Lunchtime news Wednesday 30 July 2023

Caroline Flint yesterday announced plans to increase the amount of information available for potential buyers in home information packs to speed up sales. The proposals include calls for a property information questionnaire, providing information on building work carried out on a property, and an increase in the amount of information on leaseholds. The Conservatives have said it will lead to a council tax revaluation.

The report into the first collapse of a housing association has found the Housing Corporation ‘failed to take decisive action’ that could have prevented Ujima from going bust. The review said that regulatory tools had not been adequate to deal with an association that would not cooperate with the regulator and that the corporation should have intervened earlier. Bad management and an ineffective board at Ujima did not help. The report recommended that the risk ratings of every association with more than 1,000 homes be reviewed, and that a centralised system for handling whistleblowing allegations be set up.

One in four Britons will never own their own home although they would like to do so, according to research by Moneysupermarket.com. And a further 11 per cent say they will never own a property through their own choice. In a separate survey, 61 per cent of young professionals are struggling to pay their rent each month.

However, 70 per cent of buy-to-let investors are planning to increase their portfolios this year. While 65 per cent of those surveyed believed Britain was heading into a recession and 70 per cent thought house prices would drop in 2008, investors ‘recognised the demand for rented accommodation… is boosting rental yields considerably. Landlords can take advantage of the lower prices… and they are certain to achieve good returns over the long term’.

And finally, you know that the credit crunch is serious when beach huts are no longer selling for more than £150,000 these days. In some places, their value has fallen by as much as a third, and unofficial figures show that only about a quarter of those that would normally be selling on the market during summer, have made it this year.