The Halifax has released its house price index for December which shows that prices went up by 1.3 per cent, the first rise in the past four months. The overall annual rise was 5.2 per cent, the slowest annual rate of growth since 1996, taking the average UK home to £197,039 in 2007. The lender
The Daily Telegraph newspaper has picked 16 September 2026 as the perfect day to buy your next house. The paper asked a number of property experts to estimate the date when they believe house prices will be at their lowest level, and the answers ranged from last Thursday to May 2010, with the average being
All local authorities in the UK have now signed up to the government’s mortgage rescue scheme, with as many as 300 households already qualifying for the support plan. Communities and Local Government says the impact of the £200 million scheme introduced in September 2008 to prevent as many as 6,000 repossessions from occurring is difficult
House prices dropped during November according to Land Registry figures, with the average value of a home in England and Wales down by 1.9 per cent, or £3,135, to £161,883. It was the fifteenth consecutive monthly decrease. Prices are now 12.2 per cent down in year on year figures â standing at the same level
A proposal to publish MPs’ expenses without releasing receipts has been criticised as ‘outrageous’. The Commons lost a Freedom of Information battle last year and was ordered to publish all MPs’ claims and receipts by October 2008. However, the deadline passed with Commons officials saying that process and cost was proving ‘more complex than anticipated’.
Researchers at Durham University have found many homeowners are remortgaging their homes for cash to supplement their day-to-day expenditure. The researchers looked at the spending patterns of more than 8,000 families from 2001 to 2005 and found a third of people used the cash released by equity in their homes for ‘other specified reasons’, ie
Previews of the Freud report on Welfare reform – due later this month – appear in several of today’s papers. The Mail predicts that people who are long-term unemployed and refuse to look for work will have their benefits stopped, while Peter Riddell in the Times focuses on plans to introduce work tests for lone
The centrepiece of yesterday’s housing industry rescue package – the stamp duty holiday – has come under fire today. Referred to as a ‘sticking plaster’ by many, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said it will have little impact in London, where a first-time buyer’s property averages at around £260,000. As many as nine out
The chancellor Alistair Darling has urged mortgage lenders to pass the recent interest rate cuts on to homeowners, saying it was time lenders ‘played their part’ after the Bank of England injected £15 billion into the financial system. After conceding on Friday that the present financial troubles are the ‘biggest economic shock since the Great
Wherever you look the statistics seem to be unprecedented. House prices fell at their fastest rate ever in 2008. Sales are lower than at any time since records began in the 1950s. Housing starts are at the lowest level seen in peacetime since the 1920s. For current information, see further details. According to many forecasters,