Lastminute.com sold for £76m to Swiss travel firm December 16, 2014 TRAVEL site Lastminute.com, founded at the height of the dot.com boom in 1998, has been sold to Bravofly Rumbo Group in a £76m deal. The sale will see current owner, US-based Sabre, swallow a big loss, having bought the holiday site for £577m in 2005. Swiss company Bravofly made the winning bid yesterday, following a [...]
Shock February drop in lending for mortgages March 31, 2014 MORTGAGE lending dipped during February, according to surprising official figures from the Bank of Lending, marking the first monthly drop in a year. There were 70,309 mortgages approved by financial institutions in February, down by more than 6,000 from January’s figure, which was the highest in six years, going back to the onset of the [...]
Goldman: Weak Opec will mean lower oil prices October 27, 2014 OIL PRICES will continue to decline in 2015, according to analysts form Goldman Sachs, who have also stated that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has lost its pricing power. The investment bank has lowered its price forecasts for brent crude oil from $100 a barrel to $85 a barrel for the first quarter and [...]
UK house prices drop for the first time in 17 months September 30, 2014 UK house prices have dropped for the first time in 17 months, dipping 0.2 per cent between August and September. In price terms, this means a drop of £931 for the average residential property, from £189,306 to £188,374. The data, from Nationwide, shows the annualised growth rate also slowed to 9.4 per cent from 11 [...]
Swelling house prices continue into February March 6, 2014 UK HOUSE prices surged in February according to a major index of prices, jumping 2.4 per cent in the month alone, and up 7.9 per cent from February last year. The monthly change is the fastest that Halifax has recorded since the first half of 2009, and February saw the 11th month-on-month increase in the [...]
It doesn’t get more central than The Beecham in Covent Garden November 27, 2014 Covent Garden, that stretch of meandering streets off The Strand that culminates in the famous piazza, has been through every stage of London life. It started out, as many of the City’s suburbs did, as countryside, serving as gardens for Westminster Abbey. Then came its first gentrification phase when Henry VIII seized the land [...]
Housing market goes in reverse over August September 10, 2014 A fall in both house sales and mortgage approvals in August has backed growing evidence that the booming property market is at last slowing. A Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) survey showed the number of agreed house sales in August fell for the first time since September 2012, and new buyer enquiries fell for [...]
78 Carlton Hill: Eric Idle’s old St John’s Wood home where Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher partied with the Rolling Stones November 27, 2014 Eric Idle used to let movie stars stay in his home in St John’s Wood while filming. Now, anyone can stay, for the right price. Tucked away in a quiet corner of north west London, a magnificent townhouse once hosted an unusual evening of frivolity between some of the biggest icons of 1980s pop [...]
Put your house on it …price boom ends October 8, 2014 HOUSE price growth slowed in September, an influential report from Halifax showed yesterday, adding to evidence that activity in the UK’s rampant property market was moderating. Prices rose 0.6 per cent last month and 9.6 per cent in the past year. But this still-substantial growth marks a continued slowdown from the annual growth of 10.2 [...]
This press release sums up everything that’s wrong with the UK’s house price obsession February 18, 2014 If there's a blindspot in the UK's collective understanding of economics – house prices is certainly it. In no other area would we so excitedly greet news of rising prices. That public relations officers feel we should want to applaud news of house prices well above their pre-crisis high is an insult. "Like chinks of sunlight, [...]