Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910, but the Edwardian period is generally extended to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Edward’s reign was short but influential. The atmosphere of the period was influenced by the king and his love of the good life, which contrasted sharply with the puritanical values of the Victorian ideal. This short era saw a huge housing boom as suburbs sprung up around every city and large town.

via findaproperty.com

It's an old one, but a good one that kitchens and bathrooms really do sell houses. If you want to add a surface sheen to your existing kitchen, try replacing cupboards and worktops. Alternatively a small new kitchen can start at £1,500- £2,000. Avocado suites might have been all the rage thirty odd years ago, but nowadays it's all about clean and crisp white minimalism. Tiling over the floral wallpaper is also advised, as is adding a shower room where there's space.

via findaproperty.com

What's HomeBuy? HomeBuy is a Government funded scheme to help social tenants and those on the housing register, key workers and other priority first-time buyers into home ownership. There are three HomeBuy products on offer: • New Build HomeBuy enables people to buy a share of a newly built property paying a rent on the remainder.
• Open Market HomeBuy enables people to buy a property on the open market with the help of an equity loan. • Social HomeBuy enables tenants of participating local.

via findaproperty.com

All first time buyers earning less than £60,000 a year are now eligible for the Government’s shared ownership and shared equity schemes, which allows borrowers to part buy a property. The Government's Homebuy programme, which was previously only available to social tenants and “key workers” such as nurses and teaches, is intended to support first time buyers struggling to get on the housing ladder.

via business.timesonline.co.uk

"If people have home warranty insurance, they will be covered," Vero Insurance spokeswoman Sue Repanellis said.
"They are going to be protected for the investment they've already made." Vero Insurance provides cover under the NSW home warranty insurance scheme. Ms Repanellis said the insurer was working with Beechwood's receivers to determine how many homebuyers had been left with unfinished properties when the company was placed into voluntary administration on Tuesday. She put the number of homeowners affected at around 300 but said it would be up to the receivers to make a final estimate.

via news.com.au

IT'S every home owner's heartbreak -- watching the value of their home plummet to half the price they paid within a few years. And in working-class suburbs around the country, it's becoming an all-too-regular occurrence, The Australian reported. Zaia Dawood, a real estate agent at Fairfield in Sydney's southwest, last week sold a two-bedroom unit -- bought for $240,000 in 2006 -- for just $140,000. "It is a massive decrease, but it's not rare in these areas,'' Mr Dawood said at the weekend.

via news.com.au

THE resources boom has pushed up residential property prices in some mining towns by more than 44 per cent in the past year. RP Data research shows prices at Broken Hill in western New South Wales rose 44.6 per cent and, at Glen Eden, a suburb in the Queensland city of Gladstone, they rose 44.2 per cent, The Australian reported. Other resource-rich centres where prices jumped in the year included Kalgoorlie in Western Australia (with 36.1 per cent), Clermont in Queensland (with 39 per cent) and Whyalla in South Australia (with 35.4 per cent).

via news.com.au

The affordable housing scheme, which was previously only open to key workers and social housing tenants, allows buyers to purchase a share of a property – starting at 25% - with the option of buying up to 50% of the property using a shared equity mortgage. Housing Minister Caroline Flint also announced a new initiative to enable the Housing Corporation to allocate up to £200m of its resources to buy new properties on the open market, either to be made available to first-time buyers through the HomeBuy scheme or social renting.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Research from the financial comparison site also showed that of those lenders that have passed on the cut, 20 (28%) have lowered their SVR by less than 0.25% - the cut made by the Monetary Policy Committee in April. According to Moneyfacts’ research, the majority of lenders who haven’t passed on the cut, or have passed on less than 0.25% are building societies, with 18 (38%) of the 51 societies that offer mortgages still not declaring their intentions regarding any rate cuts and another 18 (38%) announcing cuts of less than 0.25%.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Key lawmakers spent Thursday trying to broker a deal on a bill that would allow the government to insure up to $300 billion of home loans and overhaul oversight of key players in the mortgage industry. By the end of the day, they had come closer together but had not hammered out a final compromise. "We believe we have an agreement in concept," said a spokesman for Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the lead Republican on the Senate Banking Committee. "We're currently in the process of seeing whether we can translate that agreement in concept into language."

via money.cnn.com

Homeowners are far better placed to weather a house price crash than they were in the early 1990s, analysis for the BBC has suggested. House prices would have to fall by 56% to put the average mortgage borrower in negative equity.
Government figures suggest the average borrower has an outstanding mortgage worth 44% of their property's value.
The analysis was done for the BBC programme the Truth About Property, by housing intelligence monitor Hometrack. According to Hometrack, the average homeowner has equity worth £167,000.

via news.bbc.co.uk

The Truth about Property is back for a second series and aims to make sense of the housing market turmoil. In this series presenters Andrew Verity and Jenny Scott travel around the UK to hear how households are coping.
Are you crash proof? The ubiquitous credit crunch has led to a rough ride for home owners in recent months, causing higher mortgage costs and in some cases, negative equity and repossession. In the first programme Andrew and Jenny find out how homeowners would cope in the event of a major property crash.

via news.bbc.co.uk

That is the surprise finding of the first poll to test the assumption that house price falls are unpopular and therefore politically damaging. Barely a fifth of people want house prices to rise - fewer than the number of people who want them to fall. The poll of 1,005 people, commissioned by the BBC, found that only 22% said they wanted prices to go up while 28% said they wanted house prices to fall. The poll, carried out by ICM, canvassed people over a three-day period from 25 to 27 April.

via abclocal.go.com

Key senators said they are close to a bipartisan deal on a homeowner rescue package that could help a half million strapped borrowers get government-backed mortgages. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee Chairman, postponed a meeting Thursday to vote on the plan in anticipation of reaching a compromise with Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the panel's senior Republican. The measure also tightens regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that finance mortgages.

via abclocal.go.com

Wall Street turned higher in erratic trading Thursday as a batch of reports pointed to an economy that is hurting, but not experiencing as rough a time as many investors expected after the near-collapse of the mortgage market.
Some deals at major companies including General Electric Co. and CBS Corp. also helped stocks stay afloat.
"The encouraging news is that the markets have become more functional, and large companies are able to make strategic purchases and sales, which previously was a very difficult thing to do.

via topix.net