Docklands News

The Manhattan Loft Corporation (MLC) has negotiated an £80m refinancing loan with real estate investment manager, for its development of a 42-storey residential tower in Stratford. The Manhattan Loft Gardens Tower, in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, includes 204 apartments and a seven-floor hotel. “We very much appreciated Tristan Capital Partners’ partnership and solution-based approach to the refinancing of our award-winning residential tower", said MLC finance director Lloyd Hunt. "This facility provides us with the flexibility we need to further optimise the asset for all of our stakeholders, and especially the residents and local community".

Property Week (19/08/2022)  

Property prices in London are set to fall by 12% over the next two years as buyers in the country's most expensive market are hammered by the cost of living crisis and surging interest rates, according to new research. Home values in the capital will drop nearly twice as far as in the rest of the country, which will see an average price fall of 7% by the end of 2024, according to Capital Economics. London house prices will fall by 8% in 2023 and by a further 4% in 2024, it forecasts, meaning the average £538,000 London property will lose £65,560 in value. The capital will be worse hit than the rest of the country because homes are so much more unaffordable in relation to earnings. This means buyers are much more heavily reliant on the mortgage market and are therefore most exposed to rising interest rates. 

The Dally Telegraph (24/08/2022)  

The average interest rate on a two-year fixed mortgage has crept above 4% for the first time in almost ten years, following the Bank of England's latest base rate increase. An average two-year fixed rate mortgage is now at 4.09%, according to Moneyfacts: 62.3% more expensive than the same time last year when it was at 2.52%. It marks the first time the rate has breached 4% since February 2013 when it hit 4.09%. A typical fixed five-year mortgage - now a more popular option as buyers seek to shield themselves from further rate rises - has risen from 2.75% last August to 4.24% today. 

Daily Mail (22/08/2022)  

Britain’s biggest lenders are changing mortgage rules to target wealthier borrowers amid an affordability squeeze brought on by surging inflation. Halifax has upped its minimum loan size from £25,000 to £100,000 on some of its two and five-year remortgage deals. Experts said many lenders were competing to attract wealthier homeowners as the cost of living crisis leaves less affluent households struggling to pay their bills. It comes as NatWest relaxed its lending limits for wealthier borrowers. It will now offer those who earn more than £75,000 per year a mortgage of up to five-and-a-half times their annual income. The new rules apply to mortgages sold using a broker and joint applicants must have a combined income of at least £100,000 a year. Earlier this month Nationwide building society increased its maximum loan size from £2m to £5m. Experts said this was also to target weather borrowers. 

The Daily Telegraph (20/08/2022)  

House price growth slowed from 12.8% to 7.8% between May and June, a decline that marks one of the steepest monthly drops in annual growth ever recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The slowdown was so large partly because the annual growth rate was based on huge house price rises recorded in June 2021, the final month in which buyers could benefit from the full stamp duty holiday. The ONS figures show that the average property value climbed to £286,000 in June, an increase of £20,000 on a year earlier. While annual house price growth cooled from 13% to 7.3% in England and from 14.1% to 8.6% in Wales, it remained steady at 11.6% in Scotland. London remained the most expensive of any region in the UK, sitting at a record level of £538,000 in June 2022.

Daily Mail (17/08/2022)   Financial Times (17/08/2022)   Sky News (17/08/2022)   The Daily Telegraph (17/08/2022)  

House price falls are imminent amid soaring mortgage rates and increased pressure on household budgets, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The analysis suggests there will be a downturn in 2023, with prices set to fall by 4% next year. Meanwhile, Capital Economics has forecast a two-year property market downturn, with price falls of between 5% and 10% by the end of 2024. Andrew Wishart of Capital Economics comments: “The historical record shows that increases in interest rates of the scale that we are seeing now are always a precursor of house price falls". Martin Beck, of the EY Item Club, notes that more expensive properties, whose buyers are less dependent on the mortgage market and who have more savings, are more likely to hold their value but “properties for first-time buyers might see outright falls".

The Daily Telegraph (13/08/2022)