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th May 2021 9:39 am
Demand for city centre locations and flats is beginning to return, fuelled by the easing of restrictions and the government’s Mortgage Guarantee Scheme, according to Rightmove.
The property website says that the jump in the number of people contacting agents about its flat listings has been higher than for any other property type, up by 39% since January.
Demand for city centre properties is up by 35% compared to a 32% jump in demand for homes in villages.
The findings are based on analysis of 1.6m property listings.
Average house price growth in city centres has been flat since the start of the year, while prices across the market as a whole have risen by 3.4% during this time, helping to improve the relative affordability of urban properties.
Half of first time buyers rely on parents to get on property ladder
Updated
Half of first time buyers rely on parents to get on property ladder
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A mortgage expert is warning that the government have so far failed to turn generation rent into generation buy. This comes as new research shows almost half of first-time buyers have still had to rely on the bank of mum and dad to get their first step on the property ladder.
The Openwork Partnership has achieved a record £5.7bn in mortgage completions in the first quarter of the year.
An estimated 245 mortgage and protection qualified advisers joined the network in the first three months of the year, and a further 46 appointed representative firms and 337 advisers are in the application pipeline.
New firms joining have included Andrews Property Group which helped take the total of mortgage and protection advisers to more than 2,500.
Mortgage advisers at Andrews and other firms are also being supported to move into wealth advice.
The record first quarter for mortgage completions follows a 3% rise in total mortgage completions to £19bn last year despite the purchase market being shut for two months by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government’s Mortgage Guarantee Scheme is not being used by many lenders, to the surprise of Nick Morrey, product technical manager at John Charcol.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed the launch of a Mortgage Guarantee Scheme in the Budget, to help those with lower deposits onto the housing ladder.
Morrey said: “Lenders will not divulge exactly why they have said ‘no thank you’ to the scheme, but ultimately it means they have far more control over the whole transaction with regards to pricing and criteria.”
He also pointed to lenders not having to set up robust systems to track and monitor any and all mortgages sold that are part of a scheme financially linked to a third-party.