A report by the Equity Release Council claims that owning your own home makes you considerably better off in the long term compared with renting. In their report called Home Advantage: intergenerational perspectives on property wealth in later life the Council looked at trends in pensions, mortgages and home ownership over the past 30 years.…
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Property and Conveyancing
A new report prepared by Zoopla found an increase in demand for properties in the South East of 19%. Zoopla believe this is due to seasonal demand, the lenders moving towards lowering their mortgage rates and better news on inflation. All these factors are giving buyers more confidence Compared with pre-pandemic levels, house prices are…
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Residential property experts make a career out of showing the rest of us how to make our homes more sellable. They suggest we de-clutter to make our houses look bigger and brighter, or offer more subtle ideas such as decorating the place with flowers and having a coffee pot brewing when potential viewers visit. A…
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As well as causing a slump in property sales, the increasing cost of mortgages is having serious knock-on effects in the buy-to-let market, where owners are now faced with higher borrowing costs eating into their profit margins. The situation has worsened over the last few weeks as mortgage lenders have withdrawn and repriced many of…
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A key speaker at a government-sponsored conference has predicted that the era of regular annual house price increases is now at an end. David Miles, from the government’s Office for Budget Responsibility said: “Those forces driving house prices up are going to be much weaker, I suspect, in the next 40 years than they have…
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A few years ago anyone travelling up the A1 towards Peterborough or on the rail line to Bedford will have seen evidence of the region’s history of brickmaking. Bricks were produced for over a century and were known as Fletton bricks, a generic name to describe bricks made from lower Oxford clay. Nowadays most of…
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The government has stepped back from a pledge to abolish leaseholds and replace them with a new system of commonhold property ownership. Despite previous criticisms of England’s “feudal” property system the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has put any major reforms on hold, citing concerns over the legal complexities involved. Ownership of a…
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Successive governments have come under pressure to increase the number of homes available in the UK. In their manifestos for the 2019 elections all the main parties pledged to increase the supply of housing, with the Conservatives aiming to add 300,000 housing units per year and more than one million over the course of their…
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The Hertfordshire village of Wheathampstead has been included in The Sunday Times Best Places to Live list for 2023, published on March 25th. Situated just a few miles north of St Albans, Wheathampstead has been listed among the best eleven locations in the south-east, as well as one of the top 72 places in the…
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The latest Wealth and Assets Survey carried out on behalf of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) claims that gifts and informal loans from family members have further skewed the pattern of home ownership in the UK. Between 2018 and 2020 annually funds and assets worth £17 billion were passed between family members, an increase…
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