Housing, Brexit, savings and tax

There’s a slew of housing news this morning including new research from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It predicts that the housing market will make a slow start in 2017 due to a lack of homes for sale.

According to Rics, property transactions have slowed since the spring and although there is a chance they may gather pace in the new year, any rise would be ‘modest’.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports on the collapse of the capital’s luxury housing market. It cites LCP, a property investment firm, which claims that, thanks to six months of Brexit uncertainty and tax changes, buyers from both Britain and abroad have been deterred from high-end purchases. The paper states: ‘The number of new-build properties sold for more than £5 million in the six months to the end of October was down 83 per cent on the same period of 2015, according to LCP. The number of transactions fell from 52 to just nine. Large falls were also recorded across England and Wales on other high-end properties, with sales of homes costing more than £10 million down by 75 per cent, from 61 to 15. Transactions for all UK properties costing between £5 million and £10 million were down by 51 per cent, from 201 to just 99.’

Brexit

BBC Newsnight reports that a number of major banks are in ‘advanced stages of planning to shift some operations from London to Paris’. That’s according to France’s leading financial regulator, Benoit de Juvigny. He said that ‘large international banks’ have undertaken the due diligence needed to set up a subsidiary in the French capital.

He also told Newsnight that ‘many other companies’ had lodged informal inquiries about moving post-Brexit. It is thought that authorities in other European cities are having similar talks. Savings

Thisismoney reports on a study from Skipton Building Society which claims that ‘half of Britons adopt an ‘Ostrich mentality’ of burying their heads in the sand when it comes to retirement savings’.

Just over half of people yet to retire haven’t started saving anything into a pension pot, while just under half have no idea how much money they’ll need.

Sports Direct The BBC reports that Sports Direct has been hit by the falling value of the pound. Pre-tax profits in the six months to the end of October dropped by 25.1 per cent to £140.2 million on group sales up 14.2 per cent at £1.6 billion. Footballers The Guardian reports that Jon Thompson, chief executive of HMRC, has asked the the Chancellor to review the tax rules for wealthy footballers who are avoiding tax by siphoning earnings from Premier League games into image rights companies based in offshore tax havens. Thompson told a committee of MPs that offshore image rights payments were now ‘the most significant risk in football’. Pay

A quarter of UK workers admit they spend up to 25 per cent of their month’s pay within 72 hours of being paid and most of this goes on unnecessary purchases. Research conducted by Paymentsense, on 2,000 UK workers who are paid monthly, found that 49 per cent of people say they make unnecessary purchases as soon as they get paid.

A third of people say that spend between £41 to £60 on socialising on the first weekend after payday. But half of respondents believe they spend most of their disposable income on food. However, they seem to go from riches to rations – a third of the UK change their eating habits towards the end of the month due to being skint.

Jobs The jobs market has ‘ended the year on a high’, with employment and wages strengthening despite fears of a post-Brexit slowdown, according to The Times. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation and Markit say that firms expanded their permanent staff headcount in November at the fastest pace since February, and starting salaries rose to a six-month high. Pensions

Almost half of accountants say they do not know enough about auto enrolment, despite being the primary source of advice sought by small businesses about the pension legislation, a report by employee benefits adviser Helm Godfrey has found.

And with tens of thousands of small businesses due to begin implementing the pension reforms, accountants are being told to brace for a surge in enquiries from employers. Helm Godfrey is concerned that the knowledge gap among accountants means many smaller companies risk ending up with unsuitable schemes.

Finally…

With Christmas just under weeks away, worrying about money has been revealed as the single biggest cause of stress for UK adults, according to new research by Central YMCA. Money worries were found to cause the biggest swing in wellbeing scores – creating a 52 per cent divide between the most and least financially-confident people in the country.