The Government’s new Portas Pilot scheme is designed to locate town centres who can put together a scheme for regeneration, following the review carried out by Mary Portas last year. Cunningtons’ home town of Braintree has won though and so will share of the £1.5m in funding available aimed at breathing new life into local shopping centres.
Other winners include Brighton (LondonRoad) which has been the subject of strong local campaigning, Leamington (Old Town) and Loughborough.
The Government’s new Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS) is designed to pump money into the economy by making cheap sources of borrowing available to banks, who can then lend it on cheaply to those in the real economy. It is hoped this will benefit the beleaguered First Time Buyer by providing cheaper mortgage finance, thus boosting demand across the property sector. A lack of affordable funding has to date has been a major constraint on the housing market, leading to fewer new homes being built because of lack of demand, which in turn leads to the housing supply crisis we are currently enduring.
The success of the scheme is very much in the hands of the lenders, if it works it should lead to more homes being built, which will help the construction sector, and a healthier property market.
It was pleasing to see, after the HSBC debacle earlier in the year, that the Council of Mortgage Lenders agrees that in the majority of cases a single conveyancer acting for both purchaser and lender is the better option. CML appears to recognise that the interests of the purchaser and lender are generally aligned in most transactions, which means the potential for a conflict of interest is minimal, and therefore the consumer benefits from lower legal costs. Cunningtons, having been accredited under the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality scheme, is on the panel of all major lenders, and so can act for purhasers and lenders in almost all cases.
The uncertainty in the property market continues unabated, the latest Halifax house prices survey being a fine example, whilst showing a 1% increase in house prices in June on the previous month, the second quarter showed they are 0.3% down on the first quarter, and 0.5% down on a year ago. However this is a marked improvement on the figures for May 2011 which revealed an annual drop of 4.2%.
The ending of the stamp duty holiday for first time buyers predictably led to a steep decline in such transactions in April, but May saw an increase of 28%, so signs that perhaps after a temporary hitch, first time buyers are still entering the market. One survey has numbers of first time buyers at their highest level for nearly three years.
Nearly two thirds of those first time buyers are looking to purchase with a partner, so its as important as ever for them to appoint the right conveyancing solicitor who can give good advice regarding the advantages and pitfalls of joint ownership.
