Research by the RICS – Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, has indicated that activity in the housing market is increasing fastest in parts of the UK where previously house prices have been the most depressed.
They state that homebuyers are returning to the market in their highest numbers for four years with the greatest activity being in the West Midlands and the North East. Although every region saw an increase in house prices, the biggest rises occurred in London and the South East.
Prices rose higher in July than in any time since 2006 but in the West Midlands and the North
The value of lifting drain covers for Homebuyer Surveys and Building Surveys cannot be underestimated. Often there is no sign of problems above ground and sometimes little evidence of problems below ground. Also where a property has single occupancy what was not much of an issue can, once a family move in with increased usage, become a far more significant problem.
Age of property can also be a problem as some drains during the 1960’s especially were built using pitch fibre drains which are quite brittle and easily crushed.
Tree roots can spread quite some distance laterally and just because there is
According to the latest figures from the Bank of England more mortgages are being approved than at any time in the past three and a half years.
In May 58,242 mortgages were approved up from 54,354 in April.
However, although the Bank of England figures show a significant improvement in the demand for flats and houses, the number of mortgage approvals is still less than half what it was 10 years ago.
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Bristol has been crowned the Green Capital of Europe for 2015 at a ceremony in Nantes. In the previous year Bristol was runner up but this year beat cities such as Brussels in Belgium, Glasgow in Scotland and Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia to win the award.
The title rewards cities which consistently achieve high environmental standards and that are committed to further improvement and sustainability.
Other cities that have previously won have said that it has made a real difference to their percetion and have helped ensure that they are really good places to live in.
According to the Nationwide Building Society, house prices in the UK increased by 0.4%. This brought the annual rate of growth to 1.1% – the highest since Nov 2011.
Nationwide stated that this provided support to “the view that the housing market is gradually gaining momentum”. Robert Gardner, Nationwides’s chief economist indicated that a number of factors were likely to have lead to this including a reduction in the cost of credit and the UK returning to growth in the first period of 2013.
Mr Gardner said that property sales were also up, running at about 5% higher each month this year
Customers Comments
Below is a selection of comments that clients have kindly provided following surveys.
