UK Builders to Construct Bigger Homes as More People Work From Home
British house builders are set to construct more detached and semi-detached homes, as the demand grows for properties with space to work from home, an industry body has said.
The National House Building Council (NHBC), a warranty and insurance provider, said the housing sector has “bounced back” following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the number of new home build registrations up by 10 percent in the first quarter of 2021 compared with a year earlier.
Across the UK, 36,863 new homes were registered with NHBC in the first quarter of 2021 compared with 33,388 in the same period last year.
Rain dampens high street recovery as footfall drops 4.1 per cent
Wind and rain persuaded shoppers to stay inside last week.
Footfall in UK retail destinations fell 4.1 per cent last week from the week before, as wind and rain persuaded shoppers to stay home for another week.
The number of high street shoppers fell 6.6 per cent last week, according to the latest data from retail insight company Springboard, while footfall in shopping centres and retail parks fell 1.5 and 1.3 per cent respectively.
The reduction in people out and about was widespread across the UK, spanning all areas but Northern Ireland, where footfall rose 21.1 per cent, reflecting the impact of the reopening of retail on Friday 30 April.
UK Rural House Prices Surge Due to ‘Urban Flight’ During Pandemic: Study
The UK has witnessed over the past year a shift in housing demand away from cities and towards more rural or less densely populated areas of the country, a new study has revealed.
House prices have boomed during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic despite the most significant economic contraction in a generation, said the Resolution Foundation, a London-based think tank.
Is there evidence for this ‘race for space’ in the data? Splitting the UK’s local authorities into deciles by their population density, house prices have risen by over 10% in the least populous 10th of local authorities in the UK, compared to rises of ‘only’ 6% for the most dense pic.twitter.com/9UlTNBHhNb
Hiten Ganatra is managing director of Visionary Finance
As we start to go through the various phases to exit lockdown across many areas of the globe, there have been many theories about what effect twelve months of the pandemic will have on the decade to follow.
Analysts have been making comparisons between the impact of COVID-19 and the Spanish flu epidemic that ended in 1920 and sparked a decade of economic and cultural change.
Personally, I think the effect may be overstated, but in the housing market it is clear we are already seeing trends to indicate that people are taking opportunities to live where they want to live and maybe moving away from immediate convenience and/or near their place of employment.
An estimated 131,900 properties were sold by landlords in Great Britain in 2020, the smallest number since 2013, according to research from Hamptons.
Landlords who sold last year in England and Wales did so for an average of £82,450 (42%) more than they paid for it, and had owned the property for an average of 9.1 years.
The average gross gain increased by £3,390 (4%) to £82,000 compared to 2019 (£79,060), marking the first annual rise in more than five years.
London landlords made the biggest gains, selling on for £302,200 (71%) more, having owned the property for 9.8 years on average.
Despite the increase, typically landlords who sold in the capital last year made a smaller gross profit than those who sold in 2016 when they made an average gain of £364,960.