From tomorrow, Halifax, the UK’s largest mortgage lender will force borrowers with small deposits who do not use a broker to open current accounts before they can get a mortgage. The move is seen as an attempt to boost the bank’s cash deposits. A spokesperson for the bank said that ‘wholesale money continues to be
A new report by Shelter has suggested that the rise in the number of couples who choose to live apart is contributing to the housing shortage and will cause a shortfall of one million houses. The recent collapse in house building will mean at least 500,000 fewer homes being built by the government’s 2020 deadline,
Record numbers of homeowners are letting out properties after failing to sell them, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. New instructions to let houses and flats increased at the fastest ever pace – and the flood of properties is expected to depress rental levels in the coming year. However, demand is rising, with
The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) will do everything it can to change the way that housing is supplied and would encourage the development of housing schemes that mixed affordable rented housing with homes at intermediate rents, as it plans to buy land from house builders in a bid to build new developments and boost
Gordon Brown is expected to unveil plans today to increase the amount of energy from renewable sources to 15 per cent by 2020 and investing £100 billion in the industry, in what has been billed as the biggest shakeup in Britain’s power generation since the industrial revolution. Under the plans, households could be forced to
With Tony Blair’s departure from number 10 imminent, the Mirror reports that Gordon Brown will launch a new era of council house building when he takes over as prime minister. HIPS come in for flak from a number of papers, including the Guardian, which all cover a critical House of Lords committee report claiming that
The Financial Services Authority warned mortgage firms that they should treat customers fairly as the number of repossessions rises and more homeowners fall into arrears. During the first three months of the 2008, repossessions rose 40 per cent from a year earlier, while the number of home loans in arrears increased 15 per cent. The
Papers including the Mail interpret comments by Mervyn King yesterday as a signal that the property boom may be over – though the Bank of England governor also said inflation is set to fall. But leading buy-to-let lender Bradford and Bingley sees no signs of a slowdown thanks to immigration and students, reports the Financial
Complaints about military accommodation are growing according to the Army Families Federation (AFF), a support group for British service personnel. The federation says that 59.4 per cent of more than one thousand calls it received last year were about housing, compared with just 39 per cent in 2005. The AFF blames the fact that there
The number of repossessions jumped by 70 per cent in the past year. According to figures from the Financial Services Authority, some 11,054 homes in Britain were repossessed in the second quarter of the year, up from just under 6,500 during the same period last year, and 9,172 in the first three months of 2008.The