September 20, 2007 on 8:08 pm | In News | No Comments
A BIG variation exists in the burden of mortgage debt across Europe, according to a report by Morgan Stanley. Switzerland has the biggest mortgage book relative to its GDP. Britain and Denmark, where house prices have risen rapidly in the past decade, have seen their stock of home loans rise sharply. Economist.com – Sep 20th [...]
September 20, 2007 on 7:58 pm | In News | No Comments
Housing associations have said they are willing to increase their borrowing to fund the construction of new housing – providing they can raise rents faster and sell thousands of new homes on the open market. PublicFinance.co.uk – 21 September 2007 In a long-awaited analysis of the borrowing capacity of registered social landlords, the National Housing [...]
September 20, 2007 on 4:55 pm | In Press Releases | No Comments
Students’ bad reputation and their lack of domestic skills are to blame for the poor standard of private rental student accommodation, according to a new ICM poll. 71 percent of British people believe that the quality of student accommodation has such a poor public perception because of the lack of care shown by students. Subsequently, [...]
September 18, 2007 on 1:11 pm | In News | No Comments
Investors should brace themselves for a prolonged period of market turmoil, Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, said yesterday as he held emergency meetings with the Chancellor and the French Finance Minister. Suzy Jagger and Gabriel Rozenberg, The Times – 18 September 2007 Mr Paulson flew to London to discuss the financial crisis with Alistair [...]
September 18, 2007 on 12:28 pm | In News | No Comments
Britain faces the prospect of falling house prices and rising inflation within a few years, according to Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve. Graeme Wearden and Ashley Seager, The Guardian – Tuesday September 18, 2007 In a series of interviews to promote his memoirs, The Age of Turbulence, the respected US economist [...]
September 18, 2007 on 12:24 pm | In News | No Comments
Buy-to-let investors are taking a massive risk by relying on property to fund their retirement. That is the claim of experts who say banking on one type of asset could be a recipe for disaster. Jo Thornhill, Mail on Sunday, 30 April 2007 It is not hard to see why property has grown in popularity, [...]
September 18, 2007 on 12:20 pm | In News | No Comments
There is a “one-in-10 chance” of a 1990s-style UK housing market crash, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said on Tuesday, after scaling back its expectations for British house price inflation. William Kemble-Diaz and Sinead Cruise – LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) Simon Rubinsohn, RICS’s chief economist, said his base case was for flat house [...]
September 18, 2007 on 12:16 pm | In News | No Comments
Landlords are required by law to protect deposits Landlords and tenants in the Private Rented Sector have become substantially more aware of Tenancy Deposit Protection during the summer months. Nearly two thirds of all landlords and approaching half of all tenants are now believed to understand the mandatory requirements to protect deposits and provide for [...]
September 18, 2007 on 11:51 am | In News | No Comments
A lot of people seem to think the house price-earnings ratio is 11 times salary, as Business Week claimed, rather than a still-high 6.5 – 7 times. Here, as reminder, is the calculation. David Smith, EconomicsUK.com – Monday 17th September 2007 Here’s a link to the median earnings figures. As you’ll see, the median in [...]
September 18, 2007 on 11:44 am | In News | No Comments
Governments’ boast that they had succeeded in taming both inflation and the business cycle was always a hollow one. The lie was given by rampant house prices and commodities, massive speculation in investment structures that barely existed a decade ago and record levels of debt on both governments’ and households’ balance sheets. Stuart Fowler, nomenkeybusiness.org [...]
