Houses priced below £100,000 are officially extinct in London October 17, 2016 Houses priced below £100,000 are now an extinct species in London. According to research by Jackson-Stops and Staff, all London homes worth less than £120,000 will disappear this year, with properties worth less than £150,000 set to vanish by 2020. Read more: This is how sterling's unstoppable slide will affect UK house prices Ninety-three per [...]
New Builds: 600 new homes are set to be built on a site the size of three football pitches in south London December 2, 2016 The Quarry, Bexley A quarrying site that hasn’t been used in 40 years is set to be home to 600 new properties. The first new homes – 80 per cent of which will be modern family houses hoping to attract upsizers – will go on sale in the new year. There will also be a [...]
Housebuilder share prices drop, following the FTSE 100’s slide November 2, 2016 The share prices of housebuilders have fallen in morning trading, following the FTSE 100, which has edged downwards. Barratt Developments' share price was down 0.81 per cent, Taylor Wimpey's share price was down 0.61 per cent and Berkeley Group's share price was down 0.42 per cent. After a positive set of results this morning, Persimmon's share price bucked [...]
Ownership of over 40,000 London properties shrouded in secrecy December 5, 2016 Thousands of London's properties are held by overseas companies registered in so-called secrecy havens, obscuring the details of their true ownership, a report out today has found. The report from Transparency International UK and Thomson Reuters identified 44,022 land titles owned by 23,653 overseas companies in Land Registry data. Of these, 91 per cent of companies, holding 40,098 of the land [...]
Construction firms hit brick wall as depreciation in sterling pushes up costs of building materials January 9, 2017 Building projects could be about to shoot up in price, as figures out today show more than seven in 10 UK builders have seen an increase in the cost of materials. Thousands of smaller building firms are now grappling with rising material prices caused by the depreciation of the pound since the EU referendum in [...]
Public funds committed to infrastructure and construction have increased by £40bn since March December 8, 2016 The total amount of public money locked in to infrastructure and public construction projects has leapt by almost £40bn, or eight per cent, in the last six months. Figures from KPMG show that the total value of a combined government infrastructure and construction pipeline is now £502.3bn, up from £463.4bn in March. 60 per cent [...]
A “hard Brexit” could undermine the very things driving GDP growth, according to this think tank November 7, 2016 Dramatic new migration barriers in the aftermath of Brexit could hit the UK's prospects for future growth, according to foreign policy experts. The UK recorded more than double the growth of Eurozone peers between 2010 and 2015, with Chatham House attributing the difference to aggressive monetary policy, rapid interventions into the financial sector and a [...]
Focus On Victoria: A £4bn investment in housing, retail and infrastructure is making it a destination in its own right February 10, 2017 If the Queen’s getting a £369m refurbishment of Buckingham Palace, it seems only fair that the neighbourhood surrounding it should get a polish, too. £4bn should just about cover it, and that’s how much has been invested in the area by developer Land Securities over the last five years. Around £700bn of that has gone [...]
Britain’s business groups attack “worrying” plans for a £1,000 charge on EU recruitment January 11, 2017 Business groups have hit out at proposals for a £1,000 charge to recruit European workers, warning the plan would Immigration minister Robert Goodwill told a House of Lords Committee earlier today that the Home Office was considering extending incoming charges for non-European recruits to all incoming migrants. From April, recruiting non-EEA skilled workers will see [...]
The housing crisis must be tackled by both government and industry or shareholders in the housebuilding sector will continue to suffer November 29, 2016 The UK is facing a chronic housing shortage, but housebuilders’ shares have taken a hammering in recent months. On the surface it is a conundrum. However, there are many forces at play. This year's changes to stamp duty have been inflationary at the bottom end of the London market and deflationary at the top. As [...]