Much has been made of the growth in the property market in the Cape Verde islands. With prices growing, new developments rising up, tourist numbers increasing and infrastructure improvements to support this including a number of new airports served by new air routes, the place appears to be ... Views: 1278
The UK housing market is in a curious state in many ways. After years of high inflation driven by a strong economy and a shortfall in demand, the market has seen a slowdown since the base rate hit 5.75 per cent and the credit crunch introduced a wave of economic uncertainty.
Evidence of the ... Views: 987
While the lightening afternoon skies may make many investors think ahead towards summer and dream of places with sun kissed-beaches, many have not forgotten that it is still, despite the floral evidence to the contrary in Britain, winter.
Up on high Alpine slopes, of course, the situation is a ... Views: 973
In its recent prediction that suggested the UK as a whole would experience zero house price growth, Nationwide said that Scotland property would fare better than the rest of the UK, with four per cent growth in 2008, a slowdown but certainly not a juddering halt.
The explanation for this ... Views: 944
The buy-to-let market, whether in the UK or overseas, is in many respects a series of markets, for the kind of property investors choose to sink their capital into will depend on the potential customer base. Thus property which is not necessarily of tip-top quality but is close to a university ... Views: 926
The extent to which recent predictions for the fortunes of the UK property market in 2008 have cast a shadow of gloom may seem disheartening for many, be they aspiring buyers, new investors in buy-to-let or those considering an expansion of their portfolio.
Yet time and again there are both ... Views: 903
As the Spanish market has taken a few hits in recent times, many investors have been looking around for alternatives. While some have found new places to go to in Spain and some have ventured into the unknown territory of emerging markets, others have found the country next door to be of great ... Views: 878
In a period when the property market has seen falling prices, restricted credit and one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the land having first to go begging to the Bank of England to stay afloat and now be nationalised, some might expect that buy-to-let investors should concentrate purely on ... Views: 873
History was made this week in Cyprus when the central bank met to set interest rates. Not because it was for the first time, but because it was for the last.
For the record, governor Athanasios Orphanides said the three rates set, the key refinancing rate, the Lombard rate and the overnight ... Views: 871
Today, just for the benefit of anyone who had been away on a canoeing trip and had lost their memory, the Department for Communities and Local Government issued a reminder that there are just three days to go until the final roll-out of the controversial home information pack (Hips) scheme is ... Views: 867
More information has emerged today to demonstrate the contrast between the buy-to-let UK property market and the residential house buying market.
The ability of buy-to-let to withstand a housing downturn or even slump has been questioned, although Ray Boulger of John Charcol said this week the ... Views: 865
When George Orwell wrote Down and Out in London and Paris, he was writing about life as a homeless person in the two capitals, perhaps never imagining that one day people would be not just anything but homeless in either city, but able to commute between them with impunity.
Yet while the ... Views: 863
Earlier this week, the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) said that over 3.5 million Britons will be jetting off to the sun over the Christmas and New Year period. Among this small army of those leaving behind the cold and wet of the British winter to spend the festive season in the ... Views: 848
Of all the variations on the traditional act of people
buying a mortgagesimply as a home to live in themselves,
buy-for-uni is a somewhat unusual one.
Such a mortgage, which is presently only offered by one building society, works by securing the property bought for the student to live in ... Views: 844
It's now widely accepted that the UK housing market has all but ground to a halt. Some believe this is temporary, pessimists believe it will be the beginning of a downward spiral, while others suggest Britain is simply due a fallow period to let things settle down and get back into kilter ... Views: 837
Yesterday, amid great ceremony and under a spanking new roof which had replaced its dingy predecessor, the revamped St Pancras, recently re-opened by the Queen, began its role as the new London hub for the Eurostar and waved off the first of the new high-speed generation of trains as it hurtled ... Views: 822
Investing in France Property has always been a popular way for Britons to secure a piece of foreign property, with the country second only to Spain, but the country is perhaps an even better location into which investors should sink their hard-earned than its Iberian neighbour across the ... Views: 821
Those looking at property investment in France have the luxury of a variety of different possible markets to serve. There are those who fancy commuting from Paris or other parts of the north to London via the Channel Tunnel. There are those who fancy a place among the famous vineyards. ... Views: 816
There area many reasons why people buy property abroad. Some are after a buy-to-let rental income in the long-term. Some want to buy and then sell at a profit in a growing market. Some look for a place to call their second home and those emigrating one to call their first.
When it comes to ... Views: 813
Earlier this week, the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) said that over 3.5 million Britons will be jetting off to the sun over the Christmas and New Year period. Among this small army of those leaving behind the cold and wet of the British winter to spend the festive season in the ... Views: 811
The old saying "speculate to accumulate" may ring true - but in more than one way when it comes to the buy-to-let market. Accumulating failure appears to be the way for some in the buy-to-let market as the nature of the industry and the state of the housing scene tilts the advantages all towards ... Views: 811
The buy-to-let property market has come in for some heavy stick in recent months, with all kinds of negative predictions for the near future. This has been true for the housing market as a whole of course, with the Hometrack survey this week setting alarm bells ringing by showing a 0.1 per cent ... Views: 801
Investors in overseas property may have felt somewhat negative about the prospects for Alpine ski resorts after last winter. The unusually mild season left many resorts despairing as slopes that would normally be filled with skiers were brown, muddy wastelands with barely a flake of snow.
The ... Views: 798
Given the kind of headlines which have emerged with the slowdown in the Spanish property market, one might sense the palpitations experienced by news that property sales in the country are going down by 45 to 50 per cent this winter.
The reality, however, is very different, according to Les ... Views: 789
Those looking at overseas property investments in areas such as the Swiss Alps property may have a somewhat more complex choice to make than in days of yore. Where once it was a matter of finding attractive chalets in a snowy location for the winter, much has changed.
For one thing, the spectre ... Views: 787
The time between the announcement of the monthly decision by the Bank of England's rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC) and the publication of the minutes is frequently filled with speculation about how the committee might have voted. Partly this may be due to the fact that nature abhors ... Views: 782
That Cape Verde is emerging as one of the most exciting new markets for property investors is not in doubt. Stories of the increase in the number of people buying Cape Verde property in the islands and the growth of tourism are well-documented trends. But the specific marketing of the islands as ... Views: 782
As the second largest country by population in the world, India was always likely to make an enormous impact if it ever began to punch its weight economically. Now this appears to be happening, with rapid industrial and technological advancement, economic liberalisation and an influx of foreign ... Views: 771
The decision of the Bank of England to keep interest rates on hold yesterday may tempted some to predict more hard times ahead for the property industry. Notwithstanding the widespread expectation that rates will fall next month, there are many who would beg to differ.
Buy-to-let is certainly ... Views: 771
Following the credit crunch and the interest rate increases over the last 16 months, the housing market has seen a significant slowdown. With Halifax revealing a 1.1 per cent house price fall for November on the back of smaller falls in September and October, the situation looked less than ... Views: 769
With the end of the year drawing close, analysts will be able to look back on a 2007 of two distinct phrases. Up to July, the housing market continued to boom, talk of a housing market slowdown appeared as risible as it had turned out to be in 2006 and first-time buyers sought mortgages of ... Views: 767
Among all the island paradises where British tourists may wish to go, the Cape Verde holiday home is emerging as one of the most attractive. Much nearer than the Maldives and not prone to seasonal storms like the Caribbean, the archipelago off the coast of west Africa, a former Portuguese ... Views: 762
The last week has, as usual, seen some mixed news about the property market. In between predictions of further falls in house prices have been forecasts of recovery. Mixed news from the Bank of England in its quarterly inflation report may only have added to the uncertainty some could be ... Views: 759
With the future of the UK property market, both residential and buy-to-let, subject to so much uncertainty and speculation, many will wonder if any clear idea can be formed about where the best investments, if there are any, are to be found.
Neil Johnson, PR policy manager at the Building ... Views: 757
Inheritance Tax (IHT) has been a big issue in Britain recently, with newspaper campaigns for its abolition, a pledge to raise the threshold to £1 million by the Conservatives and an immediate doubling of the threshold for couples to £600,000 in response by the Labour government in the ... Views: 754
Of all the claims made about the state of the property investment market, one of the most common is that the city living trend in regional cities is grinding to a halt. While more and more apartments have been built in cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds, these have now ... Views: 750
For the last few years London has been one of the areas pushing UK property inflation the most. Whatever the average price rise, London's has been higher, with prime central London areas seeing the biggest booms.
Recent figures, however, have suggested this capital trend has reversed. The ... Views: 741
Investors in Cyprus property looking to secure a piece of real estate in Cyprus, whether as a retirement home or as a buy-to-let property to serve the army of tourists who descend on the sun-blessed Mediterranean island every year, will have been keeping an eye on the economy.
The news is good ... Views: 740
There is an old French saying that "the more things change, the more they stay the same". This might be applied to many things, but the Cypriot property market is not one of them. It is an island where there is constant and change in equal measure.
What undoubtedly stays the same is the ... Views: 739
In the current climate with its talk of crunching credit, plummeting prices and declining dividends, many have seen the buy-to-let market as a near-certain victim of the emerging economic circumstances.
Not so, it seems, judging by recent surveys in the industry, which have found the majority ... Views: 738
Investing in France Property has always been a popular way for Britons to secure a piece of foreign property, with the country second only to Spain, but the country is perhaps an even better location into which investors should sink their hard-earned than its Iberian neighbour across the ... Views: 737
Those who seek to analyse the fortunes of the UK property market from the point of view of buy-to-let lenders may possibly wonder how a downturn in the residential market can coincide with an increase in rents. After all, the boom in buy-to-let in recent years has occurred at exactly the same ... Views: 732
Up until today it had not seemed to be a good week for news emanating from the Bank of England.
Firstly, we had the news that in March the number of mortgages approved had dropped from 72,000 in February to just 64,000. Then yesterday brought governor Mervyn King's declaration before members ... Views: 729
Earlier this week many were surprised to hear Bank of England monetary policy committee (MPC) member Tim Besley indicate an apparent shift in his position on interest rate cuts. Known to be a rate-cut opposing hawk, he seemed to soften his stance by telling the Institute for Fiscal Studies that ... Views: 728
Its official - affordability in Britain is bad. Close observers of the UK housing market will, of course, know this isn't exactly a startling revelation. It is, after all, one of the prime factors to which the high house price inflation of recent years has been attributed.
What is happening, ... Views: 727
Cyprus is an area which has seen a lot of change in the past few years, with much of it succeeding to make it an even more attractive destination for Cyprus property investors and holidaymakers alike. After becoming a member of the European Union in 2004, the economy expanded and business ... Views: 727
While the property market has produced a series of clear signals about its fortunes in recent months, from the slowdown in the residential housing sector to the rise in rents, the wider economy has thrown a number of contradictory signals into the melting pot of uncertainty. Thus the credit ... Views: 718
Those looking at the possibilities of investing in property in UK will be concerned with many issues. One will be the economy as a whole, with some doom-mongers still predicting that Britain will catch America's cold and plunge into recession. Others may take a more subtle view, that a major ... Views: 715
Amid all the speculation about the future prospects for the Spanish property market after the slowdown in the past year following the boom, or the recent threat by the Spanish government to demolish illegally-built homes on the coast, some might ask if a more long-term perspective is the best ... Views: 711
Graphic designing is a strategic tool for marketing and communication to the public through visual representations of creative designs and logos. It comprises of creative faculty with superior designing and aesthetic skills studded together in the designer. Critical analysis and sound thinking ... Views: 710