New property website has to conquer Google – Bottom Line January 28, 2015 ONTHEMARKET.com, the new property website from the Agents’ Mutual group of estate agents, launched this week with an apparent threat to the “duopoly” of Rightmove and Zoopla. Zoopla, as the less well-visited of the two, seemed in danger as one of the requirements of OnTheMarket.com meant participating agents could only list on one other rival. [...]
Which London street is the most expensive to live on? Belgravia beats Kensington and Chelsea December 12, 2014 Grosvenor Crescent, near Buckingham Palace, has been named London's most expensive street to live on, according to new research by Lloyds Bank. Home buyers who want to live in one of the prestigious crescent's white Georgian townhouses will, on average, have to shell out a whopping £16.9m. It's located in high-end Belgravia, one of the wealthiest [...]
Queen denies housing bubble exists June 4, 2014 There is no housing bubble, we are all safe from the spectre of another boom and bust. Or so says the Queen’s speech and the accompanying notes the government published today. “My ministers will continue to promote the Help to Buy and Right to Buy schemes to support home ownership,” she said this [...]
Use of Help to Buy scheme picks up pace May 29, 2014 INTEREST in chancellor George Osborne’s controversial Help to Buy scheme is accelerating among buyers, even amid warnings that it is doing nothing to boost the UK’s supply of homes. Up to March, 7,313 applications for the mortgage guarantee part of the scheme had been approved. Demand was much stronger in the later months of the [...]
City Link administration: Most jobs to go on New Year’s Day December 29, 2014 Most workers at City Link are expected to be made redundant on New Year's Day, they have been told. An internal document seen by Sky said it is unlikely to be able to make termination payments – "however, you may be entitled to make claims to the Redundancy Payment Service". The news came on the [...]
How London’s brutalist Centre Point tower is being turned into luxury flats with a view January 26, 2015 Both reviled and admired, London’s Centre Point tower at the east end of Oxford Street has stirred controversy ever since it was first erected in 1966. A beehive of concrete and glass, its brutalist-style was regarded as an eyesore on the skyline and the fact that a building of its height (it is 117 metres [...]
Intelligent design: Made.com co-founder Chloe Macintosh talks knitting and the importance of opportunities April 26, 2015 When Chloe Macintosh sat down with a friend of a friend, she didn’t expect to get a job out of it – or to go on to become the co-founder of e-commerce furniture company Made.com. But Brent Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute.com and mydeco.com, isn’t any old coffee meet-up – and there’s nothing ordinary or unremarkable [...]
Return to Utopia: The desire to live where you work harks back to the industrial towns of yesteryear February 19, 2015 On frosty, damp mornings like the ones London has seen of late, the morning commute is worse than ever. Biting winds followed by packed, sweltering trains, followed by more wind – it’s as if the commute was specifically designed to make you as ill-prepared as possible for the day ahead. Yet it’s accepted by millions [...]
Now RBS caps UK mortgages June 3, 2014 RBS yesterday joined Lloyds in cutting back mortgage lending for the most expensive houses, in the latest sign that banks are worried that the market could overheat. The move came as Nationwide reported house prices are at a record high, while ex-City watchdog boss Lord Turner said he is worried about the towering pile of [...]
Letters to the Editor – 08/04 – Stamp duty reform, Crowdfunding rules, Best of Twitter April 7, 2014 Stamp duty reform [Re: Why it’s time to focus on the real cost of the housing crisis, yesterday] The government should switch payment of stamp duty to when someone sells a property, not when they buy. First-time buyers could use the money towards a deposit, and those in the middle of a chain would not [...]