Property sales hit their highest monthly level of the year so far in November figures from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have shown.There were 85,000 property sales during the month, up from 79,000 in October, it said.
However, despite the apparent pick-up in transactions, the number of sales in the first 11 months of the year [...]
A growing proportion of surveyors and estate agents believe that economic uncertainty is holding back housing market activity.This was considered to be a bigger reason than the availability of mortgages and worries about house price falls, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said.
However, the latest Rics survey shows a slight rise in buyer demand [...]
Housing market activity will improve in 2013 after a stagnant few years according to forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).It said there would be a 20% rise in transactions in 2013/ 14, compared with the previous year.
The OBR also predicted that house prices would rise at levels above inflation from the same year, [...]
Economic uncertainty makes the future of the UK mortgage market “difficult to call”, a mortgage lenders’ group has said.Paul Smee, director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), said the market for home loans was currently stable.
The number of mortgages taken out for house purchases was 48,200 in September, down 2% from the month [...]
Mortgage interest rates could start to rise again as a result of the turmoil in the eurozone brokers are warning.Some lenders, including Woolwich, Halifax and Santander, have pushed up their tracker rates for new borrowers.
This increase follows a rise in the rate at which banks lend to each other – Libor – which has been [...]
The number of new mortgages approved for home buyers, but not yet lent, fell in September for the first time in five months.The Bank of England said approvals for home buyers were 50,967 in September, down 1,380 or 3% from August.
The figures suggest that this year’s modest revival in sales has ended and that mortgage [...]
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was unanimous in voting for another £75 billion of quantitative easing (QE) to support the weak UK economy.Minutes from the MPC’s meeting earlier show members considered injecting between £50 billion and £100 billion.
The committee cited a sharp deterioration in the international outlook as a key factor.
The vote [...]
House prices are “lacking genuine direction”, according to the Halifax, as it reported a 0.5% fall in values in September compared with August.Prices were down 2.3% from a year ago, leaving the average home in the UK worth £161,132, the lender said.
It said there had been a mixed pattern of monthly changes in prices, but [...]
Activity in the UK construction sector slowed to “near stagnation” in September, a closely-watched survey has suggested.The Markit/Cips construction purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 50.1, just fractionally above the 50 “no-change” threshold that separates expansion from contraction.
In August, the index had read 52.6.
Markit said fewer new orders was the reason behind the slowdown, but [...]
Building and heating materials group Wolseley has returned to a full year profit in 2010/11.The group suffered when the housing market was hit during the recession, but said it had focused on improving its “customer, product and vendor mix”.
Wolseley reported a pre-tax profit of £391 million in the year to July, compared with a £328 [...]
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