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UK house prices grew at the slowest annual rate for nearly six years in January, according to Nationwide, with prices up by just 0.1% from a year earlier, and down from a rate of 0.5% in December. However, month on month prices grew 0.3% at the start of 2019 compared to a 0.7% slip between November and December. The average property price is now £211,966, just £210 more than a year ago. Nationwide said it was likely that the recent slowdown in the market was due to "the impact of the uncertain economic outlook on buyer sentiment". Robert Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist, added: "However, if the economy continues to grow at a modest pace, with the unemployment rate and borrowing costs remaining close to current levels, we would expect UK house prices to rise at a low single-digit pace in 2019."
BBC News (31/01/2019) Financial Times (31/01/2019)
Mortgage approvals dropped to an eight-month low, to 63,793 from 63,952 the previous month, amid falling household confidence and heightened uncertainty in December, according to the Bank of England. Mortgage lending rose by £4.1bn in the same month, down from £3.6bn in November. “Weak mortgage approvals reflect the very high level of house prices, which, combined with rising interest rates, have been suppressing demand. However, the data suggests that Brexit uncertainty is increasingly weighing on lending volumes,” said Hansen Lu, economist at Capital Economics. “On the demand side, new buyer inquiries are falling, while house price expectations have dropped sharply – pointing to weakening buyer confidence”.
The Times (30/01/2019) City AM (30/01/2019)
Lloyds Banking Group is to offer 100% mortgages to first-time buyers in a return to lending last seen before the financial crash. The Lend a Hand mortgage requires a parent, grandparent or other close family member to lock away enough money to cover the equivalent of a 10% deposit. In return, they will earn a fixed 2.5% interest on this sum.
The Guardian (28/01/2019)
Transactions in the central London housing market have dropped to their lowest in a decade, as political uncertainty around Brexit begins to bite.
Financial Times (28/01/2019)
Private developers started building 23,130 homes in London in 2018 – a decrease of 15% on the year before. The figures, part of a report released by data analysts from Molior London, show the lowest level of new builds starting since 2013. “London has never recently been further away from building the number of homes it needs,” the report said.
Evening Standard (22.01/2019)
First-time buyers are now dominating Britain's housing market, as the level of current homeowners moving house fell the most in seven years, according to Lloyds Bank. It found that the number of homemovers fell by 4% last year from 2017, while the number of first-time buyers increased by 3%. It is the first year since 1995 that people buying their first home account for more of the market than homemovers – 51% vs 49% – Lloyds said. The cost of moving home is putting pressure on homemovers, said Andrew Mason of Lloyds Bank, with an average deposit now at just below £100,000, while stamp duty cuts and the Help to Buy scheme are helping out new buyers. According to the data, Northern Ireland and the north of England are the only regions where the number of homemovers increased during the last 12 months, by 7% and 1% respectively.
The Daily Telegraph (18/01/2019)