All articles by Alastair Stewart – Page 8
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Insight
‘Peeled’ bids, buy-to-let seminars and confident cabbies spell bubble trouble
Sealed bids becoming “peeled bids”, the return of buy-to-let seminars and cabbies doling out property investment advice — London’s housing market in the first few months of this year sounded as hot as it had been for years.
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Insight
Planning framework is more lawyers’ charter than developers’ friend
In the promotion battle between developers and countryside campaigners, the final unveiling of the National Planning Policy Framework represented, at best, a scrappy draw but, more likely, a narrow win for amateurs National Trust FC over Big Builders United.
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Insight
Banks drag their feet over buy-in to NewBuy
As mad dashes go, this month’s apparent scramble to launch the NewBuy mortgage plan took some beating. In the end, only three banks and the half-dozen largest housebuilders signed up for the 95% loan scheme when it launched on 12 March. But the builders, the banks, housing minister Grant Shapps ...
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Insight
The number’s up for Britain’s housing shortage
A mantra could be defined as a phrase of religious or mythical script repeated to the extent that adherents develop an unquestioning belief in its veracity. Housebuilders and politicians have been repeating their own incantation for more than two decades, to the extent that just about everyone has elevated to ...
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Insight
First-time buyer schemes could blow up in buyers’ faces
The shared equity scheme could land new buyers in negative equity the dat they are given their keys
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Insight
Too much “Pesto” leaves housebuilders
Housebuilders may have invented a new instrument to gauge the health of the housing market: the “Pesto-meter”. Greg Fitzgerald, chief executive of Galliford Try, recently told analysts and investors that while the BBC’s lugubrious business editor Robert Peston’s appearances remain limited to once a week, his board feels OK. “Four ...
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Insight
Cornish house prices look pasty as City types succumb to squeeze
Sloane Square sur Mer” would be an apt name for many a Cornish seaside village, where “Chelsea tractors” now outnumber the agricultural variety
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Insight
London super-prime’s vintage could be last of the summer wine
It was supposed to be the greatest Bordeaux release for years. Hailed by French critics as “the vintage of the decade”, the top first growths from 2010 were tipped to eclipse the outstanding 2009, which had commanded a record £15,000 per case en primeur. But something went wrong. Rival producers, ...
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Insight
Our continental invaders may bring a new housebuilding culture
Sacre bleu! Here come the French! And the Swedes are encamped already
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Insight
Neighbourhood watches as Barratt is forced to innovate
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention
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Insight
FirstBuy could snare young couples in ‘equity trap’
You say HomeBuy, we say FirstBuy”, might have been an appropriate line should chancellor George Osborne have burst into song during last month’s Budget
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Insight
Housebuilders out of tune as they chorus ‘price not volume’
If there were an X Factor for industry groups, the UK housebuilders would be strong candidates
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Insight
Housebuilders suffocated as inflation starts to squeeze profits
Andy Carroll poached by Liverpool for £35m and Fernando Torres joining Chelsea for a UK record £50m fee; inflation is firmly on the agenda – but not just in football
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Insight
Shapps wants to turn up the volume, housebuilders would rather turn him down
Eight months into Grant Shapps’ tenure as housing minister, many in the industry may be wishing him well in a rise to higher office
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Insight
Lloyds’ new chief might not be a hit with developers — check his record
It doesn’t take much for stock markets to turn gaga on stray newsflow. Thursday 4 November was one such day