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Thousands of “mortgage prisoners” who are paying high borrowing rates but are unable to switch to better deals should be given more help, the UK’s financial regulator has said. These homeowners took out mortgages before new, stricter rules on affordability were brought in. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) also said about 30% of borrowers failed […]

House prices edged 0.2% higher in April, according to the latest report from lender Nationwide. Its March report indicated that house prices fell. The annual growth in house prices rose to 2.6% from 2.1%. “Surveyors continue to report subdued levels of new buyer enquiries and recent months have also seen a softening in new instructions,” […]

More than 150 new houses could be built on the edge of a York village. Housebuilder Gladman has applied for permission for a new housing estate off Tadcaster Road, north of Copmanthorpe. A planning statement says that as the land is included in the draft Local Plan, which is due to be submitted to a […]

Mortgage lending for first-time buyers, home movers and remortgagors increased to its highest February level since 2007. UK Finance’s latest mortgage trends update reveals that total homeowner purchases, which combine both home movers and first-time buyers, reached 50,000 “Homebuyers have shaken off the winter blues,” said Jackie Bennett, director of mortgages at UK Finance. There […]

  Landlords who break the law by exploiting their tenants should have their properties confiscated, a committee of MPs has concluded. Members of the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) committee said vulnerable tenants needed greater protection. Many face retaliatory evictions, unfair rent increases and harassment. During it’s enquiry the committee heard that up to […]

Annual house price growth remained subdued in March, according to the Nationwide building society. The increase of 2.1% was down slightly from February’s rate of 2.2%. Nationwide said “subdued consumer confidence”and wage growth not keeping up with the rise in the cost of living had offset healthy employment gains and low borrowing costs. But it […]

Tenants with pets are often charged a bigger deposit MPs and landlords are at loggerheads over the acceptable level of deposits demanded of tenants in England. Deposits should be capped at five weeks’ worth of rent, according to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. The government’s latest plan has been to cap the deposit […]

Homeowners are moving half as often as they did before the credit crunch, figures produced for the BBC suggest. Reasons include high house prices, stricter rules on getting mortgages and older people staying on in large properties. People used to move house roughly four times after their first purchase. Now it is more like twice. […]

Shares in Countrywide, the UK’s largest estate agent group, lost 20% after it warned of tough times in the market. Countrywide, whose brands include Bairstow Eves and Gascoigne Pees, made a £208.1m after-tax loss in 2017, versus a £17.5m profit in 2016. said about 150 head office jobs would go. The firm has been hit […]

Mortgage products allowing applicants to put down a deposit of just 5% have become much more common in the past year, figures show. Some 307 such deals are now on the market in the UK, up from 253 a year ago, according to financial information service Moneyfacts. This is the first time since the 2008 […]