The sometimes-gruelling challenge of finding an accessible home when disabled – The Telegraph
Six months pregnant with her first child, Jordanne Whiley and her partner Marc McCarroll were looking to move into a large family home. It would need to have five double bedrooms, a downstairs loo in a spacious hallway, wide doorways and be an easy home to maintain.
The Fifties houses nearby in Uxbridge didn’t fit the bill, but pretty soon they came across Abbotts Meadow, a David Wilson Homes development in Steventon, Oxfordshire. They moved into their “perfect forever home” with a couple of months to spare before their son Jackson arrived nine weeks ago.
The ease with which they completed on their home might not be especially noteworthy had the couple been non-disabled buyers, yet both are wheelchair users.
Not only is there a shortage of such housing stock – only seven per cent of UK housing is deemed suitable for the 1.8 million disabled people needing wheelchair-accessible homes, according to Habinteg Housing Association – but developers don’t promote the fact that they provide accessible homes.
Build-to-rent: how developers are profiting from Generation Rent – The Guardian
More than £2bn was invested in purpose built rental flats last year – but this is no way to solve the UK housing crisis.
The number of UK residents renting privately has doubled over the past decade, with some 20% households (30% in London) now in private rented accommodation. Into this growing gap between social housing and home ownership the build-to-rent model has given property developers a new way to profit from Generation Rent.
In 2017, the burgeoning build-to-rent market, comprising purpose-built blocks of rental homes, attracted £2.4bn in investment and is forecast to grow by a further 180% over the next six years.
The attraction for large pension and insurance funds, such as Legal & General, is clear. They have the capital to develop large blocks of flats which are let out and managed long term by a single company rather than being sold to individual landlords. This provides institutional investors with a fairly stable, long-term income stream.
Would you buy and renovate a property in France? Escape to the Chateau couple launch new TV show helping others follow in their footsteps – Daily Mail
They are the congenial and colourful couple who found television fame renovating a dilapidated 45-room French Chateau bought for just €390,000.
And now Dick Strawbridge and his wife Angel, from Channel 4’s Escape to the Chateau, are helping others to follow in their footsteps and turn their chateaux into a successful business.
They are helping 16 individuals who have also made the decision to move to France and renovate a chateau – including a couple in their 20s.
House for sale? This trick will add thousands to the price of your property – Daily Express
House prices are soaring, as the market seems to grow and grow despite forecasts. Is your house for sale? This is how you can increase the value of your property, according to an expert.
Property for sale can often do with a tweak to increase the price.
Is your house for sale? An expert at Webuyanyhome.com has revealed some fool proof ways to increase the cost of your home.
Elliot Castle said: “When selling your home, it is vital to present it in a way that entices buyers and encourages a quick sale.
“However, you don’t have to spend a fortune to renovate to help future buyers visualise the hidden potential in your property.”
Why moving country could save you money – Independent
Lower taxes, cheaper housing, higher employment. As moving season starts in earnest, it’s worth shopping around.
On 6 April, something very unusual will happen to Scotland. While the whole of the UK will see tax levels adjust with the new tax year, Scotland is going to break away and introduce an extra two bands of income tax.
The tax-free personal allowance will stay the same but then there’s going to be a starter rate of 19 per cent for earnings above that and up to £13,850. After that it’s the standard basic rate of 20 per cent up to £24,000 but then there’s an extra percentage point on earnings up to £44,273.
And, just in case you haven’t had enough of the numbers, the rate then rises to 41 per cent and 46 per cent on earnings over £150,000.
That means that, in Scotland, if you earn less than £33,000 you will almost certainly pay less tax north of the border than you would in the rest of the UK.
New rent collection service aims to ‘minimise’ risk of late or missed payments – Landlord Today
A new rent collection service that offers landlords the same power as large financial institutions to incentivise on-time payments from their tenants has been launched by TheHouseShop.com in partnership with Experian.
Rent arrears can cause landlords major financial problems, with TheHouseShop reporting that rent arrears cost landlords in this country more than £900m annually.
The property marketplace provider claims that part of the problem for landlords is that rent payments often fall behind other outgoings, such as utility bills or credit card payments, in the list of tenant’s financial priorities, mainly because unlike most other regular monthly payments, rental payments are not reflected on a tenant’s credit history.
Until recently, private landlords have been unable to do anything to address this imbalance in financial priorities. But with the increasing importance of credit scores in modern financial life, TheHouseShop hope that its new RentScore service will help change that.
House market crash predicted by 1 in 4 Londoners – Property Reporter
The latest research by property marketplace, TheHouseshop.com, has found that almost 1 in 4 Londoners believe there will be a housing crash in the next 2 years.
Despite the cooling down of house price growth in the capital over the past 12 months, a sizable proportion of Londoners still believe that we are headed towards another crisis.
The research asked Londoners to say if, and when, they believed the UK housing market would experience a crash. The results showed that over half of Londoners (55% excluding “don’t know”s) believe there will be a crash within the next 5 years, rising to two thirds of respondents (65%) who say there will be a housing crash within the next decade.
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