Property

Was Help to Buy a timely market intervention with a valid social purpose or a political gimmick that unintentionally showered housebuilders with taxpayers’ cash? Or both: this isn’t a straightforward question. ‘This government supports those who dream of owning their own home,’ said a statement from Philip Hammond last week. So far the ‘equity loan scheme’ launched by George Osborne in 2013 and now extended until 2023 has underpinned 194,000 home sales, the great majority to first-time buyers in the provinces, while another 300,000 have been supported by a £3,000 savings top-up. Meanwhile, housebuilders have upped their game as Osborne wished: annual new home numbers, having almost halved by 2013

If you’re looking to buy a property in the New Year, this week’s Best Buys – of two-year fixed rate mortgages – might help you on your way. From data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

A month ago I wanted to travel to Bath for a 60th birthday party. From Kent, this either involves a Tube journey to Paddington or traversing the south-western stretch of the M25, where — in the rare moments you are not in stationary traffic — you have the even worse experience of driving over 10,000 misaligned slabs of ribbed concrete. But deep in my hippocampus, I remembered seeing a train to Bath on the departures board at Waterloo. This would let me travel from Seven-oaks to Waterloo East, avoiding the Tube. I looked online, but the website denied all knowledge of such trains. It told me to take the Underground

Top of the wish list in the country estate and farm property market is space for rural enterprise. Whether the property in question is a main home or a country retreat, space to host festivals, rear specialist breeds or offer boutique accommodation has become the latest must-have in the estates market. Commercial space was always sought after in the country estates market, but over the last few years, buyers are no longer wanting just farmland to rent out, but space for their own enterprises. Since the economic crash in 2008, buyers are more conscious of where and what they are buying. A ‘trophy asset’ is still wanted by some, but having a

Owning a property in Central London is a dream for some, but a burden for others – if you are an accidental landlord, that is. An accidental landlord? But that I mean you were lucky enough to buy a property 20 years ago, then decided to move out of London – and were left wondering what to do with it. Rent it out? Sell it? Only a mad man would want to sell a property in London? Right. Wrong. Recent figures from property website Rightmove showed that this year, asking prices for homes in London have recorded their biggest annual fall so far this decade – having dropped on average by £18,000

Of the 375,000 listed buildings in England only 2.5 per cent are Grade I. Half are churches; many are otherwise uninhabitable, such as Nelson’s Column or the Royal Opera House. There are perhaps only 2,500 Grade I listed buildings in England in which you can feasibly live: these include Buckingham Palace and the Sutherland gaff. Eighteen years ago, when we had twins and decided to move out of London, my wife discovered a four-bedroom apartment in the roof of a Robert Adam house a mile outside the M25. To our astonishment, it was barely more expensive than ordinary housing of similar size nearby. I recently asked my neighbour, an economist,

A few years ago, someone asked me how to fix social care costs for the elderly. One eventual idea of ours was that, at age 65, people could pledge to pay a higher level of inheritance tax as a form of insurance against social care costs. If, say, you pledged £20,000 of the value of your estate, you would receive an annuity worth perhaps £150,000 should you develop dementia or need long-term care. This, we thought, would be appealing enough to be made voluntary. The idea was designed to align with a known property of human psychology called Prospect Theory, which  shows that people much prefer a small, certain loss

A gentleman on Twitter ‘writes’ to say I’m boring him with my house move. ‘Snooze-fest’, says this chap, and he posts a little yellow unhappy face or ‘emoticon’, which passes for articulate on Twitter. I’ve never heard of this fellow, although it is likely he is some kind of pundit with followers in the blogosphere who rely on him to tell them what is boring and what is not. I suspect I’m not alone in not knowing who he is, and that no one, including his own mother, has heard of him and that this being Twitter it is entirely likely he has not even heard of himself. However, I

‘It feels like 2010,’ was the verdict last week of one seasoned operator in the prime London property market. What they meant is that after a period of uncertainty and restraint, the smart money is beginning to take a longer, harder look at the top-end of the London market. In 2010, the market was coming to terms with impact from the global financial crisis. In recent years, pricing has been adjusting to higher taxation, a political by-product of the downturn designed to address wider affordability concerns. However the stamp duty increase of December 2014 for £1 million-plus properties, which had the single biggest dampening effect on demand, is nearly two

Helen Dunmore’s new novel concerns lives, consequential in their day, that pass away into utter oblivion. Appropriately, the ‘solitary and no doubt rather grim middle-aged man’ of the opening pages is unnamed and never appears again, once he discovers a forgotten grave near the pathway of the title. Bearing the image of a quill, the headstone commemorates a radical 18th-century writer, Julia Fawkes, who died in Bristol in 1793. The stone was ‘Raised… in the Presence of her Many Admirers’. But who was this Julia, wife of an equally obscure pamphleteer, and what is left of the works that, the stone optimistically proclaims, ‘Remain Our Inheritance’? The historically minded 21st-century

If it takes any longer to find a buyer for my London flat I am going to start coming to the conclusion that it is perfect for me in my old age. Forget moving to a cottage with a vertiginous staircase in the inhospitable countryside, this two-bedroom apartment minutes from the hustle and bustle is just the thing for an aging couple like the builder boyfriend and me. ‘Think about it,’ said the BB the other evening, as we sat in my cosy living room, he nursing the usual aches and pains he brings home after a hard day on a roof. ‘This is just what we need. It’s handy