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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Home move volumes plummet 9% in first half of 2015

Some 155,000 existing home owners moved to another property in the first six months of 2015, which is about nine per cent down on the same period of 2014. 

The new figure is also less than half the 327,600 home movers in the first six months of 2007 - the last period unaffected by the slowdown.

Lloyds Bank, which has collected the figures, suggests this slump is at least partly because of a shortage of suitable properties on the market for people to move into, as well as pushing up prices for those who do move. 

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The average price paid for a home in the first six months of the year by someone who was already on the property ladder and moving to their next property was £261,524, according to the bank. 

This was 25 per cent, or £52,870, more than the typical home mover paid in 2010, when the home they were moving into would have cost £208,654.

The situation is starker in London where home movers face paying 45 per cent or £153,535 more for a property than they would have done just five years ago, with homes there now costing £492,882 on average.

In Wales, home movers are paying 15 per cent more for a property than five years ago; in Scotland the increase is 17 per cent; in Northern Ireland movers pay eight per cent less. 

The average deposit put down by a home mover in 2015 was £87,954 - that’s eight per cent or £6,405 more than in 2014. 

The typical deposit size is 34 per cent of the average £261,524 price tag for a home.

  • Simon Shinerock

    People aren't moving for three reasons, they don't have to because they can afford to stay, they can't afford to because the costs of moving are so high and they can't get a mortgage because the MMR has made it so hard.

    If we build more property to meet the needs of a growing population, at today's prices the property would be unaffordable, no builder wants to make a loss. So the only only real solution is a mass build to let program, a privatised version of council housing which consigns future generations to living in very basic accommodation.

    The only problem is that rather than allowing private Landlords to participate in this process, the current Government wants to hobble them with restrictions and disincentives while encouraging institutional investment in the sector, all in all dystopian nightmare

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