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British Parents Turn to Home Equity to Help Young Buy Property*Lending on equity-release products doubles to £6.2 billion*Figures highlight how buying a home is out of reach to manyBritish parents are fueling a £6.2 billion ($7.4 billion) boom in equity release loans to help younger people get on the property ladder. Households have doubled the amount they’ve borrowed through loans tied to the value of their homes in the past five years, according to the Equity Release Council. Estate agent Knight Frank said rising interest rates, being wealthy but cash poor, and the need to help relatives is driving more people to access cash through products known as lifetime mortgages. The finding reveals the scale of what families can do for children after a decade of soaring house prices left millions with big buffers of wealth. Even though prices have been falling for the past few months, housing affordability is at its worst in almost 150 years, putting ownership out of reach for many first-time buyers, according to Schroders.“Older homeowners who have enjoyed many years of growth in the UK housing market now hold the vast majority of property wealth,” said David Forsdyke, head of later life finance at Knight Frank. “There is a growing need for older family members to pass this wealth down to the younger generations, who are struggling to afford property on their own.”About 93,400 homeowners borrowed a record £6.2 billion last year through equity-release loans, data from the Equity Release Council indicates. It’s equivalent about £66,400 per household. The total value was up 29% from the previous year and double the levels seen in 2017.Equity release products allow older homeowners to release cash tied up in their properties. The most popular product is a lifetime mortgage, where people take out a loan secured against the property while still owning it.Lifetime mortgages are offered to people over 55, allowing them to borrow a lump sum and then draw down cash when needed. This is a pre-agreed, tax-free amount and the interest can be rolled up into the loan rather than paid monthly. When the borrower dies or moves into long-term care, proceeds from the sale of the home pays off the loan.Forsdyke said many “asset rich but cash poor” homeowners are using equity-release as a source of income. The loans also can work for wealthy households using interest-only mortgages to reduce the amount of money tied up in the property as they are facing much higher interest costs when they renew their deals.“Lots of borrowers are currently receiving an interest rate shock as their current mortgage term ends and the terms of renewal or remortgage are significantly higher,” he said. “Equity release provides a way to overcome the shock, keep payments at a manageable level, and even bring some flexibility over payments that borrowers did not have before.”“In the midst of a fall in product choice and concerns surrounding interest rates, consumers may feel pressured to take out a lifetime mortgage,” said Rachel Springall, a finance expert at Moneyfacts Group Plc. “If it is the most appropriate choice, then they must be conscious of how equity release works and its resulting impact.”Even so, those loans can be costly — more expensive than a regular mortgage. The average rate for a lifetime equity release mortgage was 6.61% in February, according to Moneyfacts. The rate had jumped to 8.13% in November, after Liz Truss roiled markets with her budget plans during her short term as prime minister. The effective rate on new mortgages rose 21 basis points to 3.88% in January, a jump from 1.58% a year earlier, the Bank of England said this month.Even with the borrowing boom, many lenders have pulled equity-release products off the market since the Truss budget, which put a chill on the appetite banks have for risk. The number of lifetime equity release products has fallen by 70% since September last year, plummeting to 597 deals to just 178 last month.Still, Forsdyke said that using equity release products is likely to remain popular because of a number of benefits it can unlock for consumers. One is that it’s a way to gift money to children that also can reduce tax bills.“By creating debt against your property and allowing that debt to increase, you can reduce the potential taxable value of the property itself so there are inheritance tax planning applications there as well,” Forsdyke said.
Where Russian homebuyers went nextSince the invasion of Ukraine, oligarchs have had to look beyond London and Monaco — while many ordinary citizens just want out(...) According to data from Russian property portal Prian.ru reported in the Russian press, requests from Russians to buy real estate abroad in 2022 doubled compared with 2021, with three-quarters of these associated with permanent moves, up from 55 per cent the year before.Cyprus has been a popular choice, favoured for its golden visa scheme, which the EU requested be scrapped last March amid concerns sanctioned Russians were relocating there to live and work. Since the start of the war, Pavlos Loizou, of Ask WIRE, which compiles a local property index, estimates that about 6,000 Russians and Belarusians have arrived in Cyprus, alongside a larger number of Ukrainian refugees — as of February, 16,000 remain, according to local media reports.The latest influx has driven up rents and reduced the supply of homes in Limassol, the coastal city that has attracted Russian buyers thanks to its glamorous marina and new luxury developments. “The vast majority [of Russians] arriving are young professionals [aged] between 30 and 40 who rent,” says Loizou, who estimates that only 300 have bought. In the last three months of 2022, apartment rents in the city were 23 per cent higher than in the same period in 2021, according to Ask WIRE.In Turkey, where homes bought for more than the equivalent of $400,000 grant the buyer and their immediate family the right to Turkish nationality, Russian nationals bought one in four homes sold to foreigners last year, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute — a total of 16,312 homes, up from 8,035 a year earlier.In October, finance graduate Viktor moved from Moscow to join his parents at their retirement home in the Turkish resort city of Antalya, which they bought two years ago. “I don’t want to fight in a conflict that feels like something out of the Middle Ages or live in a city where young people are grabbed on the underground or stopped in their car and forced to enlist,” says Viktor, which is not his real name.He had intended to visit them for a holiday, but he’d been stopped at the Russian border and told to report to a conscription site — he’d heard that people were being bullied into signing up at such places. Fearing the borders might close, the next day he locked up the flat he owns in Moscow and passed into Belarus before boarding a flight to Turkey. A few days later, when chatting on the Telegram messaging app favoured in Russia, he learnt others had subsequently been stopped taking this route.The area has a thriving expat scene, Viktor says, particularly around Mahmutlar, known locally as “little Russia”, a neighbourhood outside Alanya, with droves of thirtysomethings like him who have left Russia, many of whom have become friends. But he is applying for jobs in finance in Europe and the US and he is missing city life.“I’m exploring the healthy way of life out here, hiking, swimming, jogging — and there are a lot of Russian men my age. We all face the same problems: we are tired of the war but can’t return to our lives back home.”Anya, 34, moved to Zurich in August, transferring her job to the European headquarters of the US multinational she works for, one of a steady trickle of such transfers since the start of the war, she says.Her mother shares many of her fears about Russia, but has remained in St Petersburg, in part to be close to Anya’s grandmother, who is in her eighties. But Anya has no plans to return to Moscow, choosing a local pay and accommodation package in Zurich and placing her six-year-old twin girls in a local school.“I wasn’t moving as an expat, because I don’t see myself going back,” she tells me. “The girls miss their father [they are divorced, he is in Russia] and grandparents, but they know and understand the reasons for our move.”Back in London, some worry that measures to crack down on the flow of Russian oligarch money into the property market have stalled.Bion Behdin, co-founder of First AML, which does customer due diligence checks for estate agencies, says sanctioned Russian individuals are still trying to buy and sell homes in the UK. “Since the middle of last year, they have targeted smaller agencies, often many at the same time, which have less sophisticated controls and customer onboarding processes,” he says.“Self-regulation by professional bodies is not a substitute for clear rules and laws,” says Page. “The UK is still too slow and inconsistent in weaning itself off its addiction to Russian dirty money.”
The U.S. housing market is crumbling under the weight of higher mortgage rates and rock-bottom affordability’: Prices fell the most in these U.S. states and Employee Appreciation Day gestures are nice, but here’s what employees really want[color=purple]Single-family home prices slid 1% in January, as compared to December 2022, according to data from Moody’s Analytics[/color]Americans are finding it hard to afford homes at mortgage levels now beyond 7%, according to some measures. Home prices have begun to reflect that.As mortgage rates rose in the last quarter of 2022, Americans found the cost of homeownership increasingly challenging, adding hundreds of dollars in interest to their potential monthly mortgage payment. Yet home prices held steady, given how few homes were on the market.But months of high mortgage rates and a drop in home sales are finally impacting home prices. Single-family home prices slid 1% in January, as compared to December 2022, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.“The U.S. housing market is crumbling under the weight of higher mortgage rates and rock-bottom affordability,” Matthew Walsh, Moody’s Analytics housing economist, said.Alaska had the biggest decline in month-over-month prices. Home prices fell by 4.9% in January. New Mexico and Wyoming followed, with a 3.8% decline. Mississippi took the next spot with home prices dropping 3.7% in January as compared to the month before.However, it wasn’t all bad news. House prices also rose month-over-month in Indiana, by 2.2%, West Virginia, by 1.1% and Vermont by 1%. But looking at prices year-over-year, the West Coast is leading the drop, Moody’s Analytics said, with California, Nevada and Washington reporting values below what they saw in 2022.The median price of an existing home was $359,000 in January, according to the National Association of Realtors. The median price of a new home sold in January was $427,500, according to Census data.To be clear, home prices aren’t crashing, but rather falling gradually as buyer demand dries up. Part of the reason why sales aren’t moving more is because sellers are reluctant to list. Having secured an ultra-low mortgage rate over the last two years, there’s little interest in giving up that deal.“There were fewer new listings in January than at any point on record, with the exception of the start of the pandemic,” Taylor Marr, deputy chief economist at Redfin, said in a recent report. “That hampered demand because it meant that many of the buyers who were still in the market had a tough time finding a home that met their needs. The shortage of homes for sale also buoyed home prices,” he added.Home purchase applications have dropped to the lowest level in 28 years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said this week.“Following two years of double-digit price growth, the housing market is extremely overvalued, and affordability is near a three-decade low,” Walsh wrote in a note.“The housing market will descend further into correction through 2023. Our baseline forecast expects that house prices will decline by 5% to 10% over the next two years,” he added.He expected home prices to go back to 2021 levels by 2025.