August house purchase lending….

According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders August house purchase lending was down 9% on July, but up 2% on last year. First-time buyers, home movers, home-owner remortgage and buy-to-let all saw a monthly decline in lending in August but an uptick (significant for buy-to-let) compared to August 2014. This is a normal seasonal trend,…

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Effect of buy-to-let on UK financial stability

According to the Bank of England in a recent report by their financial policy committee, the UK’s buy-to-let market is posing a threat to the country’s financial stability. Any wobbles in the housing market could be exagerated due to the nature of that market, the effects of a housing crash could be made much worse.…

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Lack of housing supply

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The lack of housing supply is a story that just will not go away, numbers of properties currently available per estate agent have fallen again from 55 in July to 38 in August, we are actually at an 11 year low for properties available. Where we look to find the reason for the imbalance  at…

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Private Rented Sector Booms in Scotland.

Declines in home ownership and a reduction in social housing have fuelled growth in Scotland’s private rented sector over the last year, and the recently published Scottish Household Survey revealed that the proportion of private rented households has grown from 5% in 1999 to 14%, some 266,000 properties. As the private rented sector in Scotland…

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Comments on BTL regulation

According to Stefatheno Silvestrin, senior economist at the the Nationwide Building Society who was  speaking at the the Financial Services Expo (FSE) London on Wednesday, the curbing of tax relief on interest-only buy-to-let mortgages for landlords by  George Osborne is unlikely to have a major impact on activity in the sector. Silvestrin said the decision…

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Corbyn and Social Housing

The result of the labour leader contest was announced on saturday, against all the odds we saw the selection of Jeremy Corbyn, most commentators and many inside his party are dubious as to whether the right person was selected. This major swing to the left has suprised many, how will it affect those moderates in…

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Property purchase stats for over 55’s

Research by Insurers Prudential says that its figures suggest that involvement by householders currently over the age of 55 will account for more than three million property transactions, worth a total of more than £775 billion. Investing in property remains popular with the over 55’s says the insurer, the average maximum purchase price for their…

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Buying a buy-to-let project.

An easy mistake to make when deciding to start a portfolio of  buy-to-let properties is to under estimate the need for a professional approach and that infact you are running a business, to many it can appear a relatively simple way to make money with little risk, emphasis should be made on maximising potential return…

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Buy-to-Let increases burden on welfare

It is expected that George Osborne will be cutting Housing Benefit in his budget on wednesday, it has been reported through certain media that he is considering forcing all housing benefit recipients to contribute towards their own rent. It has also been reported that he is pushing for the benefit cap to be lowered from…

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Rental demand continues to grow

The buy-to-let lenders Paragon Mortgages says that 43% of landlords surveyed  believe demand is either growing or booming, in their most recent findings the trend for strong tenant demand is well established, with ongoing steady growth for the past three consecutive quarters. This  level of growth is expected to continue over the coming 12 months,…

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Pensioners invest in Buy-to-Let

The buy-to-let sector of the property market remains as strong as ever, new data reveals that the number of buy-to-let deals available to first-time landlords has increased 13 per cent in the last few months. It is just a few weeks since the relaxtion of rules came into effect concerning changes to how pensioners are…

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Well known landlords decide to sell.

Fergus and Judith Wilson are without doubt a true success story when it comes to Buy-to-Let  investing, I can rememeber back quite sometime when I read a report in one of the main stream newspapers describing how the former maths teachers recognized that the buy-to let market at the time was a matter of simple…

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How to maximise your buy-to-let profits.

The buy-to-let market is flourishing, especially in areas where lots of people want to live and work, such as London and the South East. Other investments (such as bonds) are not producing the returns they have in the past and interest rates are still at an all-time low of 0.5% above base rate, so savvy…

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Landlords prefer semi-detached

A survey recently put out by Paragon the buy-to-let lender shows that 35% of landlords  prefer the semi detached property when searching  for a property to rent out, that figure is up from 23% in the last quarter of 2014. Terraced properties have reportedly fallen out of favour of prospective landlords, over the last three…

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