Housing market, insurance hikes, pension woes and debt problems

The UK housing market ran out of steam after the Brexit vote, but could take off again over the next 12 months, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

A Rics survey showed house price rises slowed significantly in the three months to the end of July. The surveyors said new buyer enquiries, home sales and new instructions all fell over the period.

The number reporting price increases dropped to its lowest in three years. They outnumbered those seeing price falls by 5 per cent, compared to 15 per cent in June. And the survey found prices had fallen outright in London, East Anglia, the North of England and the West Midlands. Insurance

Insurers have been ordered to come clean over the stealth price hikes they inflict on loyal customers, according to the Daily Mail.

Renewal letters will now have to tell clients what they paid last time. Customers will then know whether the next 12 months will cost them more. Announced by City watchdogs yesterday, the rules cover car, home, pet, health and travel insurance.

The Financial Conduct Authority said the initiative could save customers up to £103 million a year through switching firms. Experts put the figure at £1 billion.

Pensions

Nearly 100,000 workers at the Royal Mail and the Post Office are likely to be the victims of turmoil in markets as the companies plan big cuts to their ‘simply unaffordable’ pension schemes, according to The Guardian. One manager in his 40s at the Post Office was told that his projected pension at retirement will collapse from £38,000 a year to just £18,000. Currently, Royal Mail pays around £400 million a year into its defined benefit scheme, which guarantees a pension based on a postal worker’s average salary over his or her lifetime, rather than what happens on the stock market. But the company said financial market conditions had deteriorated so much that the cost of keeping the plan fully open would balloon to £900 million over the next few years. Although the cuts were first mooted just before the EU referendum, historic lows in bond markets since the vote have made the pensions even less affordable to companies.

Broadband

Thisismoney reports that Vodafone has removed the £18 line rental charge for its new and existing fibre optic broadband customers.

The company says it has scrapped the ‘hassle of paying for line rental’ but instead of the price dropping, customers instead will now see one combined price for broadband and line rental.

This comes as new rules from the Advertising Standards Agency are due to be enforced from the end of October which ban broadband companies from excluding the price of line rental in their headline rates.

Debt

A third of Britons have confessed to taking on debt in order to pay off their holidays, with the majority using credit cards to fund their trips. The average sum borrowed for a holiday is £1,750 per person, with the majority of debt-ridden holiday-goers heading to Mexico.

The team at www.VoucherCodesPro.co.uk conducted the research as part of an ongoing study into the costs involved for planning a holiday. A total of 2,381 Britons aged 18 and over, all of whom stated they are considering going on holiday abroad within the next two years, were quizzed about their plans and the costs involved.

Initially all respondents were asked ‘How do you typically pay for your holiday?’ to which almost a third stated that they ‘take out a debt’, while the remaining respondents either use their savings, cover the cost from their everyday current account or are given money or the holiday as a gift. All those who take out debt in order to pay for their holiday were asked what kind of debt they normally use, to which the most popular answers were credit card (69 per cent) and finance plans (12 per cent).

Right-to-buy

The Guardian reports that council leaders in England have called on the Government to make urgent reforms to the right-to-buy scheme, after figures showed that the number of sold-off homes replaced by local authorities fell by more than a quarter last year.

Analysis by the Local Government Association showed that 12,246 council homes were sold to tenants under right-to-buy in England in 2015-16, but just 2,055 replacements were started by councils – a drop of 27 per cent on the previous year. TV subscriptions

Consumers over the age of 55 are getting the worst value for money when it comes to TV subscriptions, according to research from Freesat.

Over-55s with TV subscriptions spend an average of £41 a month on their service yet they watch less than a quarter of the channels available to them. This means they’re wasting around £380 a year on channels they never watch. Many over-55s appear to recognise that they’re overpaying for their service, with 58 per cent of those surveyed stating they don’t feel they get their money’s worth.

Freesat’s data also revealed older customers’ negative attitudes towards their package provider, with nearly half of over-55s claiming they feel they are being taken advantage of by regular price hikes.