First-time buyers make the most of sudden stall in UK house prices April 12, 2015 First-time buyers snapped up 21,000 houses in February, taking advantage of a short-term blip in house prices, according to estate agents Reeds Rains and Your Move. That is an 11 per cent rise in the number of transactions on the month. The average first-time buyer paid £143,767 for their property, down four per cent on [...]
Survey points to high business optimism and strong hiring plans April 12, 2015 Businesses are planning to take on more workers over the coming months, according to survey figures released today by accountancy firm BDO. BDO’s employment index – an indicator of hiring intentions – scored 113 in March. Despite it being marginally lower than February’s 113.1, it is far above the long-term average of 100. Firms also [...]
Charted: Coalition the first government to enjoy uninterrupted interest rates for 60 years April 10, 2015 With the Bank of England’s interest rate decision yesterday, the coalition government has become the first government for 50 years to make it through its entire time in power without interest rates being raised. The total, if you're counting, is now 74 months, after the rate was lowered from one per cent on 5 March [...]
Wage increases gather pace as recruiters battle skills shortage April 9, 2015 Salaries for new staff rose at their fastest pace in six month in March, recruiters said today, as diving unemployment combined with strong growth to push up pay. Finance workers and engineers are in the highest demand, closely followed by executive staff. The study from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG found that almost [...]
Broker warns UK house price rise could accelerate April 9, 2015 House price growth has cooled since last year’s boom, but price growth remains high and could pick up again, a mortgage broker has warned. The average UK house price was £192,970 in March, 8.1 per cent higher than a year ago, according to figures released by Halifax yesterday. A boom in house prices last year [...]
Middle Eastern visitors to London splash out the most on the city’s luxury hotels April 9, 2015 Hotel prices paid by international visitors to the UK jumped last year thanks to tourists from the Middle East paying 67 per cent more for a room than the average rate. The hotels price index (HPI), a survey by online accommodation provider Hotels.com, revealed that travellers to the UK from the region paid an average [...]
IMF’s Christine Lagarde on the three big risks to the global economy April 9, 2015 Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, has said that the global economy risks slipping into a "new mediocre" which implies a prolonged period of low economic growth. "[The] global recovery continues, but it is moderate, and uneven," she said ahead of the release of the IMF's economic forecasts next week. The last forecasts released in [...]
Ed Miliband’s non-dom policy “ignores all evidence” and could backfire, says Adam Smith Institute April 9, 2015 Ed Miliband's reform to the non-dom system ignores all the evidence, risks costing the country money and could make the UK less attractive to entrepreneurs. That's the verdict of a new briefing paper from the Adam Smith Institute that aims to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the political rhetoric surrounding non-doms. In [...]
Living standards are finally rising – but only in the North April 9, 2015 Is the North-South divide about to flip on its head? A new report suggests living standards are finally beginning to rise – but only up North. According to the research, by think tank the Resolution Foundation, although typical weekly incomes rose after the financial crisis, after 2009-10 they began to fall again, hitting a low [...]
Best month of car sales this century April 8, 2015 Nearly half a million new cars rolled on to Britain’s roads in March, the best month for new car registrations since 1999. Consumers and firms registered 492,774 new cars in March, up six per cent on the same month last year, according to figures released yesterday by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). [...]
