Five Years Before Housing Market Recovers From Coronavirus – Claim

The market could take five years to recover from the Coronavirus crisis after possible double-digit percentage price falls and fast-increasing repossessions. That’s the bleak assessment of a peer-to-peer lending platform, Sourced Capital, which has analysed property market data from past recessions in a bid to estimate - very crudely - what might emerge from the current crisis. It suggests that the early 1980s recession lasted for over a year and produced a four-fold rise in repossessions. The platform says the property market nonetheless remained resolute where house prices were concerned at least, with an increase of 8.6 per cent. Read more on the Estate Agent Today website.

https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2020/4/five-years-before-housing-market-recovers-from-coronavirus--claim

Property Markets In England And Wales Showing Signs Of Picking Up

There are signs of the property market picking up in England and Wales, and in parts of London, according to the latest real estate market analysis. Average prices for July in England and Wales, excluding new build, reached £263,145, up 2.2% month on month, according to the report from London Central Portfolio (LCP), but annual growth was almost static at 0.8%, the weakest since 2011. However, sales increased year on year by 2.2% to reach 807,478 due to a surge in quarterly sales, reversing the fall in 2018. Read more on the Property Wire website.

https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/property-markets-in-england-and-wales-including-london-showing-signs-of-picking-up/

Forty Houses Recovered After Right-To-Buy Scams

Some 40 council houses were recovered by Sandwell Council last year following fraud investigations into right-to-buy applications. An annual report to the council’s Audit and Risk Assurance Committee meeting says its counter fraud team has investigated 218 cases were tenants get discounts of up to £82,800 when applying to buy their homes. The recovered properties – valued at £3,720,000 – were taken back into public ownership as part of the authority’s counter-fraud programme. In addition, some 54 applications to buy homes were cancelled and officers calculated in total tax payers were saved £3,894,960. Read more on Birmingham Live.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/forty-houses-recovered-after-right-16634523

UK Housing Market Shows Scant Sign Of Recovery In April

Britain’s housing market showed little sign of recovery in April as properties put up for sale fell the fastest rate since 2016, according to a survey on Thursday that added to downbeat signals from the housing market ahead of Brexit. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) gauge of house prices held at -23 in April, still close to February’s level of -27, the weakest in almost eight years. While official data show house prices have been rising across the country as a whole, prices in London have fallen, hit by unaffordable prices for many buyers, tax changes affecting rental properties and Brexit uncertainty which has weighed heavily on the capital. Read more on the Reuters website.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-houseprices/uk-housing-market-shows-scant-sign-of-recovery-in-april-rics-idUKKCN1SE2W2

Universal Credit – A Programme In Recovery?

A new report from the Institute for Government judges that Universal Credit is now in recovery. A mere 300,000 or so households are receiving it. Serious challenges remain, not least transferring the huge numbers still on tax credits to the new system and ensuring that the most vulnerable, who include people with disabilities and long-term health problems, are able to cope. But many years later than originally planned, something that is recognisable as Universal Credit now looks likely to make it to the finish line. The report charts Universal Credit’s troubled history, which includes an utterly unrealistic initial timetable and the fact that the DWP started to build this hugely ambitious benefit reform before it had defined what it would look like and how it would work. Download the report from the Institute for Government website.

Help to Buy Is 'Not Pushing Up London Prices'

Government figures show that of the 7,313 mortgages completed under Help To Buy 2 since its launch in October 2013, just 5 per cent were in the capital. The latest figures released by the Treasury show Help To Buy has had little impact on London and has led to a housing market recovery in the regions. Some 14 per cent of purchases under Help To Buy 2 were in the North-west, 14 per cent in the South-east and 9 per cent in the East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside and the East. Around 80 per cent of home loans completed under the scheme were to first-time buyers. Read more on the Independent website.