House prices: is the pendulum swinging in favour of buyers?
10 Mar 2010 [1 Comment | 186 views]
Last month was a tricky one for the housing market. Both the Nationwide and Halifax had prices down. The Bank of England’s latest data on mortgage approvals showed a sharp drop, and Hometrack was full of negativity sentiments.
But then again, you can’t read much into one month’s worth of data.
The snow may have been the [...]
House prices: the February story is complete
4 Mar 2010 [0 Comments | 214 views]
Yesterday, we told the latest news from the Nationwide and Hometrack on house prices, and the news from the Bank of England on mortgage approvals.
Now the data from the Halifax is in, so here is a summary of what the latest data says.
According to the Halifax, house prices were down 1.5 per cent in February, [...]
UK housing market leaves Europe for dust, or is it the other way round?
3 Mar 2010 [0 Comments | 151 views]
Yippee, the UK economy may be in the doldrums compared to our cousins in Europe, but the housing market isn’t. At least, that’s the finding of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in its latest report looking at the European housing market.
RICS said: “Low interest rates and reviving economies helped to avoid housing market [...]
Is the housing market turning?
3 Mar 2010 [0 Comments | 315 views]
The last few days have seen more developments in the housing market, with hints that the market’s surprising recovery seen last year may be stuttering and going into reverse.
News from the Nationwide, Hometrack and the Bank of England all seem to point in that direction.
The Nationwide has house prices down 1 per cent in February, [...]
Friday snippets – House price recovery stutters, and Goldman comes under Bernanke antenna
26 Feb 2010 [0 Comments | 99 views]
If there’s a correlation between the amount of news and the economy’s woes, then now is the time to worry. There is simply too much happening at the moment to squeeze it all in.
Goldman Sachs is in trouble again. The issues at the bank were referred to here the other day; see: Will Goldman Sachs [...]
High Street and house prices: Britain freezes over
9 Feb 2010 [0 Comments | 217 views]
And then the snow came.
January saw both the High Street and housing market freeze over. It was the worst January for retail sales growth in 15 years, while activity in the housing market went into a steep reversal.
Was it the snow, or something more serious?
Bad news for houses came from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. [...]
Double trouble for house prices
4 Feb 2010 [0 Comments | 223 views]
Bad news, it seems, comes in twos, and today we have got two bits of bad new for the housing market.
First off, comes news from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, or CML. It reckons the UK mortgage market is about to suffer from a £300 billion funding gap.
The problem is this. Thanks to the credit [...]
Bulls leap on housing market, but Toreador steps forward
2 Feb 2010 [0 Comments | 299 views]
Predictions that house prices are set to rise are like buses. You can hang around for ages waiting for a hint of optimism, and then, all of sudden, there is a traffic jam of buses carrying bullish forecasts.
Look a little deeper, however, and the buses appear different. Yes, passengers on one of them are clearly [...]
House prices, the future, the definitive article
20 Jan 2010 [3 Comments | 680 views]
Here is our first attempt to comprehensively summarise all the arguments for and against house prices going up in the future.
House prices always go up. Did you know that in 1930 the average house price was £590. See this link
According to a parliamentary report a pound in 1998 would have been worth around 0.03 per cent [...]
Housing barometer index hits the press
13 Jan 2010 [0 Comments | 271 views]
If you are a regular reader, you will know this column is a fan of the monthly housing market survey from The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Yesterday, its latest survey saw the light of day.
For the first time in quite a while, the headline index fell. In November, the percentage difference between [...]
