Docklands News

The total value of mortgages lent rocketed last month as buyers face more affordability tests. Some 70,933 mortgages were given the green light in February, compared to 73,841 in January, according to the Bank of England's monthly money and credit figures. However, the total value lent rose from £16.6bn to £16.7bn, meaning the average value of a mortgage loan is 10.4% higher than this time last year. The average mortgage was £235,474 in February, up 4.6% month-on-month. Approvals for remortgaging with a different lender rose to 48,200 in February. This was the highest total for remortgage loans since February 2020 but still below the average seen in the year leading up to the pandemic. 

City AM (29/03/2022)   Daily Mail (29/03/2022)   Evening Standard (29/03/2022)   The Guardian (29/03/2022)  

Homeowners have been hit with higher borrowing costs as lenders pass on the Bank of England’s interest rate rise. Halifax, Santander, Lloyds, Nationwide and Skipton Building Society all added 0.25 percentage points to their standard variable rate deals last week, just days after Threadneedle Street increased official interest rates from 0.5% to 0.75%. The lowest mortgage rates have doubled in the past six months and borrowers are now paying £840 a year more for the average loan than they did in October last year, analysis shows. 

The Daily Telegraph (25/03/2022)  

A revised home information pack-inspired form, providing more upfront property information for prospective buyers to speed up the conveyancing process, has been unveiled by a stakeholder group helping the government. Unique property reference numbers and smart home system information have been added to the Buyer's and Seller's Property Information form (BASPI), designed by the Home Buyers and Sellers Group. The form now includes requirements such as the unique property reference number, shared ownership information, leasehold details, spray foam insulation, smart home systems information and whether the property has a digital logbook – which will have to be transferred on completion – and where it is held.

Law Society Gazette (31/03/2022)  

Canary Wharf Group has laid out plans to build one of the largest commercial labs in Europe, as the landlord moves to set up a life sciences cluster in east London. The Group and Kadans Science Partner have announced a joint venture to develop the 750,000 square foot life-science focussed hub, understood to be in the range of hundreds-of-millions of pounds. “We are creating a world class building that will provide state of the art laboratory, office and innovation space for some of the most exciting and fast-growing businesses in the health and life sciences sector,” Canary Wharf Group CEO Shobi Khan said. 

City AM (30/03/2022)   Financial Times (30/03/2022)  

A planning inspector has rejected TateHindle’s "overbearing" design for a 25-storey residential tower in Canary Wharf. The plans involved the demolition of Muriel Crescent, an eight-storey commercial building on Canary Wharf’s waterside, which would have been replaced by 151 flats. Tower Hamlets Council refused the plans last summer, arguing that the new homes would not have a ‘satisfactory internal living environment’, the tower would be "overbearing" and that other issues relating to energy, microclimate and waste management were "inadequate" or not considered. The developer, Meadow Partners, appealed the decision but planning inspector Christa Masters backed Tower Hamlets’ original decision. She commented: "The space would fail to provide a satisfactory living environment for potential future occupiers. With the exception of the first floor, the outdoor amenity space would fail to be a high quality and useable feature for future residents".

Architects' Journal (22/03/2022)  

The London property market is overvalued by as much as 50%, analysts have warned, prompting fears of an impending correction. S&P Global, part of Standard & Poor's, used long-term average prices of properties and compared them with income data for its calculations. Alastair Bigley, a researcher for the agency, warned that prices were likely to fall. “A combination of low rates, the stamp duty holiday and excess savings amid the pandemic have driven property prices higher, particularly in London and the South East where overvaluation relative to income over the long-term is as much as 50%,” he said. “We expect a greater correction in property prices in an overvalued market.” Outside the capital, S&P estimated that property was overvalued by 20%. Mr Bigley said that house price rises were “a consistent trend” across the pandemic, which was not initially noticed due to the disruption to the international economy. 

The Daily Telegraph (21/03/2022)