Asking prices have fallen for the third month in a row by 0.8% (£1,968), but interest from buyers is up due to lower prices and recent falling interest rates. A good deal of the monthly fall is attributed to the final HIPs' (home information packs) deadline for smaller homes, which has brought more cheap properties to the market. It is not all gloom and doom, however, as the January housing market seems to be showing signs of its usual upturn after several months of sellers re-adjusting their prices, according to theproperty website Rightmove s latest House Price Index. 'Now, some house-buyers are able to find properties that have fallen into their affordability zone and are bagging what they see as bargains against previous prices. 'Some properties have had their prices dropped by 10% or more and are now within reach, satisfying some of the pent-up demand from previously disenfranchised buyers,' says Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove. The drop in the annual rate of increase from 4.8% to 3.4% has resulted in the lowest year-on-year figure for two years, mirroring the 2005 property market downturn. A sustainable recovery to a volume sales market requires the return of more first-time buyers or buy-to-let investors, and a lowering of costs for existing home-owners to trade up, adds Rightmove.
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Uniquely unique? The Yorkshire grain silos transformed into a home that's a symphony in glass, steel and curvesAmid the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire, on the edge of the Castle Howard Estate, The Silos is a property for which the word 'house' simply doesn't cut it. And that's not the only way in which it's made us throw out the dictionary.
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Polluting water executives now face up to two years in prison, but will the new laws make much of a difference?The Government has announced that water company executives caught covering up illegal sewage spills could now be imprisoned for two years, under new laws — but many still have their doubts.
