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The 20 Best Places in Britain to Buy

What’s the worst that can happen to the property market? Well if interest rates were to go up and unemployment levels increase, then we could well be looking at a recession and house prices would undoubtedly go down. read more >>>

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Selling in a Difficult Market

Selling houses in a buyers market is never going to be an easy task. Everyone knows that prices are falling at the moment, so the expectation between what the vendor wants to sell at and what the buyer wants to pay, are often poles apart.
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10 Projects for Your Home That Don’t Need Planning Permission

There are a surprisingly large number of alterations and extensions that you can carry out without planning permission. Such projects are known as “Permitted Development and can be carried out with only building regulations consent. Note that many of these projects will not apply for listed buildings and conservation areas.
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Articles | House Price Latest

According to figures just released by Nationwide, house prices have fallen for a fifth consecutive month and have faltered to their slowest growth rate in twelve years. Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide’s Chief Economist said: “The price of a typical house fell by 0.6% during the month, bringing the annual rate of house price growth down to 1.1% - its lowest rate since March 1996.”

The Demise of Buy-to-Let Giant Inside Track

Britain’s biggest property investment company, Inside Track, has gone into administration. The company that promised to turn a generation of Britons into “property millionaires” fell victim to a combination of a series of property price falls and the ongoing mortgage crunch. read more >>>

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The Top Ten Coastal Resorts in Which to Own a Home

If you’re one of the select band of homeowners in the market for a second home, the time could be right to buy a holiday home on the coast. Houses in good resorts with sea views don’t come up for sale very often, but with the credit crunch biting, many second homeowners are finding the place on the coast a luxury too far. Don’t expect too much of a bargain, though; with the strong Euro and higher airfares holidaying closer to home is popular and properties like these are very much holding their own. read more >>>

Making the Most of the Downturn

You may be excused for feeling a bit blue at the moment, with every newspaper you pick up and every news bulletin you catch talking about the housing market downturn and all money talk seems to be about a coming recession. What you need to remember that with every slump in the market there are always winners as well as losers. Many smart purchases were made in the housing recession of the early 1990’s by people who have been reaping the rewards in the last few years. So here are some tips on making the best of the current market. read more >>>

Recent figures from the Bank of England and the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) reveal that the number of remortgages taken out has fallen 14% from April to May this year. Over 12 months the figure is more marked; down 23% since May 2007. Although remortgaging is the best way to save several hundred pounds per year, these figures are hardly surprising; in the current climate, so many mortgage products have been withdrawn, there is no longer much out there to tempt the homeowner into switching. Many borrowers are opting to stay with their existing lender at the end of the initial fixed period, even if this means a substantial hike in monthly payments on the lender’s standard variable rate (SVR). read more >>>

Protesters at parliament The Rise of the Eco-Town

Unless you’ve been walking around with your head up your backside recently, you’re bound to have heard of the term “eco-town” and about the growing opposition towards them. The term refers to the government’s plans to meet housing demands in an environmentally friendly way. read more >>>

Homeowners Stay Put

House price survey figures for June show that there is no end in sight for the general stagnation in the property market. The statistics show that most homeowners, weighed down with an ever-increasing cost of living, are in no mood for relocation. This is extremely bad news for the professions that depend on this; lean times indeed for developers, estate agents and removal firms. Two prime examples of this was the news on 4th July that the building company Barratt intend to cut nearly 15% of its workforce and a few days earlier the announcement by Taylor Wimpey that they plan to close one third of their offices. read more >>>

The Cost of Home Improvements Improving our homes is something of a national pastime for Britons. Every year we spend millions of pounds making them bigger and better. According to the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), planning was granted for 295,074 extensions, 43,761 self-build projects and 39,462 loft conversions in the UK last year. With house prices on the wane, it could make even more sense than ever to stay put and do up your existing property, rather than moving to a bigger one. read article >>>

The Spanish Property Crash

If you thought that things were bad at home, spare a thought for the Spanish property market. After a decade of boom, in which house prices doubled, the latest figures make depressing reading for the tens of thousands of Britons who have bought property there. The market shrunk by a massive 39% in March alone and sales by developers are down by 60% in comparison to last year. Combined value of sales has plummeted from £1 billion to less than £240 million. read more >>>

Nationwide Downbeat on House Prices

According to the latest house price index figures compiled by Nationwide, house prices fell by 2.5% in May. This is not only the largest drop since the building society started compiling a monthly index in January 1991 but also its seventh consecutive monthly fall. Gloomy news indeed, bearing in mind that if the data is accurate, the month has wiped out about £4,500 off the value of the average property. To put that in perspective; if that happened every month, it would wipe a whopping £54,000 off the value of an average house, in one year. read article >>>

Rent Increases Set to Create Buyers

With the market for selling houses currently experiencing difficulties, some would-be sellers are turning to renting out their properties instead. The latest letting survey by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) suggests that more homes are being made available for rent as sales stagnate and values drop. This may well be a smart move as Hometrack, a property data website, have suggested that the average cost of renting has risen 6.15% in a year. According to RICS, the key areas for rental growth include the South East and the South West, but not London, which was cited as the weakest area for rental growth. read article >>>

A Return to Self-Sufficiency

It has been documented that a well-kept garden can add around 20% onto the value of a property. Hardly surprising when bearing in mind that in the summer months it can be like having an extra room. According to Jeremy Leaf, estate agent: “A well presented garden supports a valuation. It shows that the owner has cared for the whole of the property.” However, in the face of ever-rising prices in the supermarket the humble home garden is seeing the resurgence of another use, other than just to add value to the property; that of the home allotment. read article >>>

Analysis Rejects Repeat of 1990s Housing Crash

Financial analysis recently carried out on behalf of the Financial Times suggests that house prices would have to fall by a massive 25% if there were to be another 1990s-style negative equity crisis. That’s more than double the 12% fall that sparked off the crisis in the last decade, where 7% of households ended up in negative equity. The FT’s figures are derived from the Council of Mortgage Lenders database and are consistent with a Bank of England survey carried out last year and the annual accounts of the largest lenders. read article >>>

Mortgage lending for house purchases fell to its lowest level Mortgage Lending Drops

Latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) for the first three months of this year, suggest that the number of new mortgages approved (142,000) has fallen to its lowest level since the first quarter of 1975. To put these figures in perspective, the figure for March stands at 46,500. This is down 1% from February’s total but is down a whopping 48% on the 89,000 loans approved in March 2007. That means that mortgage lending to first-time buyers and home movers has nearly halved in one year. read more >>>

Interest rates fall to 5%

Gordon Brown to the Rescue!

Gordon Brown has stated that people worried about their homes and jobs that the economy was “safe for them over the next few months”. This statement came after a Downing Street meeting with bank chiefs at which the Prime Minister pledged a further £15bn of funding from the Bank of England for the cash-strapped UK banking system. Read Article >>>

interesting.stuff

If you're a home owner, chances are you're fed up to the back teeth about the grim predictions for the property market this year. Now the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) have added to the current gloomy mood by stating that they expect 45,000 home repossessions in 2008 unless the Bank of England reduce interest rates again. That's a massive 50% increase on 2007, and to put it into perspective, that would average out to 123 luckless borrowers losing their houses every single day! read more >>>

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Article
Choosing the Right Mortgage
Picking the right mortgage from the thousands available on the market can be very confusing. Even though you know that it is a decision that could cost you a lot of money if you get it wrong, you really need stamina to pick out the one that’s best for you. More often than not, the borrower will simply plum for the one at the top of the best-buy table or, more likely, pay a broker hundreds of pounds to do it for them. The truth is that there is no such thing as the best mortgage, but rather the one that fits your financial needs and circumstances the best.
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Submitted by: Sara
Article: Choosing The Right Mortgage
Comments: Thank you so much, very informative, just about to buy my first property and am terrified, your site is beautiful, very simple yet informative, love the articles, who writes them?
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