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24th July 2015
A PwC report has found over half of 20 to 39-year-olds will be renting property from private landlords rather than living in their own homes a decade from now. It predicts that by 2025, 7.2m households will be in rented accommodation, compared with 5.4m today and just 2.3m in 2001. It notes that owner occupation will be at 60%, down from the 70% seen before the financial crisis. PwC predicts property values will rise 5% this year and average prices could hit £360,000 by 2020, up from the current average of £279,000. One property expert notes the cost of buying was a bigger barrier to ownership than the cost of owning, saying: “with low mortgage rates, annual housing costs are more affordable than for those in the rented tenures. Instead, with house prices still at many multiples of income and mortgage lending at high loan-to-values limited and expensive, it is the cost of raising a deposit that prevents many from buying a home."
The Times The Daily Telegraph The Guardian
24th July 2015
Simon Jenkins in the Evening Standard looks at the number of skyscrapers that are reshaping the London skyline, saying that the City of London Corporation has gone against its policy of protecting it. He says the Shard was meant to be a one off but has in fact been a precedent, with the Heron Tower and Walkie Talkie building following and new plans for the site at 22 Bishopsgate set to see a building only 30m short of the Shard’s 300m. He says London has no plan in place to design, cluster or shape its skyline.
Evening Standard, Page: 14
24th July 2015
London football clubs top the league tables for property values, with eMoov looking at the mean prices in the postcodes of every Premier League club and finding that the top six places are taken by teams from the capital plus neighbouring Watford. Average house prices of £1,137,550 place Chelsea’s SW6 postcode at the top of the table, with Arsenal’s home in N7 placing them second, with an average price of £575,676. All Greater London clubs have seen local values rise since last year, with west Ham’s Upton Park seeing the biggest climb at 7%. Liverpool and Everton were found to be the clubs with the cheapest places to buy property.
Evening Standard
24th July 2015
New research shows that despite rising property costs, average rental prices in the City and Docklands have stalled over the past three years. Following a rise in short-term tenancies, the report warns of the impact of the Government relaxing anti-subletting rules, indicating that it could make it easy for tenants to re-rent properties for a profit.
24th July 2015
Tower Hamlets Council has rejected a planning permission by British Land to build a 320,000 square foot office, residential and retail floor space as part of the Norton Folgate scheme. Local campaigners have raised concerns over the development of the Shoreditch Estate, worried about the demolition of historic buildings and the impact the site would have on local prices.
17th July 2015
Homes worth a total of £140m in Canary Wharf’s latest residential tower block sold out in less than five hours despite the fact that it hasn’t been built yet. Maine Tower’s 230 apartments, which ranged in asking price from £350,000 to £1.25m, and will be completed in 2019, sold out in a single morning a fortnight ago, according to Galliard Homes, the builder behind the east London development. Galliard said that 50% of the flats were bought by domestic buyers - including some first-time buyers - and 50% were from overseas. Crossrail is due to start running in 2019 and experts believe the new railway line is driving a major uplift in house prices in areas through which the service will run and attracting new levels of interest in east London. Earlier this year JLL forecast a 44% rise in house prices in Canary Wharf and a 54% hike in Whitechapel. Stephen Conway, the chief executive of Galliard Homes, said that the international buyers that have invested in Maine Tower were dominated by Greek, French and Italian buyers looking to sink their money into London property.
The Sunday Telegraph (12/07/2015)