Number of first-time buyers drops to lowest level for a year as mortgage lenders freeze out those with small deposits The number of first-time buyers fell in September 2011 to the lowest level in almost a year as a result of mortgage providers approving fewer loans for borrowers with small deposits, according to the latest e.surv mortgage monitor. Mortgage approvals in the cheapest price bracket (up to £250,000, which is considered typical first-timer property) accounted for only 22% of the total market in September, the lowest since November 2010 and well down on the 30% seen in 2006 when the housing market was near its peak. Approvals for mortgages with a deposit of 25% or under fell to their lowest number since February, at 33.5% of all loans approved for purchase, compared with 43.2% in September 2007 The average loan-to-value in the cheapest price bracket fell to 66% – far below the 76% LTV seen in September 2006, as borrowers found it harder to secure mortgages with a smaller deposit. E.surv said the decline in lower-income buyers fuelled a 1.7% total fall in mortgage purchase approvals in September, to 51,524, down from 52,410 in August. But approvals on homes in all price brackets above £250,000 remained steady. Richard Sexton, business development director of e.surv , said: “With the economy in peril from every angle, lenders are playing it safe and training their sights on wealthier borrowers. But for those who can access mortgage finance, life is particularly sweet. “Lenders are falling over themselves trying to offer the lowest fixed-rate deals, and the good news is that they look odds-on to remain particularly cheap for the foreseeable future. But that won’t be of much comfort to first-time buyers who can’t build the big deposit required to access these rates.” Matt Griffiths of first-time buyer campaign website PricedOut.org.uk agreed that conditions were leading to a widening gap between homeowners and prospective buyers. He said: “For those blessed with home ownership, very low bank rates are giving large cash windfalls whilst saving capital values from sharp falls. But for those not on the ladder the financial storm is hitting their ability to get a mortgage whilst rental inflation hits their ability to save.” The research came as lender HSBC announced it intended to make £350m of lending available to borrowers with small deposits. Separate research from LSL Property Services showed a 0.3% fall in house prices in September. David Newnes, director of LSL, said the modest summer recovery in the housing market “came to an abrupt end in September”. He added: “There are still serious barriers to a sustained property market recovery. Outside London, prices are falling throughout England and Wales and this has contributed to a fall in the average house price.” First-time buyers Property Mortgages Mortgage lending figures Housing market Real estate Mark King guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A second man has been convicted in the murders of a mother and her two daughters during a home invasion in Connecticut. Joshua Komisarjevsky, the alleged mastermind, was found guilty of all 17 counts today and now faces a death penalty hearing, reports the Hartford Courant . His accomplice, Steven Hayes,…
Continue reading …Was that a little White House-Fox News friction at President Obama’s press conference today? When the network’s Ed Henry asked about US reaction to Iran’s alleged Saudi plot —and used a quote by Mitt Romney critical of Obama to do so—Obama responded, “Well, I did not know you were…
Continue reading …The 2009 3D blockbuster Avatar ranks No. 1 on the list of most pirated movies, reports MovieFone via TorrentFreak . Despite director James Cameron’s prediction that 3D would discourage illegal copies, pirates still downloaded Avatar 21 million times. (It’s still the highest-grossing movie of all time.) Runners-up for most pirated…
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Radiation level on Tokyo street was 17 times recommended limit but came from radium kept under house floorboards Concerns that contamination from the Fukushima Daiichi plant had spread to Tokyo subsided on Friday after high levels of radiation recorded along a street in the city were linked to old bottles of radium stored beneath the floorboards of a nearby house. Researchers had recorded radiation of 3.35 microsieverts per hour along a street in Setagaya ward, a higher level than in some parts of the 12-mile (20km) exclusion zone around the nuclear plant. An investigation traced the contamination to several bottles that had been stored in a cardboard box beneath an empty house. The bottles recorded radiation levels in excess of those measurable on a low-dose radiation counter, said Setegaya’s mayor, Nobuto Hosaka. Science ministry officials believed the bottles contained radium-226, a radioactive material used in fluorescent paint on watch faces and in medical devices, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. Radiation levels inside the house dropped significantly after the bottles were placed inside a lead container, reports said. The hourly reading in the Setagaya hotspot, located close to a nursery school, was equivalent to 17.6 millisieverts (mSv) a year, according to science ministry calculations, just below the 20mSv a year required to trigger an evacuation and more than 17 times the internationally recommended level for the general public. Officials said the area had been cordoned off, adding that the contamination levels did not pose a threat to health. The reading in Tokyo was taken a metre above the ground near a hedge, according to the public broadcaster NHK. Other spots along the same street showed lower readings. Although this recent incident is not connected to the Fukushima disaster, the discovery comes amid concern that fallout from the plant may have spread over a much wider area than previously thought. Kyodo News reported that a citizens’ group detected levels as high as 5.82 microsieverts an hour in a park in the town of Funabashi, Chiba prefecture, 130 miles from Fukushima. That is five times higher than the highest levels recorded in the city since the 11 March disaster. Earlier this week officials in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo, said they had found abnormally high levels of strontium-90 in sediment on the roof of a block of flats. The radioactive isotope, which has a half-life of 29 years, can accumulate in the bones and cause bone cancer and leukaemia. In September officials in Yokohama said they had detected 40,200 becquerels of radioactive caesium per kilogram of sediment collected from a roadside ditch. The task of identifying how far the contamination has spread, and in what quantities, is proving difficult. Wind direction and topology can cause radiation to spread unevenly, and particles are more likely to gather in ditches and other places that accumulate dust and rainwater. Setagaya ward officials said they would screen more than 250 other locations in the area over the next month. Radiation levels in the neighbourhood, which has a population of more than 840,000, have not dropped despite decontamination efforts. Children have been warned to avoid the recently discovered hotspot, now blocked off by several plastic cones, on their way to and from school. “I thought the reading must have been a mistake when I first saw it,” Hosaka told the broadcaster TBS on Thursday. “Once we have confirmed the readings as high we will push ahead with decontamination efforts.” Japan Japan disaster Nuclear power Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
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Nature Check report assesses government’s progress on pledges to protect the natural environment The government is failing to deliver on most of its commitments to help wildlife and the countryside, a coalition of leading conservation groups said on Friday. An assessment backed by 29 organisations has used a traffic light system to see whether 16 government pledges on the natural environment are being backed by policies which are well-designed and on track. The Nature Check report criticises the government over a number of controversial policies which conservationists say show ministers are failing to keep their promises on protecting nature. They include the reliance on a badger cull to tackle bovine TB , attempts by ministers to dispose of publicly owned forests to businesses and charities and the current row over changes to the planning system which opponents fear will lead to a return to damaging development in the countryside. Just two of the promises outlined in the government’s coalition agreement have been given a green approval rating in the report published by the Wildlife and Countryside Link umbrella group today. The government has earned the backing of the conservation groups for its action on pledges to oppose the resumption of commercial whaling and to press for a ban on ivory sales . A further seven commitments have been given an amber rating because the groups say ministers are failing to support positive ambition and rhetoric with effective policies. Seven more pledges are given a red light, including promising to reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods more of a say in their local area and to create a presumption in favour of sustainable development in planning. Other areas where the conservation groups say the government is failing to deliver well-designed policies on time include preventing unnecessary building in flood plains and ensuring measures to look after the seas and open access to the coast are implemented effectively. Martin Harper, conservation director of the RSPB, one of the groups in the coalition, said: “These are 16 policy areas where the government has promised tough action, but that is not what we are seeing. “In these financially straitened times politicians may be tempted to ignore the natural environment in favour of economic growth – but this kind of short-termist attitude won’t wash with a British public which expects the government to protect the countryside and wildlife we all hold dear.” He said a healthy natural environment was not “an aspirational luxury for times of plenty”, but was vital for the future wellbeing of the economy and society. Neil Sinden, policy and campaigns director for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said the government would not be the greenest ever, as it claimed , if it continued with a “business as usual” approach to economic growth. Wildlife Conservation Green politics guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A crazy story about a waitress getting gipped and insulted by a customer just may have a happy ending: The tale began last weekend when Seattle waitress Victoria Liss collected a bill from a customer who wrote in “0″ on the tip line and added, “P.S. You could stand…
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Four reported survivors including two pilots after Airlines PNG Dash-8 plane comes down in forest near Madang A plane has crashed in stormy weather in Papua New Guinea’s remote forests, killing 28 people and leaving four survivors, officials have said. Two pilots – one Australian and one New Zealander – were among those who survived Thursday’s crash on the northern coast, Australia’s foreign affairs department said. The Airlines PNG Dash 8 plane crashed while flying from Lae to the resort hub of Madang, Papua New Guinea’s Accident Investigation Commission spokesman Sid O’Toole said. Most of the passengers had been parents travelling to attend their children’s university graduation ceremony in Madang this weekend, according to the Australian Associated Press news agency. The duty manager at the Madang Resort, Donald Lambert, said six of the plane’s occupants – one passenger and five crew members – had reservations to stay at his hotel. “I went to meet them at the airport,” he said. The crash site was 12 miles (20km) south of Madang. Police and ambulances had reached the crash site and investigators were on their way. Australian consular officials were planning to travel to Madang on Friday. “Initial indications are that there are no Australians amongst those killed,” Australia’s foreign affairs department said in a statement. Trevor Hattersley, the Australian high commission’s warden in Madang, said the plane went down during a violent storm in remote jungle not far from the coast. “The weather was horrendous,” Hattersley told the Associated Press. “There was a huge storm that came through at the same time – big rain, big wind.” The storm had flooded the only road from the crash site to Madang, so rescuers had to get the four survivors to the nearest beach and transport them to Madang by boat. Papua New Guinea journalist Scott Waide told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he had visited the hospital where the survivors were being treated. One of the survivors told a nurse he fled the burning wreckage through a crack in the fuselage. “He told the nurses he was sitting on the seventh seat and the plane broke in half,” Waide told the ABC. “While struggling to get out his arms got burned and his back got burned.” Airlines PNG said a full investigation was under way and it had temporarily grounded its fleet of 12 Dash 8 planes. Plane crashes Papua New Guinea Australia New Zealand guardian.co.uk
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The Italian PM’s government must resign if it fails to win more votes than the opposition on Friday Silvio Berlusconi is to stake the fate of his government and his own political future on a confidence vote in parliament on Friday. Standing before a half-empty chamber boycotted by the opposition, he appealed on Thursday for support from the chamber of deputies, the lower house of the Italian parliament, saying: “There are no alternatives.” Berlusconi decided to seek a vote of confidence after losing a crucial division on the public accounts earlier this week. The result of the confidence vote is due at around 11.30am GMT on Friday. To survive, the government needs only to secure more votes than the opposition. If it loses, it is constitutionally bound to resign. All but six deputies were missing from the opposition benches when the prime minister got up to speak, the main opposition parties having decided to stay away from the debate in protest at Berlusconi’s refusal to step down. Under mounting pressure from the courts, where he is a defendant in three trials, the prime minister leads an increasingly fractious party. However, one of the biggest question marks hanging over Friday’s vote was removed when his chief ally, Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League, confirmed his support for Berlusconi’s rightwing coalition. “The government will still be here tomorrow evening,” he told reporters after listening to the prime minister’s speech. But there is still a risk that individual maverick deputies will stay away in numbers sufficient to bring down the government. This week brought a high-profile defection in the person of Santo Versace, the brother of the designers Donatella and the late Gianni Versace. Santo Versace was elected for Berlusconi’s party, the Freedom People (PdL), when the right stormed back into power three years ago. But, he said: “The economic situation is critical. I’ll be voting against [the government] because it is better to change.” The latest crisis to engulf Berlusconi’s government has come in the midst of the eurozone emergency at a time when Italy is battling to convince investors of its creditworthiness, despite massive public debts of around 120% of GDP. So far this year the government has passed four increasingly stringent austerity packages aimed at reducing the budget deficit. But it has been fiercely criticised, not only by trade unions but also employers’ groups, for neglecting measures to stimulate economic growth. Unusually for a conservative government, Berlusconi’s is under open attack from the leading bosses’ federation, Confindustria. Alarm over the state of the economy also helps to explain the emergence in recent weeks of critical factions in the PdL, notably one centred on a former minister, Claudio Scajola, who resigned last year in an alleged corruption scandal. Bossi too has been having difficulty controlling the League where dissatisfaction is growing over his autocratic style of leadership. He was barracked at a congress last weekend in Varese, north of Milan, after he imposed a new, unelected local party secretary. Scajola said he and his followers would support the government on Friday and the PdL’s parliamentary business managers appeared confident they could muster enough votes in the 630-member chamber. There has been widespread media speculation that rebels in the Northern League and Berlusconi’s own party would prefer to wait until January before delivering a fatal blow to the government. That could clear the way for an election in the spring – before taxpayers start to feel the full effects of the tax rises and spending cuts imposed in recent months. But with Berlusconi’s approval rating below 25% in the polls, the right has a vast amount of ground to make up. The president, Giorgio Napolitano, does not have to dissolve parliament until 2013, however, if there is enough support for a cross-party “technical” government to steer Italy out of the eurozone crisis and perhaps recast the country’s much-criticised electoral system. A frequently mooted candidate for prime minister is the economist and former EU commissioner Mario Monti. Berlusconi discounted the idea in his speech to the chamber: “The problems of the country cannot be resolved by a technical government not democratically legitimated to make choices that in the present circumstance would also be unpopular ones,” he said. Silvio Berlusconi Italy Europe John Hooper guardian.co.uk
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