Closing post
Time for a recap.
Asking prices for homes in Britain have fallen at their fastest pace in five years for the time of year, property website Rightmove reports.
Rightmove said the housing market was faring better than forecast this year, despite average asking prices for homes fell by 1.7% last month.
That pulled the average new asking price down by around £6,000, to £362,143, as high borrowing costs cooled the market.
Asking prices fell year-on-year in the Midlands and all Southern regions, but rose in Wales, Scotland and the North of England.
Rightmove predicted that new seller asking prices will keep dropping in the last couple of months of the year, while some experts suggested the market would bottom out in 2024.
Rising interest rates also hit the rental sector, where landlords are on target to have bought the fewest number of homes since 2010.
Higher interest rates have also knocked £200m off the property portfolio of British Land, although profits have been lifted by soaring rental rates and increasing demand for office and retail space.
In other news….
The Opec group has insisted that the fundamendals of the oil market remain strong, as it maintained its forecast for demand growth in 2024, and pushed up its 2023 forecast slightly.
In its latest monthly report, Opec said:
“Recent data confirms robust major global growth trends and healthy oil market fundamentals.”
Ikea’s parent company has bought its second UK shopping mall, in Brighton, for an estimated £145m as part of a push to bring its furniture stores into city centres.
Blackpool is more popular than Benidorm for British holidaymakers booking trips away next year as soaring air fares lead people to opt for stayactions, according to accommodation search website Trivago.
Avon, the beauty company famous for building a global business by making house-to-house visits, is to open its first physical UK stores in its 137-year history.
The UK government is looking to roll back powers to intervene in company takeovers less than two years after they were introduced, in an attempt to be “more business friendly”.
Royal Mail has been fined £5.6m by the regulator for missing its first- and second-class delivery targets by a “significant and unexplained margin”, causing “considerable harm” to its customers.
And…the boss of Co-op is calling on the government to take more action to tackle retail crime amid a warning it has reached record levels as criminal gangs are operating “exempt from consequences”.
Updated
City economists are increasingly confident that the Bank of England will start to cut interest rates from their current 15-year highs next year.
The money markets are currently predicting that rates will have been cut to 5%, from 5.25% today, by next June.
Btut some forecasters believe the cut will come in May 2024 (a month when the Bank is due to release one of its quarterly inflation reports).
The Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley anticipates that the #BoE will lower interest rates by May, offering relief to mortgage borrowers. According to a client note, the firm expects that a reduction in the prices of food and essential goods will lead to a decrease in rates to 4.25%… pic.twitter.com/fFP4CO5YcW
— Share_Talk ™ (@Share_Talk) November 13, 2023
The next inflation report, due on Wednesday, could influence the decision too. Economists predict the Consumer Prices Index will drop to around 5% for October, down from 6.7% in August and September, as price pressures ease.
