House price inflation – only in Spain has it grown faster.
31 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 77 views]
Over the last five years, house price inflation in the UK was 90 per cent. In Spain the inflation rate was 100 per cent, but everywhere else in the Eurozone, and in North America and Australia, it was lower – or so says the Halifax. France enjoyed the third-highest house price inflation rate – says [...]
But some runes point to a housing disaster in the making
31 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 54 views]
And yet there are plenty of reasons to believe that the market is not quite as solid as so many of these experts are telling us. For one thing, Land Registry figures recently published said that average house prices rose by just 0.1 per cent in July. In the West Midlands, Yorkshire Humberside and Wales, [...]
Mortgage approvals and economic fundamentals set to save the day
31 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 64 views]
Better ordnance was given to the property bulls camp when the Bank of England released its latest report on mortgage approvals yesterday. 115,000 mortgages for house purchases were approved in July. The last time the monthly figure was higher than that was back in February. The likes of the Halifax and Nationwide still insist that [...]
Paragon celebrates buy-to-let’s growing profits
31 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 58 views]
Paragon Mortgages released its latest report on the state of the rental market earlier this week. It was very positive, but then Paragon only seems to do bullish reports. “With strong rental demand landlords are able to raise rents to cover their increased mortgage repayments. Rents rose by an average of 3.04 per cent over [...]
Are UK houses about to go the way of the US?
31 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 65 views]
It’s difficult to imagine a bigger split on opinion. The last few days have seen a rush of new reports on the property market, and a glut of opinions ranging from woe to celebration. At one extreme you have Paragon exclaiming how profitable buy-to-let investing is, and Halifax pooh-poohing fears that the recent rate of [...]
Markets claw back losses as another Hedge fund prepares to bite the dust
30 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 49 views]
Wednesday saw the Dow soar by 247 points: only 33 points short of making up for Tuesday’s falls. You may recall, yesterday we said there was no good reason for the sell-off in shares seen on Tuesday. And, today, we say that on Wednesday, there seems to have been no good reason for the share [...]
Barclays ABN and the share price that fell to Earth
30 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 86 views]
You may recall yesterday we told how shares in Barclays fell after a report suggested the bank might have got itself into difficulty with something called SIV-lites. The current liquidity crisis seems to rotate around horrible jargon and acronyms. Sub-prime is bad enough; it refers to mortgages for people with poor credit records. Then there [...]
BAA set to fly out cost cuts
30 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 55 views]
Douglas Adams once wrote that “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, ‘as pretty as an airport’.” We don’t like airports: they are noisy chaotic beasts. But, if there is one group of airports that seem to take the biscuit it’s those British air terminals run [...]
It is deja vu Banking crisis has hallmark of 1998
30 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 66 views]
1998 was a bad year for the banks. This was the year that Russia defaulted on its debts, and the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management collapsed. In the wake of the year’s turbulence banks’ profits plummeted, with investment banking and trading revenue down 31 percent in the second half, or so says Standard and [...]
Markets panic over lack of good news
29 Aug 2007 [0 Comments | 59 views]
Not much happened yesterday, so markets panicked. Sure, there were reasons for the panic. It’s just that under different circumstances yesterday’s news might not have led to a fall in share prices at all. First of all there was the Fed. It seemed somehow irrelevant. The minutes for the last regular meeting of its monetary [...]
