December 17, 2008 on 2:42 pm | In News | No Comments
The value of commercial property loans in breach of their agreed terms more than trebled in six months as rapidly falling real estate prices hit a heavily leveraged sector struggling under almost £208bn of debt. Daniel Thomas, Property Correspondent, FT.com 17 December 2008 With more than £76bn of debt needing to be refinanced before the [...]
December 8, 2008 on 6:04 pm | In Press Releases | No Comments
upad CEO predicts a potential increase of 25 percent in people choosing to rent in 2009 Renting a home in the UK will no longer be taboo in 2009, according to James Davis, founder of online property rental site, www.upad.co.uk. He predicts that the UK property market is heading towards the European model where it [...]
December 5, 2008 on 4:52 pm | In News | No Comments
Creditworthy borrowers are being refused deals when they remortgage because cautious surveyors are giving their homes lower-than-expected valuations The Times OnLine – 5 Dec 2008 Yesterday’s cut in the Bank of England base rate – to the lowest level since 1951 – means that high interest rates may no longer be the threat that they [...]
December 5, 2008 on 10:07 am | In News | No Comments
“WHAT happens here, stays here” is a slogan used to attract tourists to Las Vegas. Sadly, it is not true of the state of the city’s housing market. In September, they were 31.3% lower than a year ago, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller index of American house prices, and Vegas’s problems are now spreading all over [...]
December 4, 2008 on 2:57 pm | In News | No Comments
The Monetary Policy Committee has cut the UK base rate to 2% from 3%, a further 1% cut on top of last month’s 1.5%. Georgie Hobbs, Property Week – 4 December 2008 The base rate was at 2% for most of the 1930s and 1940s and was last at 2% in 1951. The base rate [...]
December 4, 2008 on 2:53 pm | In News | No Comments
Homeowners facing the threat of repossession were on Wednesday offered a government lifeline in the form of a £1bn scheme that will allow mortgage interest payments to be deferred for up to two years. Gerorge Parker, FT.com – 3 December 2008 Gordon Brown, speaking at the start of the debate on the Queen’s Speech, said [...]
December 1, 2008 on 6:36 pm | In News, Press Releases | 3 Comments
Reports that the government does not intend to move towards paying housing benefit directly to social housing tenants will be welcomed by lenders. Council of Mortgage Lenders Press Release – 1 Dec 08 According to a recent report in the Financial Times, the minister responsible for housing benefit, Kitty Ussher, gave a firm re-assurance that [...]
December 1, 2008 on 6:06 pm | In News | No Comments
Building on the September Housing Package, the Government is providing additional support in order to help people and households in financial difficulty through: * establishing a Lending Panel to monitor lending to both businesses and households. Reporting to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State, BERR, the Panel will bring together lenders, [...]
December 1, 2008 on 5:52 pm | In News | No Comments
The Government is temporarily increasing the threshold at which an empty property becomes liable for business rates. For financial year 2009-10 empty properties with a rateable value of less than £15,000 will be exempt from business rates – exempting an estimated 70 per cent of empty properties. See details more of the Pre-Budget Review Nov [...]
December 1, 2008 on 5:45 pm | In News | No Comments
Robert Shiller, the Yale economist who forecast both the bursting of the dotcom bubble and America’s property crash, is warning Britain’s homeowners to expect things to get every bit as bad on this side of the Atlantic. Heather Stewart, economics editor, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 Nov 2008 In London to promote his new book, The Subprime [...]
