Docklands News

Halifax has announced that UK house prices were 4.7% lower in September than a year earlier, the biggest year-on-year drop since 2009. The average price of a typical UK home fell to £278,601, down from £292,197 in the same month last year. Britain's biggest mortgage lender said house prices fell 0.4% month-on-month in September, the sixth fall in a row, though this was less than the 1.8% drop in prices in August. The data also found that house prices in every region had fallen in the past year, with the average price in London dropping 4.8%, to £525,678.

BBC News (06/10/2023)   Evening Standard (06/10/2023)   Financial Times (06/10/2023)   The Daily Telegraph (06/10/2023)  

Mortgage brokers and property experts have told i that housebuilders are having to "admit defeat" and offer large incentives or big price cuts to sell new homes. Property industry sources say higher mortgage rates and the absence of schemes that reduce upfront costs for buyers - such as Help to Buy loans - are causing more developers to struggle to get the money they want for new homes. Justin Moy, a mortgage broker at EHF Mortgages, said he recently had a client who had viewed a property valued by the developer at £425,000 and haggled the price down to £350,000. "The negotiation was over a six-month period. The properties were not selling, and the price had to be reduced accordingly," he said. 

I (06/10/2023)  

Average standard variable mortgage rates (SVR) have reached a record high of 8.18% in October, according to Moneyfacts. In comparison, the average two-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.47% and the average five-year fix was 5.97% at the start of October. According to Moneyfacts, a borrower paying back a £200,000 mortgage over 25 years would have made a typical monthly repayment of around £1,100 back in December 2021, when the average SVR was 4.40%, while at 8.18%, that monthly payment could now have jumped to around £1,567. 

The Independent (10/10/2023)  

HMRC data shows that 87,010 homes were sold in August, with this 1% more than July’s total but 16% lower than the total recorded in August 2022. On the month-on-month increase, Iain McKenzie, CEO of The Guild of Property Professionals, said: “Another uplift in property sales is a positive sign that the industry is recovering after a slow first half to the year.“ He said that while year-on-year there was a “significant” drop off in sales, it is “nothing different to what we were forecasting at the start of the year.” He added: “If anything, our predictions of an overall fall of 20% for 2023 may even be revised thanks to the consecutive months of increases we have seen.” 

City AM (30/09/2023)   Daily Mail (30/09/2023)   Evening Standard (30/09/2023)   The Guardian (30/09/2023)  

The average price of a house in the UK was unchanged last month, according to Nationwide, despite expectations of a 0.4% fall. The average price of a house in the UK is now £257,808. However, house prices are 5.3% lower than they were last year, the same annual figure that was recorded in August. Economists had predicted that the year-on-year rate of decline would worsen to 5.7%. “The downturn in house prices probably has only a few months left to run,” said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. The market is “close to bottoming out,” he said. The price slump eased in London with values down 3.8% in the third quarter compared to a year ago, an improvement from the 4.3% fall the previous quarter. 

Evening Standard (02/10/2023)   Financial Times (02/10/2023)   The Guardian (02/10/2023)   The Times (02/10/2023)  

A new report by UK 2040 Options and The Resolution Foundation reveals a decline in homeownership for those born in the 1980s, with only 36% owning their own homes by age 30 compared to over 60% for those born in the 1950s and 1960s. The wealth of the richest 10% has grown 25 times faster than the poorest 30% since 2006. The report suggests changes to tax laws, such as capital gains tax reform, as a step towards reducing the wealth gap. Craig Brown, CEO of Legal & General Home Finance, notes how house price rises have outpaced wage growth, making it harder than ever for first-time buyers to step onto the property ladder without help. L&G Bank of Family research suggests that, over time, less people will have the opportunity to become home owners unless there is property wealth in their family. 

Daily Express (02/10/2023)   The Mirror (02/10/2023)