UK Property Market News

These are the places for buy to lets during the stamp duty holiday The coronavirus pandemic has had a profound impact on the UK’s property market, with London being hit harder than many because people are making the decision to move out of the city. With so many more people working remotely now, lots of Londoners are deciding to move out, perhaps because they want to live somewhere a bit cheaper or because they want more space for their money. This means the house prices in the capital have come tumbling down. And so, according to a study from CIA Landlord, now may be a great time to get a buy to let property in London. […]

Despite almost half (45%) of buyers asking for a price reduction on properties in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, home sellers are not budging on price according to the latest research by online estate agent Strike. The area most likely for buyers to ask for a price reduction is London, where 70% of sellers say they’ve been asked to lower their property prices. Alternatively, regions including Northern Ireland and the South West saw buyers less likely to ask for a price reduction. On a UK-wide basis, just one fifth of sellers say no reduction has been asked for at all in recent months. Strike’s research suggests that not all sellers are willing to accept a lower […]

As many investment options remain volatile right now, property investment could be a particularly attractive avenue. For those looking to borrow to invest, portfolio buy-to-let landlords could get the best deals. Interest rates remain at historic lows, with the Bank of England holding its base rate at just 0.1% for now. This means minimal returns through traditional savings vehicles for most investors. On the flip side, low mortgage interest rates are continuing to entice borrowers and property investors. As a result, many are rethinking their buy-to-let investment options. A recent raft of regulatory and tax changes may have put off some landlords from the market. However, the stamp duty holiday coupled with cheap borrowing and high […]

The grim prognoses of a UK house price crash are now unlikely to materialise, at least not this year. Find out why – and what this means if you’re buying a house this year UK house prices are continuing to rise at a steady pace, defying all industry forecasts. The latest Zoopla house price index is in, and the data points firmly to stable housing market conditions for the rest of 2020 – and likely into the first quarter of 2021. Although the situation around house prices is no longer referred to in terms of a market boom, the much-predicted property market crash has failed to materialise. What are the real reasons behind this expert-defying trend? […]

Desire for more space on back of Covid homeworking fuels housing market, says Halifax Mortgage applications in the UK have surged to a 12-year high as house prices rose at the fastest annual pace since mid-2016, the mortgage lender Halifax has reported. Halifax, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, said the market was fuelled by a desire for more space, with more people working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, but warned that rising unemployment and recession would suppress demand further out. The average price of a home rose by 1.6% to £249,870 in September from August, marking the third consecutive month of substantial gains, Halifax said. This pushed the […]

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised to help more people get onto the property ladder. But is there more to ‘generation rent’ than an inability to buy? In a speech earlier this week, the prime minister vowed to turn “generation rent into generation buy“. He added that the government would carry out the biggest expansion of homeownership since the 1980s. Vowing to “fix our broken housing market”, Johnson wants to transform the planning system and bring in state-backed 95% mortgages for first-time buyers. Over the past decade, the average age of a first-time buyer in the UK has risen from 31 to 33 years old. According to the latest Ministry of Housing data, homeownership among 25 […]