Please accept our apologies for the downtime experienced over the last few days. This is not the service that we expect from our new hosting company and we are in discussions with them regarding the cause and a permanent resolution.
BBC News: Blair signals no to joining euro Tony Blair has suggested he would not try to take Britain into the euro during the next Parliament if Labour win the general election.
ThisIsMoney: House prices on the up Britain's biggest building society today added to evidence that the housing market has bottomed out, unveiling a rise in property prices this month.
Countrywide warns of first-quarter losses - The Herald COUNTRYWIDE, Britain's biggest estate agent, rattled City investors yesterday with an announcement that it expected to report a first-quarter loss after a pick-up in house prices at Easter failed to materialise.
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Things can only get better - again: Home repossessions rising rapidly, profits in decline at B&Q owner's Kingfisher and a warning from Countrywide estate agents that they would make a loss in the first quarter. Anyone would think there's a recession on.
ThisisLondon: Countrywide sends profits warning Britain's biggest estate agent sent the property market reeling today as it issued a shock profits warning after the expected pick-up in house sales at Easter failed to materialise and amid a lack of activity ahead of the General Election.
ThisisLondon: Double house price threat The fragile housing market was hit by two damaging blows today. Official figures show a huge jump in the number of homeowners facing repossession.
This is north scotland: HOUSING MARKET 'REMAINS DIFFICULT' Housebuilding, property development, and construction group Taylor Woodrow said yesterday the UK housing market had improved from the end of last year, but remained more difficult than in early 2004, when conditions were buoyant.
The Motley Fool UK: Location, Location, Location The Americans have a saying: it's always better to buy the worst house on the best block than the best house on the worst block. This is because the least valuable home benefits from being next to the more expensive homes, and the most valuable home is harmed by the lower valued homes.
ThisIsMoney: Last-minute rush boosts Isas The plight of the investment industry was highlighted today when official figures revealed demand for Isa funds had more than halved. Net sales of Isas - which takes into account investments that are cashed - wrapped around unit trusts and Open Ended Investment Companies (Oeics) was £1.7bn for the tax year to 5 April, down from £3.6bn for the previous year.
In2Perspective: Estate agents' election agenda - in2perspective Stamp duty, first time buyers and licensing of estate agents are the top three issues for estate agents at the forthcoming election, according to research by the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA).
Herald: Charcol first to dip toe in negative equity marketa The mortgage industry is drawing up battle plans for coping with a setback in house prices with the launch of the first negative equity mortgage in the UK for more than a decade.
ThisisLondon: Property glut keeps prices falling House prices dropped for the tenth consecutive month in April thanks to a glut of properties up for sale. According to property analysts Hometrack, pre-General Election uncertainty has also put off some would-be buyers.
Chartists foretell stock market slump - Newspaper Edition - Times Online THE London stock market last week fell to its lowest point for nearly three months. Investors were rattled by signs that America, the world’s biggest economy, was slowing and company profits could disappoint. And fears were growing that sabre-rattling between China and Japan might grow ugly.
FT.com / UK - Stalemate in house-selling game In the run-up to Christmas, estate agentswere quickto deny talk of redundancies as the property surge started to lose momentum. It would be premature to read too much into the market until Easter, they suggested, when the optimism of spring was likely to return.
Guardian: Tory stamp duty cut 'a halfway house solution' Tory proposals to increase the stamp duty threshold will encourage property sales, but further action must be taken to reform the tax, The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) said today.
ThisIsMoney: Persimmon set to hit its targets Housebuilder Persimmon expressed its confidence in the UK property market at its annual general meeting today but announced that founder and chairman Duncan Davidson would retire in April next year.
housefund.co.uk: Revaluation, Revaluation, Revaluation The upcoming council tax revaluation in England will lead to large increases in council tax bills unless the tax bands are readjusted in line with house price inflation says the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.
The Herald: Cat-and-mouse game goes on as retail sales fall A surprise fall in UK retail sales turned the interest rate outlook on its head again yesterday, signalling that near seven-year-high inflation revealed on Tuesday will probably not, after all, cause a swift monetary tightening.
Citywire: Tories pledge stamp duty cut to help first-time buyers The latest bid to woo homebuyers comes from the Conservatives with Michael Howard committing the party to raising the starting threshold for stamp duty to £250,000 and postponing the council tax revaluation of properties.
Economist.com | House prices: Will the walls come falling down? House prices have been growing at a breakneck pace in many developed countries. This has encouraged householders to keep spending even during the global slowdown. But now that housing markets are looking soft, consumers may be forced to retrench
icBirmingham: Home owners told - You're too greedy "Greedy" West Midland property owners demanding record prices for their homes are finding themselves adrift in the gap between their expectations and what buyers are actually willing to pay, according to two new snapshots of the housing market.
ThisisLondon: Shock as inflation rises Homeowners faced the prospect of a rise in interest rates today after the rate of inflation showed a surprise jump to 1.9%
ThisIsMoney: House price falls accelerating The fall in house price falls accelerated in the three months to March as fears of higher interest rates led to stagnant sales, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Reuters.co.uk: House price falls accelerate in March: House price falls accelerated in the three months to March as fears of higher interest rates led to stagnant sales, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said on Tuesday.
House Price Falls AcceleratingHighly regarded Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says the outlook for prices is more gloomy as uncertainty over interest rates dominates...
housefund.co.uk: Effects of elections on house prices As all political parties gear up for the General Election on May 5th, new research from Halifax Estate Agents highlights the rise and falls of house prices in successive Governments as well as looking at the regional winners and losers.
ThisisLondon: House prices face stagnation Estate agents say the property market is facing stagnation because 'greedy' sellers are pushing asking prices to an all-time high.
The Observer: Lets be 'aving you clued-up tenants As a tenant you can often feel a bit of a nuisance. You are on the bottom of the estate agent's list of priorities - after all you're not big money to them - and while landlords need you, more often than not they do not want to deal with you.
ThisIsMoney: King of complaintsWhile tens of thousands of people who were mis-sold endowment mortgages suffer a long and frustrating wait for their complaints to be dealt with, a little-known firm called Huntswood is making an industry out of processing these claims.
Find a Property: Prices Cool Ahead of Poll House prices in the capital have dipped ahead of the election as buyers decide to sit tight, says leading estate agency haart...
The Guardian: Call to peg rates as shoppers retrench The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) urged the Bank of England yesterday not to raise interest rates again as its latest survey showed company sales and confidence had dipped.
Guardian: BBC unions: we'll shut down live TV Trade unions at the BBC have warned they aim to "shut live programming down" in a move that could hit coverage of Wimbledon or the FA Cup final as the dispute over job cuts escalates.
ThisisLondon: Unemployment rises by 29,000 The Government has defended its record on jobs after suffering a pre-election setback with new figures showing a rise in unemployment and the number of people claiming jobseekers' allowance.
ThisIsMoney: UK house prices grow Official figures today confirmed that the UK property market bounced back in February, with first-time buyers, in particular, facing rising costs.
Guardian: Want to get rid of boom and bust? Tax land, not income Boom and bust is the mother of negative equity, but in last month's budget speech, Gordon Brown made an astonishing claim: he had terminated the stop-go cycle that has afflicted Britain since 1701.
The Observer: House boom winners face huge tax hike The residents of a leafy street in south-west London are due for a rude awakening. The council tax bills posted through the doors of their gleaming glass apartments two years after the general election will have them sobbing into their caramel macchiatos.
Credit Action: Latest Debt statistics Average household debt in the UK is approximately £7,563 (excluding mortgages) and £43,800 including mortgages. Average owed by every man, woman and child in the UK is approximately £18,017 (including mortgages).
FT.com: Homing instinct Roz Shaw thinks that home purchasing divides people neatly into two camps: owners (”happy”) and would-be first-time buyers (”fed up”). She is the latter, still struggling to find a place after two years of renting and pavement-pounding in London.
Citywire: FTSE rallies on rate cut hopes The FTSE 100 has had a good week and is on course to register its fifth successive gain today after some weak economic data raised hopes that the next move in interest rates could be downwards, which offset a new record in the oil price.
ThisisLondon: Prime London home prices race up again House prices in London's most sought-after areas posted the biggest rise for 10 months in March, in a sign that the top end of the property market has started the key spring period in buoyant mood.
This is southwales: Boom days gone bust Your reporter Leon Watson (Post, April 2) accepts a Swansea estate agent's statement that "the days of boom and bust are gone". It seems Dawsons have not noticed we have just had a boom.......well done that man!
Reuters.co.uk: Post-election interest rate rise eyed The Bank of England kept interest rates at 4.75 percent for the eighth month running on Thursday, but many economists expect another rise once the May 5 general election is out of the way.
Reuters.co.uk:
Discounted mortgages could save thousands Homeowners with standard variable rate mortgages could save at least 1,200 pounds in the first year by switching to a fixed or variable discounted mortgage, national estate agent Your Move says.
The Motley Fool UK: Long-Term House Price Trends Is housing a good investment? You can hardly pick up a paper these days without reading about the latest monthly house price survey from the Nationwide or the Halifax.
Times: City Diary Sign of the times? The website www.housepricecrash, where you can check whether your home is about to become worthless, had to be taken down to upgrade its servers. The site can’t cope with the number of hits.
Guardian: Labour urged to rein in housebuilding plans A government-backed plan to curb house price rises by building thousands of new homes could result in a glut of unnecessary housing, research by a left-leaning thinktank claims today.
Reuters.co.uk: Housing: boom or dead cat bounce? The optimists maintain that the housing market is stabilising, but it could just be a "dead cat bounce", since homebuyer confidence appears to have fallen.
It's all fixed. Hopefully everything should be back to normal. If you notice anything that's not quite right then let us now. Once again thanks for bearing with us, thanks for all the support and emails and thanks to the COAB, Consa, the Frugal Forum for rallying around and giving us a temporary home over the last few days and for all those of you who have made donations for our coming Google Adwords campaign to target more visitors......now we're all hoping that things can get back to normal.....on with the discussions!!
If you can see this message then you are viewing the website in it's new location. Depending on your ISP you will either see the websites new location or the old location during the 72 hour period that it takes for all the Domain Name Servers to update throughout the world.
Not much longer now and we should be up and running again.
We've still got some problems with the forum. Just when we thought it was running again it goes down! We'll be switching over to a new hosting company within the next few days. We're going to keep the forum down for the time being until the current hosting company can confirm that it's stable and will not be up for 10 minutes before going down. I know this is frustruting but give it a few days and we'll be on a new reliable, stable and scaleable platform.
Sunday Herald: Capital’s housing market ‘to suffer’ Scotland’s homeowners will face their first experience of negative equity in a house price crash due in 2008, according to an author who claims to have studied house price data for the past 300 years.
The Independent So would you fix a mortgage for a decade? With the UK housing market in thrall to the interest-rate decisions of the Bank of England, there is something to be said for borrowers seeking peace of mind on their mortgage payments.
Guardian: Labour boost for first-time buyers The chancellor, Gordon Brown, will today pledge to create a million more homeowners over the next five years if Labour wins a third term.
ThisIsMoney: Tax takes toll on take-home pay Take-home pay fell last year for the first time since the recession of the early Nineties, according the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The think-tank blamed tax rises following Chancellor Gordon Brown's Budget of 2002.
