BREAKING NEWS – 5 top stories 22/12/2020

Estate Agent Networking Breaking News

WELSH HOUSING DRAGON ROARS

Investment buyers, second homeowners and BTL buyers have been marginalised in many ways by creeping taxation and other factors, but in Wales with lightening speed a new raft of taxation on non-primary property purchase comes into force, two days before Christmas.

With an additional 1% layer of SDLT tax being applied to all the steps in taxation that already exists, so for property over £250,000 to £400,000 there will be a 9%. Tenants need somewhere to live, and if landlords become priced out of the market all this will do is destabilise rents and diminish the housing stock.

MORTGAGES ARE THEY TOO EXPENSIVE?

The Bank of England base rate is at an incredibly low 0.1% set in March of this year, a reduction down from 0.25%, and yet borrowers without a hefty deposit are looking at borrowing if they are a first-time buyer at over 3%.

The reason this is a worry, is that the first-time buyer is a large slice of the homebuying cake, and if they become priced out of the market, this dampens market activity. Banks need to make returns, but it is a very finely balanced line.

JENRICK ON A BORIS INSPIRED BUILDING SPURT

Seeming to have weathered his own personal storm regarding new homes and planning, our present housing secretary has in the last week, deepened his resolve to allow more housing in England. Saying, ‘The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated and magnified patterns that already existed, creating a generational opportunity for the repurposing of offices and retail as housing and for urban renewal.”

He becomes even more lyrical stating that, ‘this to be an opportunity for a new trajectory for our major cities – one which helps to forge a new country beyond Covid – which is more beautiful, healthier, more prosperous, more neighbourly and where more people have the security and dignity of a home of their own.”

TRUSSLE ON TV

Earlier this month, Trussle the digital online mortgage provider who look to uncomplicate lending and speed up mortgages, went big and launched on Television. Reports suggest that this traditional but high spend has given them new traction.

HALIFAX PREDICTS HOUSING MARKET GLOOM IN 2021

The MD of the Halifax building society has predicted a 5% clipping of property prices in the UK in a recent, looking to economic factors, the pandemic and unemployment.

Mr Galley concedes that 2020 has been a resilient market but says the steam will come out of it, ‘Despite the deepest recession for centuries, house prices have risen over the past year at their fastest rate since 2016, with mortgage approvals also at their highest level for over a decade. This growth has been driven by a shift in demand from buyers as a result of increased home working and a desire for more space, while the stamp-duty holiday brought forward many transactions that might otherwise have been planned for next year.’

The one thing that is certain for me writing this piece – is that absolutely nothing is certain and 2021 is likely to yet another white-knuckle ride into the property maelstrom.

Andrew Stanton

CEO & Founder Proptech-PR. Proptech Real Estate Influencer, Executive Editor of Estate Agent Networking. Leading PR consultancy in Proptech & Real Estate.

You May Also Enjoy

Breaking News

UK monthly property transactions for May 2025

Headline statistics from the latest transactions data include: the provisional seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of UK residential transactions in May 2025 is 81,470, 12% lower than May 2024 and 25% higher than April 2025 the provisional non-seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of UK residential transactions in May 2025 is 80,530, 13% lower than May 2024 and…
Read More
Breaking News

Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB) shows the Government has a plan

The Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB) held its first board meeting today (26 June 2025), where it set out a roadmap for recruiting 100,000 more construction workers a year by the end of Parliament. Richard Beresford, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Builders (NFB), said: “The Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB) is a recognition…
Read More
Paint Stripper Tools
Estate Agent Talk

5 Strategies to Optimise Your Warehouse for Real Estate

The term fixer-upper can mean many things, from ‘slap some paint on the walls and it looks brand new’ to ‘will this building collapse if we open the front door?’ Indeed, in the dicey world of commercial property acquisition, each warehouse you buy will probably fall into both camps. Thinking about the viability of warehouses…
Read More
Breaking News

HMOs sell for up to 50% above market average

New research from Excellion Capital, the boutique debt advisory and investment firm, reveals that HMOs sell for as much as 50% above the average house price, further increasing their investment potential after it was revealed that HMOs also create rental yields of up to 12.5%. After previous research from Excellion Capital recently showed that the…
Read More
Breaking News

UK buyers struggle while 50,000 homes sit empty

As the UK housing crisis deepens, new analysis by Open Property Group exposes a worrying surge in so-called “zombie homes”- properties that sit unoccupied and deteriorating while millions struggle to access affordable housing. Key insights: 50,000+ long-term vacant homes in England alone 23,000+ of these have been empty for more than two years Estimated £13.6…
Read More
Breaking News

Breaking Property News 26/06/25

Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.   The UK is Europe’s second most distressed market despite headline GDP growth Retail and Consumers Goods has emerged as the most distressed sector in Europe, with distress levels now the highest since the global financial crisis, according to the latest Weil European Distress Index (WEDI). The…
Read More