Young first-time buyers are increasing their overall mortgage debt in order to tackle short-term financial pressures. The average mortgage term is lengthening from the traditional 25 years, according to figures from broker L&C Mortgages. Its figures show the proportion of new buyers taking out 31 to 35-year mortgages has doubled in 10 years. That means […]
HOUSING NEWS
More homeless people forced to move away…
The number of homeless UK households placed into temporary accommodation outside their local area has increased by 59% in five years. A Freedom of Information request revealed that numbers rose from 10,651 in 2012/13 to 16,914 in 2016/17. The London Borough of Southwark placed the most households out of their area in 2016/17, a total […]
Cost of fixed-rate mortgages starts to rise…
The cost of taking out a fixed-rate mortgage has started to rise, even though the Bank of England has kept base rates at a record low. Barclays and NatWest have become the latest lenders to increase the cost of some of their fixed-rate products. At least nine other banks or building societies have also raised […]
UK house price rises picking up, says Halifax…
House prices across the UK have jumped by an average of 4% in the year to September, according to Britain’s largest lender, the Halifax. The rate indicates a pick-up from August, when the Halifax said prices were rising at an annual pace of 2.6%. The Halifax said the average price of a house or flat […]
Help to Buy: How much has it helped first-time buyers?
“The Help to Buy equity loan has achieved much higher take-up than we expected, helping 130,000 families so far with a deposit for their own home,” Chancellor Philip Hammond has said. The latest figures from the Department of Communities and Local Government show that from the launch of the scheme, in the second quarter of 2013, […]
Theresa May promises £10bn Help to Buy boost…
The government will find an extra £10bn for the Help to Buy scheme to let another 135,000 people get on the property ladder, Theresa May has said. The extra cash will help buyers get a mortgage with a deposit of as little as 5% to buy newly built homes. Mrs May gave no detail about […]
Rent controls: Who might gain, who might lose and how might it work?
Simon Youel said “radical” measures were needed to tackle the housing crisis Simon Youel has experienced some of the perils of renting a home. In the last four years the 25-year-old has lived in six different places and experienced sudden evictions and sharp rental increases. So when Jeremy Corbyn told Labour’s conference last weekend that […]
London house prices ‘fall for first time in eight years’…
London house prices have fallen for the first time in eight years, the Nationwide says, dropping 0.6% year-on-year in September. Across the UK, annual price growth slowed to 2%, down from 2.1% in August. That is the slowest rate of increase since June 2013, according to the Nationwide measure. The building society said that London […]
Young spend three times more on housing than grandparents…
Young people are also living in smaller spaces, says the report Young people in Britain are spending three times more on housing than their grandparents did, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank. They also have to cope with less space and longer commutes to get to work. While their parents typically bought their own […]
Housing budget needs review, says trade body…
The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) has called for a housing budget review after government figures showed a huge drop in the number of “genuinely affordable” homes built in England. The number of properties built for social renters per year has fallen from 36,000 to just over 1,000 since 2010. Almost 80% of the current […]
