One in five individual and multi-property landlords felt unprepared when they first started letting properties, research by Direct Line – Business found.

There were 1,464 repossessions in the North West in the past 12 months, the most of any region, research from home buying platform Yes Homebuyers has found.

The stamp duty holiday, which came into immediate effect in July as part of the Chancellor’s summer economic update, has helped to sustain the property market’s boom after the first lockdown – and is expected to keep momentum up over the next few months until it comes to a close on March 31, 2021.

The housing market in England and Wales is displaying signs of stabilising, according to analysis of web traffic from property advice website Property Price Advice.

Valuation requests on the website have broadly returned to their four-year average, representing a significant fall from the immediate post-lockdown spike.

Property rebound predicted to continue as buyers rush to complete before stamp duty holiday ends. More than 100,000 additional house sales are expected during the first three months of 2021, as the rebound in the property market continues and buyers rush to complete their purchases before the end of the stamp duty holiday. The number of new sales being agreed remains 38% higher than it was a year ago, according to property website Zoopla. It predicts the housing market will be the busiest before Christmas then it has been for over a decade.

One in 10 landlords are now planning to buy properties and expand their portfolio, compared to just 3 per cent at the end of last year, research has found.
At the end of 2019, 82 per cent of landlords claimed that they had no plans to acquire another property in 2020, and only 3 per cent were intending to add more than a single property to their portfolio.

The London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, and Camden are some of the most popular with foreign owners. Pure Property Finance analysed data from the Land Registry on overseas companies that own property in England and Wales.

Overseas buyers were the driving force behind the mortgage market in October, Legal & General Mortgage Club research shows.

L&G’s SmartrCriteria tool, which helps advisers determine which lenders would consider a particular mortgage applicant, shows that mortgages for applicants with visas was the highest searched term among advisers in October.