| Homes & Property - E:camden@myvillage.co.uk | |
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Feature: Property Boom: How much longer? 10/08/01 |
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Average London house prices have now broken through the £200,000 barrier for the first time, increasing fears that prices are unsustainable. Greater London is the most expensive place in the UK to buy a house with average prices rising by 6.65% per cent to £205,831 at the end of June from £193,004 a year earlier. There was also a massive 77% surge in the number of homes sold for over £1 million during the three months to June compared to the same quarter last year - 516 homes were sold in that price bracket. The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea remains the most expensive place in Britain to buy a home with an average cost of £567,952, with one house in Kensington Park Gardens on the market through FPD Savills for £85 million. (Read more on that story here). For the price of an average Royal Borough property, sixteen homes could be purchased in Blaenau Gwent in Wales. But the boom is far from good news for everyone - and it could be bad news for the economy. A survey by FPD Savills suggests that as many as 800,000 households in London cannot afford to buy a home at current entry-level prices of £75,000 plus. And that total of households, earning less the £20,000 a year, excludes those who are already being housed in the social sector either by local authorities or housing associations. Many of those people will fall into the category of key workers like teachers and nurses or they will be working in low-paid service industry jobs. If those people can't afford to live in the Capital then the labour shortage which already exists, and is hampering business activity, will get worse. The Mayor's recent Housing Commission recommended building an extra 43,000 houses each year to meet projected demand with 29,000 of them in the affordable to those on moderate to low incomes. But FPD Savills' Director of Residential Research, Richard Donnell, said, , "This will require London's current housing output to be increased by a factor of three and sustained for the next 10 years. This is simply not realistic or feasible given the chronic lack of suitable land." Analysts are divided as to when the heat will come out of the London property market but with the Bank of England cutting interest rates (read about that here) recently and further cuts said to be on the way, the boom seems set to continue at least for the rest of this year. That may mean that any collapse will be all the more precipitous when it comes.
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| Safe and Sound ? - 04/04/01 | |
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You shut the front door on the world
and feel safe in your own home - but your confidence could be misplaced,
according to a new study. Shocking
accident statistics reveal more people are killed in the home every
week than die in road accidents.
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| Traumatised Flatmates Avoid Each Other - 04/04/01 | |
| Your kids are usually happy when
they live at home - but are they heading towards a nightmare when
they share a flat for the first time? Nearly a quarter of young flatmates
are so traumatised by their house-sharing experiences that they go
out of their way to avoid ex-flatmates, according to a new survey.
read more |
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| Features |
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Local Homes & Property London Homes & Property
2002 March February January 2001
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