers' market
Ten tips for buy-to-let
House price crash myths: True or false?
Archive: Is there going to be a house price crash?
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