Due to the continuing problems in the economy, it looks possible that interest rates are going to remain low for longer than expected. Fortunately, the poor economic news has had a welcome side effect of significantly reducing long term…
The Alternative Auction
With the housing market moving slowly, every vendor is thinking the same thing, ‘how can I make my property stand out from the crowd?’ There are lots of things you can do, such as modifying the internal design of…
The End of the Affair
The average age of first time buyers without parental help has now reached age 37 and there are predictions that this will soon rise to age 44. As a result of this happening the number of people renting a…
Tips for Moving Home
For most of us, buying a house is the most expensive thing you’ll ever do, so it’s important that you plan and budget the best you can to make sure you don’t get yourselves in a financial mess at…
Smaller Building Societies Still Have a Place in t
In the last few weeks I have noticed a stirring in the mortgage market from a most unlikely source. After a couple of years of, in the main, government backed banks dominating lending, the small Building Society seems to…
The return of equity release schemes
Equity release schemes are making a comeback after three years of poor sales. A total of 5,812 plans were taken out during the first three months of this year, 4% more than the first three months of last year.…
Make Sure You Take Numbers and Statistic With a Pi
Did you know that 76% of statistics don’t have any meaning or use, or are made up altogether? We see companies using numbers every day to try and show us how good they are and why we should go…
The Budget 2011: For Housing Dreams or Nightmares?
The budget of 2011 has made attempts to stimulate demand for properties by introducing two new measures. Firstly, it has changed the rules with regard to stamp duty for buy to let investors that purchase multiple properties. For some…
Taking Advantage of the Flexibility of Your Mortga
Most of us will pay our mortgage each month and never think of how we can change the payments to take advantage of the flexibility that most mortgages offer nowadays. A lot of mortgages will let you overpay, underpay…
Gender Pricing
The UK insurance market is preparing for a radical reform, after the European court of justice ruled that gender pricing will be banned form December 21st 2012. The ruling follows an opinion last year from the Advocate General, that…