The number of first-time home buyers in the UK hit its highest level since the start of the financial crisis in the first half of the year, helped by the recovering economy and government policies such as Help to Buy, a survey showed on Saturday.
First-time buyers accounted for 46 percent of all purchases between January and last month, the highest proportion since 2000, with the number surging by 25 percent to an estimated 144,500, according to mortgage lender Halifax PLC.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne launched the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme last year, saying he wanted to help would-be home-buyers who were unable to pay large deposits, in particular first-time buyers.
Critics of the plan say it risks pushing up prices and will do little to spur new home-building. The IMF said last month that Help to Buy might need to be scrapped if the growth of the scheme leads to the risk of a housing bubble in the UK.
Official data released in May showed Help to Buy accounted for only a fraction of mortgages in the early months of the year, but the existence of the program is believed to have boosted high-deposit lending more generally.
A separate scheme, called Funding for Lending, has helped bring down the cost of borrowing although it was revised at the start of the year and no longer includes mortgages.
Halifax said mortgage affordability had improved sharply since the 2008 and 2009 recession. In the first half of the year, first-time buyers spent 31 percent of disposable income on mortgage payments, down from 47 percent in the same period in 2007.
The national average of first-time buyers deposit was £31,129 (US$53,300) in the second quarter, an increase of 9 percent from the same period last year, Halifax said. First-time buyers in London put down the largest average deposit, more than 4.5 times higher than those in northwest England.
As deposits and property prices have risen, so too has the age of those entering the housing market. The average age of a first-time buyer is 30 nationally, up from 28 in 2009, and is 32 in London.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last