06th May 2008
With many investors looking beyond traditional overseas property markets, many will wonder what the best way to proceed is when taking steps into the brave new worlds of emerging nations. Whether in a vast nation such as India or small islands like the Ca...
06th May 2008
Another day, another set of apparently gloomy property statistics. Yesterday we had the Land Registry and Moneyfacts house price figures for March and April respectively, with both showing monthly price falls and the former indicating an annual drop in pr...
30th April 2008
Much excitement was generated by the recent change in capital gains tax (CGT), which saw two major benefits for buy-to-let investors who might wish to sell any of their assets at any given time. First there was the fact that the level of tax was no longer...
29th April 2008
A key issue in the UK property market in recent months, both for residential buyers and those looking to acquire investment property, has been the cost of mortgages, with the credit crunch pushing up interbank lending rates, which in turn have restricted ...
29th April 2008
With so many property markets struggling with the credit crunch, various governments are battling away to try to restore some lost ground. In Britain this has come in the form of the Bank of England's £50 billion bond issue to try to create more liquidit...
28th April 2008
The last few months have been tough for those seeking to get a mortgage, be it a residential loan for that all important first home or a buy-to-let mortgage. In both cases the supply of products has fallen, while the reverse has been true about the size o...
28th April 2008
Mention property in Portugal to many and the Algarve may be the first location which springs to mind. With many seaside villas, golf courses, tourist facilities and of course lots of sea and sand, this is no unreasonable response. But Portugal offers far ...
25th April 2008
These are heady days in Cyprus. With the euro now its official currency, tying it in with most of the major economies in the continent (Britain being the obvious exception), the economy is in a new phase. A new presidency has begun too, with the tantalisi...
25th April 2008
If buy-to-let is a castle, being assailed in mediaeval-style by a huge army, firing flaming arrows (or should that be negative headlines?) and attempting to batter down the door with the "credit cruncher" siege engine, then it appears to be a fortress tha...
25th April 2008
One of the factors in considerations about the UK property market in recent times has been the apparent conflict between the short-term and long-term perspectives. Until recently, the short-termist view looked to have some merit, with rapid house price ri...
25th April 2008
People in Britain are used to talk of a north-south divide, which has been historically rooted in differences of economics, subculture, accent and, to a varying extent at different times, electoral geography. Housing, of course, has been part of the equat...
24th April 2008
When those buying investment property look for the right kind of investment, it may not be quite true to say that location, location, location is everything. True, areas close to universities may be great for student lettings, those in city centres popula...
24th April 2008
Cape Verde has been one of the names on the lips of many a property investor in recent times as the African archipelago has exploded into the consciousness of developers, investors and, most importantly, of tourists. Being the closest tropical island to B...
18th April 2008
According to many sages, the Spanish property market is a bad news story just now. The boom years are over, the credit crunch has struck, prices are down, some property firms have gone out of business and others are struggling.
In the midst of all this, ...
18th April 2008
That there has been a drop in house prices in recent months is largely agreed, even if some surveys, such as the Financial Times House Price Index, have consistently indicated a static picture. But the March figure of no change recorded in that survey, pl...
