[Halifax Figures Out Today]

The UK average price is more than one-third higher (34%) than five years ago.

The comparison is now up to 5 years in the report.

[Land Registry July 08 Figures -1.0% Mom, 0.1% Yoy]

LR PDF

[Gross Lending Declines In June]

CML

Gross mortgage lending declined to an estimated £23.8 billion in June, down 3% from May and 32% from June 2007, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

The decline between the first and second quarter was a marginal 1%. However, an increase would typically be expected in spring. The year-on-year decline has gathered pace in recent months; lending in the first quarter of 2008 was down 11% on 12 months earlier, while the second quarter was down 21%.

CML director general Michael Coogan commented:

“Market activity during a traditionally a busy time of year for mortgages has been muted by funding shortages and, more recently, dampened consumer demand.

“While by historic comparisons we still have had a good level of gross lending, new net lending has been constrained in 2008 and this picture will continue for the rest of this year.

“Government efforts to help housing associations purchase new-build properties and borrowers to save for a deposit are welcome, but are likely to have only a marginal impact on the housing market. The recent reduction in short-term fixed-rate mortgage costs is a small bit of welcome news for hard-pressed households facing significant pressures on their finances from the higher cost of food and fuel, in particular.

“However, borrowers on tight budgets will have to plan ahead to manage higher mortgage payments than they have been used to. Speak to your lender early remains the advice for anyone struggling to pay.”

[U.s. Consumer Prices Jumped In June By The Most In 26 Years]

Bloomberg

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Prices paid by U.S. consumers jumped in June by the most since 1982 on spiraling costs for fuel and food, giving the Federal Reserve even more reason to be concerned about inflation.

The cost of living soared 1.1 percent, more than forecast, after a 0.6 percent gain the prior month, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Excluding food and energy, so-called core prices climbed 0.3 percent, also more than anticipated.

The figures underscore why Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke yesterday said inflation risks had ``intensified.'' The surge in energy costs has also trimmed consumer and business spending, hurting growth and making it less likely policy makers will boost interest rates to stem even bigger price increases.

``Inflation has galloped,'' Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, said before the report. ``It puts the Fed in a really tricky position. I don't see how they can change rates this year.''

Consumer prices were forecast to rise 0.7 percent, according to the median forecast of 79 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from gains of 0.2 percent to 1.1 percent. Costs excluding food and energy were forecast to rise 0.2 percent, the survey showed.

Prices increased 5 percent in the 12 months to June, the most since May 1991. They were forecast to climb 4.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the survey median.

Not good for shares later today.

[Cpi - Just In - Up To 3.8%]

Ross Walker, RBS, says CPI may get close to 5%

OMG!

The MoM figure was 0.7% so it may not be too far off.

Telegraph

The financial squeeze on British households is tightening after figures this morning showed that inflation rose to its highest level in more than a decade in June.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), the Government's preferred measure of inflation, climbed 3.8pc in June compared with the same period last year and up from May's 3.3pc annual increase. The figure was more than the 3.6pc jump predicted by economists. On a monthly basis, inflation spiked 0.7pc.

[Banks To Rescue Of Bradford & Bingley]

Daily Mail

Britain's Big Six banks staged a dramatic rescue of Bradford & Bingley last night in a bid to avert a new Northern Rock crisis.

Under pressure from the financial services regulator, they agreed to buy a large chunk of shares in the beleaguered bank.

The bail-out followed a £400million rights issue by the former building society which was sunk when its shares plunged further during a day of bloodletting on the stock market. Up to £36billion was wiped off the value of Britain's biggest listed companies amid fears of recession.

Bradford & Bingley shares, which have fallen by nearly 90 per cent over the past year, have now dropped to a level where shareholders will refuse to buy any more.

They were described as worthless by one analyst yesterday and the rights issue was described as 'a dog's breakfast'. Existing shareholders had been offered the chance to buy at a 'discounted' 55p.

But the price nosedived a further 19 per cent to a record low of 34p yesterday, following a fall of 16 per cent on Monday.

It is understood the six banks, HBOS, Abbey, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, stepped in after being leaned on by the Financial Services Authority.

They have promised to buy the shares which Bradford & Bingley's main underwriters, the American investment banks UBS and Citigroup, do not buy, a procedure known as ' subunderwriting'.

As a result, the high street banks will end up owning at least 30 per cent of their rival.

One banking source said: 'It is in everyone's interest that there is confidence in the market.'

Bradford & Bingley's problems have sparked fears that Britain could be facing a second Northern Rock crisis. The bank categorically denies this suggestion, insisting that it is a strong business which is being unfairly targeted by ruthless share speculators.

Much of the concern surrounds its position as Britain's biggest buy-to-let mortgage lender. About £24billion of its total mortgage book of £40billion are buy-to-let mortgages.

But it has had a torrid few months which has created the City equivalent of a television soap opera, lurching from one disaster to another.

Its chief executive, Steven Crawshaw, resigned abruptly due to poor health. He is understood to be suffering from angina. He has not been replaced.

His departure was followed by a calamitous profits warning from the Yorkshire-based bank.

It admitted that it has lost £8million in the four months to the end of April, compared to profits of £107million pre-tax for the same period last year.

It was rescued by the American private equity firm, Texas Pacific Group, which was going to buy a 23 per cent stake for £179million.

But TPG ran for the exit after Bradford & Bingley's shares were downgraded by the ratings agency, Moody's, late last Thursday.

City brokers have become increasingly negative about the bank's shares, advising investors to offload.

The bank has about 850,000 small shareholders, most of whom received free shares when Bradford & Bingley converted from a building society in 2000.

In a normal rights issue all the discounted shares would be snapped up by shareholders keen to get a bargain.

But Bradford & Bingley's plummeting value has reversed the normal rules.

Leigh Goodwin, UK banking analyst at the bank Fox-Pitt Kelton, said: 'We cannot rule out the possibility of an effective failure with shareholders receiving little or nothing for their shares.'

[Supply Of Mortgages 'remains Low']

BBC

A recovery in the mortgage squeeze is still "some way away", according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

The comment came as CML figures showed the number of loans for home purchases remained low in May at 52,700.

This was a slight rise of 4% from the previous month, but was still 44% lower than the same month in 2007.

The figures revealed a steep decline in the number of people remortgaging in May - down 14% on the previous month and 23% lower year-on-year.

"Lending levels continue to be lower than last year and any recovery is still some way away," said CML director general Michael Coogan.

Tighter lending

The CML said the situation was likely to "get worse before it gets better", with first-time buyers facing having to find larger deposits and needing a good credit rating to get on the housing ladder.

The number of loans to first-time buyers rose by 4% from April to 19,200 in May, but was 41% lower than May last year.

Recent mortgage approvals data from the Bank of England indicated that the number of loans for house purchase would fall further in coming months, the CML said.

The CML data relates to completions, as does the latest survey of house prices released by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

This showed that annual house price growth slowed, down from 4.9% in April to 3.7% in May.

Annual house price growth was highest in Scotland, at 6.9%. Prices in England rose by 3.8% and were up 1.5% in Wales, but prices had fallen by 7.8% in Northern Ireland.

The average cost of a home in the UK was £218,151 in May, the DCLG said.

[Longest Time On Sale, Smallest Reduction]

This property has been on sale since May 2004 with the same agent and without any drop in price at all.

No rush to sell

[Telegraph Reveals Nationwide Figures]

Looking at the Nationwide release for May

it's down from a peak of 186044 - 14000 = 172044, a drop of about 7.6% from peak.

Last month it was 173583, which is about 0.9% MoM, and around 6.5% YoY.

Or I could be wrong.

[Boe Approvals 42000]

Ray Boulger has just been interviewed on BBC News and he blamed the BoE for making the figures seem worse than they are by using seasonal adjustment on them, said they would have been around 50000 otherwise.

[House Prices Won't Recover Until 2015]

Telegraph

The housing market will not return to its pre-credit crunch health for at least six or seven years, an expert adviser to Gordon Brown has warned.

Stephen Nickell has warned that the housing market will not return to its pre-credit crunch health for at least six or seven years

Prof Nickell: The housing market will not boom again until 2015

Families must wait until 2015 for the property market to start booming again, according to Stephen Nickell, who heads up the unit which advises the Prime Minister on housing planning.

He also warned that the "severe rationing" of mortgages was preventing first time buyers from taking advantage of falling house prices, preventing affordability from improving.

Prof Nickell, the warden of Nuffield College, Oxford and the chairman of the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit, said he was extremely worried that the credit crunch would keep first time buyers from getting onto the property ladder.

[15 Sellers To Every Buyer]

Telegraph

The ratio of properties on the market to buyers has doubled to 15-to-one in a year, forcing homeowners to slash prices.

Only one in every 15 properties on the market were sold last month, according to figures published today (Mon). The oversupply has forced owners to slash nearly £3,000 off the average house price in the last five weeks.

The average home is now valued at £239,564, a fall of 1.2 per cent. The drop is the first ever recorded fall in house prices in June, which is traditional seen as peak season for house selling.

[Mother-of-three Is First Northern Rock Borrower To Be Thrown Out]

Exactly. Exactly.

The reality is that the only people in the court when Mrs. Georgieu gets repossessed will be the judge, the bank's lawyer, her and her lawyer. There's someone missing, isn't there?

The fraud squad should be sitting at the back of the court writing a lot of notes. But they won't be. It'll end here with the tragegic eviction of the silly woman and her kids and therefore ony one of the guilty has been punished.

Shameful.

Not going to justify NR in any way but this woman doesn't seem to be anything other than a fraudster.

She borrowed £60,000 in Sept and six months later couldn't find £1500 to pay her mortgage?

Also noticed she is now estranged, where is the husband? Very important as to how she is treated by the benefits system. Has he gone away with £60,000 in his back pocket.

She will be evicted, go straight to the top of the housing list and have a three bed council house the next day. Hundreds of pounds a week in benefits and her rent paid, very well planned it seems to me.

£60,000, where did it go?

Only tragedy here is all the taxpayers money p!ssed away by everyone involved.

[Darlings New Mantra]

Do you have a link to the original bit with the interviewer asking the questions? It looks like it's the same bit spliced over and over... I'd love to see/hear the thing in it's entirety. Thanks

That is the odd thing about his interview and the reason I originally posted about it, look at the clock it's not a repeating splice he is just regurgitating it continually. Food prices are up 40%, oil prices have doubled. This may not even be the same interview I saw as I was watching BBC and this is on Sky.

I too would like to see the whole thing if there is a link, I can't find any on Sky.

[Darlings New Mantra]

Watching some of Darling's interview and for at least five questions in a row he answered with the same reply - food prices are up 40% and oil prices have doubled.

He didn't work these into his answers he merely repeated the same thing over and over. It was literally just saying the same thing, it was quite bizarre, no matter what the question this was his answer.

Food prices up 40%, oil prices have doubled.

[Here's A Clever Ploy - Put Your Price Up When The Deal Falls Through]

This is just some sort of Rightmove glitch, the properties haven't changed prices. If you go to the actual EA's website instead of going through Rightmove the prices are still the same.

I'm actually finding this quite useful as it is bringing up some pre Jan 23rd changes that happened before propertybee was released. So I now have info going back even further than I had previously, showing some even bigger drops than I was aware.

[Here's A Clever Ploy - Put Your Price Up When The Deal Falls Through]

Ah, now that's interesting. I've just been doing a PropertyBee trawl for Nottingham and have noticed the exact same behaviour from William H Brown, who by the logo are part of the same group (Sequence?). Properties which have been on since before January (when I installed the Bee) and gradually dropping in price by £20k or so, now mysteriously back up to original price today. Do they want to go out of business? What the hell is going on? Anyone got an inside view?

Edited to add: the original post from hedgefunded is the same group again! I'm sensing orders from on high here.

One of the local agents from my area had the same issue today and they are part of the same group as mentioned above, Sequence. Looks like some sort of database problem as some of the properties appeared for a short while then were removed again. Most of them were sold long ago so I don't think it was intentional.

[House Sales To Slump 35% As Property Prices Plummet By 7% This Year]

Daily Mail

House sales in England and Wales are set to fall by a massive 35 per cent this year, according to the latest forecasts.

House prices will also plummet by seven per cent in 2008, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

The predictions represent a total about turn for the organisation, which represents banks and building societies.

Just seven months ago, it forecast prices would rise by one per cent in 2008 with property sales likely to be broadly stable at one million.

It is now predicting that the rate of property transactions this year will fall to 770,000.

Seems the CML have had a change of heart.

[Bank Voted 8-1 To Maintain Rates]

BBC

The Bank of England voted eight to one to keep interest rates on hold at 5%, minutes of its last meeting show.

The only member of the bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) who favoured a cut was David Blanchflower, who wanted a reduction to 4.75%.

Inflation has risen in recent months, driven by high oil and food prices, making policymakers reluctant to cut rates despite the cooling economy.

The MPC made clear an interest rate cut is unlikely "for a few months".

'Letter-writing territory'

Recent figures showed the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) reached an annual rate of 3%, above the government's own target of 2%, further reducing chances of a rate cut.

March's 0.8% monthly rise in consumer prices was the steepest for nearly seven years.

If inflation tips beyond 3%, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King is obliged to write a public letter to Chancellor Alistair Darling, to explain what has happened and what the bank is doing to address the issue.

The MPC said that "with inflation set to move into letter-writing territory in the next month or two, the next cut looks unlikely to come for a few months unless the activity news is absolutely dreadful."

"Given the sharp rise in inflation in April - figures that the Committee had at the time of their decision - it is not surprising that eight of the nine-strong MPC voted in favour of interest rates on hold two weeks ago," said George Buckley, head economist at Deutsche Bank.

Peter Dixon of Commerzbank said the decision was "tactical" because inflation was not high enough "to warrant rate hikes nor growth sufficiently low enough to warrant cuts".

[Cml Predicts 7% House Price Fall]

BBC

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) is predicting a 7% drop in UK house prices during 2008.

The lenders' group expects property transactions in England and Wales to be around 35% lower compared with 2007.

The government's own advisors last week suggested that house prices would fall 5-10% in a briefing paper to Cabinet.

The CML's updated housing market forecast came as UK gross mortgage lending hit £25.3bn in April, a 5% rise from March but an 8% annual decline.

At the end of 2007, the CML predicted that house prices would rise by 1% in 2008, but the effects of the credit crunch on the availability of mortgages has led to the revised prediction.

"In the wake of the credit crunch, 2008 will be remembered as a very weak year in the housing market," said CML director general Michael Coogan.

'Crumbs of comfort'

The fall in prices would be welcomed by some who have seen a decade of price rises rule them out of the market.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors revised its 2008 predictions from prices remaining unchanged to a 5% fall over the year.

And on 13 May Housing Minister Caroline Flint was photographed carrying a briefing note into a Cabinet meeting which suggested a 5-10% fall, and a note saying "We can't know how bad it will get".

But the CML suggests there are "crumbs of comfort" as it has not changed its previous view on repossessions in 2008 - which remains at a predicted 45,000, up from 27,100 in 2007.

[I Love Property Bee]

I loved Property Bee until this morning but now it has croaked. On my list of Saved Properties the Property Bee information no longer shows but if I click on any individual property then all of its history of changes shows as usual.

Yesterday I deleted my temporary internet files - not sure if this could have affected it.

Today I reinstalled Property Bee and restarted the computer to try to fix it but it made no difference.

Could anybody please suggest what might revive my Bee? Thanks.

The same has happened for me this morning.

Noticed more search options on Rightmove today so perhaps they have changed somerthing to disable it.

[Used Car Prices Hold But Demand Is Falling]

anyone else thinking of switching to LPG ?

I bought an LPG car a couple of years ago and the savings can be fantastic, at my local Asda petrol is now 110p, diesel 120p and LPG is at 52p.

If you use high mileage a conversion can pay for itself in a year.

[For Those That Can Remember]

We've been paying MPs mortgages for years

[Ea Humberts Shares Suspended Over Financial Fears]

Times

Share trading was suspended today in Humberts, one of England's largest chains of estate agents part-owned by Vincent Tchenguiz, over doubts about its financial viability.

In a terse statement to the Stock Exchange the loss-making company, which has 80 offices and about 700 staff in the South of England, said the request to suspend its shares was made "pending clarification of its financial position."

[No Rate Cuts Before Year 2010 - Ft & Boe]

Brown wants it to be known he wants cuts...

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown denied on Thursday that his tax policies were breaking the government's fiscal rules and said he hoped the Bank of England would be able to cut interest rates further.

Brown said the problems facing the economy were international in origin and he was probably the best person to tackle the issues, rejecting suggestions he should quit to prevent the Labour Party losing the next general election.

Asked whether he wanted interest rates to be cut again, he told BBC radio: "I hope we will be able to do so but I've always said that this is a matter for the Bank of England."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080515/tpl...wn-e9012a6.html

Brown may want cuts but the markets they say no

U.K. Two-Year Notes Poised for Biggest Four-Day Drop Since 1996

The unwind has been massive

It's been brutal

The odds of a quarter-point cut in the Bank of England's benchmark rate on June 5 fell to 4 percent, according to a Credit Suisse Group index. The chances were 50 percent at the beginning of the week, the index showed.