According to Martin Ellis, Halifax housing economist, said: “House prices in the three months to August were 0.7% higher than in the previous quarter; down from 1.5% in July. The annual rate of growth fell from 8.4% in July to 6.9%" He continues "House price growth continued the trend of the [...]
Landlords, you need to think very carefully about what type of mortgage you get next. Mortgage brokers also need to be very careful on what mortgages they recommend. If you take out a 2-year mortgage now that is based on 125% cover and at 75% LTV you could very well find yourself in a [...]
The news this week focused on the fact that the number of homes built in the year to June has increased by 6% to 139,030, latest Government figures reveal. What these headlines don't actually tell you is that we are actually are around 111,000 homes short a year. This is based on the [...]
According to Equifax Touchstone, the mortgage lending total in July was 39% down on the same month a year ago. The stamp duty hike in April certainly has had some bearing on this. What is not clear, is if it is mainly due to purchases being made earlier than planned to avoid the [...]
Yields of more than 10% are still obtainable in certain university towns in the England, according to the Telegraph. Given all the tax changes implemented and coming, investors are looking for higher yields to try and counteract any tax increases as much as possible. For those with existing properties that potentially means increasing rents (or [...]
June buy-to-let sales were 28.6% lower year-on-year but still rose by 3% from the month before to reach £2.7bn, Equifax Touchstone analysis shows. We know there was a significant jump in sales in the run-up to the April 1 stamp duty hike. This drop does tell us though that sales generally are slowing down in [...]
On the government website two days ago, details around the restriction of claiming tax relief, were revealed. For those of you that had hoped Philip Hammond would halt and rethink this change, you may be disappointed. It is not clear if this was just the next step in a process that was underway already and [...]
Yields are critical A couple of months ago, we saw the introduction of the 145% rental cover, instead of the 125% we have been accustomed to for years. In it's simplest form, this meant that mortgages typically would require a deposit of around 33% going forward vs 25% However when you take yield into account [...]
Will the tide start to turn in favour of landlords and their tenants? Could we see the end of the "turnover" tax being proposed? George Osborne has implemented a number of tax changes already impacting both landlord and ultimately tenant. However, the main one is still to come in 2017. He proposed taking away our [...]
Your views on pros and cons going forward for the property market: Pros Interest rates could come down which would mean cheaper mortgages for those on tracker rates almost immediately and further reduction in mortgages more generally. If you are sitting on USD or EUR then property in the UK will look cheaper for the [...]
