Docklands News

Banks and lenders are no longer ruling out the self-employed for mortgages if they have taken government support during the pandemic. Halifax this week said it would no longer ask workers if they had taken Self-Employment Income Support and would make eligibility calculations based on income over the past two years. Previously, business owners who said they had taken loans had found it hard to get a mortgage. Meanwhile, NatWest removed its ban on self-employed borrowers who had taken government grants last month, as long as the loans had not been in the past three months. HSBC has also stopped comparing business earnings with those from before the pandemic and will work out an average income over the past two years. Similarly, Santander is assessing income based on 2019-20 figures, instead of last year's. 

The Times (04/09/2021)  

House prices jumped by almost £5,000 in August - their second largest increase in more than 15 years, despite the tapering of stamp duty relief. Property prices increased by 2.1% month-on-month in August after falling by 0.6% in July, according to the Nationwide house price index. The increase in prices has lifted the value of the average UK home to £248,857, £4,628 higher than July’s £244,229. In London, the average home costs £511,190. Record low interest rates and a surge in pent-up demand have supported property prices, which are now 11% higher than a year ago. “The bounce back in August is surprising because it seemed more likely that the tapering of stamp duty relief in England at the end of June would take some of the heat out of the market,” Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist, said. “Underlying demand is likely to remain solid in the near term, but, as we look towards the end of the year, the outlook is harder to foresee. Activity almost inevitably will soften after the stamp duty holiday expires at the end of September.”

BBC News (01/09/2021)   Evening Standard (01/09/2021)   Financial Times (01/09/2021)  

Soaring house prices have been driving up the retail prices index of inflation, according to a new analysis. RPI, which includes a housing depreciation component that reflects property prices, reached 3.9% in June and is on course to hit 5.6% later this year, Simon Ward, economic adviser at Janus Henderson Investors, said. As the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast RPI of just 2.4% in March, a 3.2 point overshoot would add £15.2bn to the cost of servicing the government’s £470bn portfolio of index-linked gilts, Ward said. The housing boom, which has driven annual house price inflation to a 17-year high of 13.2%, accounts for £2.4bn of the overshoot by directly increasing RPI, Ward calculated. Given that the bill for the stamp duty relief is officially estimated at £4.7bn, the combined cost to the exchequer of the property market boom is likely to top £7bn this year. 

The Times (31/08/2021)  

Mortgages with 5% deposits made up just 1% of total lending last month according to online broker Trussle – despite their return being hailed by the Government as the way to "turn generation rent into generation buy". In July, just one in 100 mortgage completions on its books were for buyers with 5% deposits. Trussle said it had had a high level of enquiries about 5% deposit mortgages this year, peaking in March when the Government's Mortgage Guarantee Scheme was announced. This suggests that many first-time buyers are not able to qualify for one based on their finances. 

Daily Mail (30/08/2021)  

Analysis of council figures by Churchill Home Insurance has found that almost 370,000 noise complaints were made between April 2020 and March 2021 - up 28% on the previous year. A third of complainants said loud music, noisy children, slamming doors and other disturbances were affecting their wellbeing, while more than one in ten called the police to try to resolve the problem. Six of the top 10 councils for complaints were London boroughs, including Newham, Islington and Kensington and Chelsea, which had the highest proportion of complaints at 99 per 1,000 inhabitants. 

Daily Mirror (01/09/2021)   The Daily Telegraph (01/09/2021)   The I (01/09/2021)  

Tower Hamlets Council has given the green light to a mixed-used tower development at 2 Trafalgar Way, near Canary Wharf. The latest scheme, which consists of three towers of 28, 36 and 48 storeys rising from a four-storey podium, will provide 68 homes, nearly 1,700 student accommodation units, more than 4,000sq m of commercial space and 1,200sq m of retail space. Initially conceived as a series of angular towers, the scheme’s corners were chamfered to distinguish it from the towers of Canary Wharf to the south after a request by the council. The towers were also slightly lowered in height to satisfy the council’s requirement that the emerging Blackwall cluster, where the scheme is located, should be subservient to the towers in Canary Wharf. Work is expected to start on site in the first quarter of 2022.

Housing Today (20/08/2021)