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The Bank of England warns that in the coming three months obtaining a mortgage will be harder due to fears of 'deterioration in the economic outlook.' This warning comes in the midst of consecutive rises in unemployment since the beginning of the year.
While part of the difficulty comes from concerns that households will not be able to keep up with their monthly repayments, lenders also expect to find it harder to secure the cash on the wholesale markets to fund the loans.

The building company Rok has launched a petition calling on the UK Government to reduce VAT on repair and maintenance work to 5%.

New research from the National Housing Federation (NHF) has predicted that house prices will not return to their pre-slump levels until around 2014.

Despite many lenders reporting a stabilisation in prices, the NHF predicts that overall house prices will fall by 12.2% this year with next year seeing a further 4.6% drop.

Nearly one in four Britons has cancelled their home insurance in a bid to save money due to the economic downturn, research has showed.

Around 22% of people said they had either cancelled or not renewed their home contents cover during the past 12 months, while 17% no longer have buildings insurance, according to the Association of British Insurers.

Two-thirds of Britons have carried out DIY during the past year in a bid to save money, a survey has shown.

Painting was the most common task people undertook themselves rather than paying a professional to do it, with 51% redecorating their home, according to Sainsbury's Home Insurance.

Around 38% of people tackled minor electrical jobs, 21% turned their hand to plumbing and 15% tried tiling.

Home builder Persimmon has reported losses of £625 million in 2008 as the nosedive in property prices took its toll on the bricks and mortar juggernaut.

After posting profits of over £400 million in 2007, Persimmon announced to the stock exchange that completed homes had fallen 36 per cent. asking prices were down 8.7 per cent and forward sales dropped by almost a quarter.

Persimmon shares closed up 8.1 percent at 375.5 pence ($5.28) on the London Stock Exchange.

Visit www.persimmonhomes.com for more information.

Sales by builders’ merchants were down 20% in the last quarter of 2008 compared with the same three-month period in 2007 according to figures published by the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF).

The collapse in demand is recent - sales in final quarter were 18% lower than in the preceding three months (2008 Q3). By comparison, the fall in sales between quarters two and three of 2008 was just 4%.

Betram Edwards Builders Merchant has gone into administration after just under 90 years of business. The depot was closed on December 18 2008, with 21 members of staff losing their jobs. The firm, which officially goes into administration on 15 January 2008, cited the current economic climate as the main reason for the recent downturn in sales.

Barclays Bank today predicted that house prices would fall a further 15%, which translates to a 30% peak to trough correction. John Varley, group chief executive of the high street bank, cited irresponsible lending as a contributing factor for the current economic crisis.

Varley's bleak outlook extended to the job market:

From 11th August 2008 on ProblemSolved, front page news in Metro today.

A report on the BBC website today, suggested that mortgages are getting cheaper as providers attempt to inject some life back in to the listless housing market. The report stated that "the average rate charged by lenders on a new two-year deal, for someone with a 25% deposit, was 6.36%.

Figures released today show that the average family will have to find an additional £640 a year to cope with the effects of the credit crunch. Rising utilities, mortgage hikes and growing inflation have added £53 to the average household's monthly expenses, with increased fuel, gas and electricity prices accounting for a significant proportion of the rise.

New mortgages are also proving significantly more costly than  in 2007 - a £155,000 mortgage with a 5% deposit (the average new home loan in the UK) costs over £500 per annum more than it did 12 months ago.

You'll read the expression "second biggest loss in UK banking history" more times than would be medically advisable after RBS followed the other high street banks into the brown stuff after making a £691 million loss (£4.3 million of which went on the Chief Exec's salary by the way).

But bloggers and journos are selling us a bit short - why couldn't they tell us the biggest?

With the storm of recession looming on the horizon, one building company from Cornwall is bucking the trend and looking to expand its services.

Cloud Nine, a company that specialises in building eco-friendly homes, is snowed under with work at the moment. It’s all down to the low heating bills that the houses account for. One of its two-bedroom houses has an annual fuel bill of just £26 a year.

The economic downturn has had new house builders and developers quaking in their boots.

“Credit crunch” has surely already topped the poll for most overused phrase of the year, beating off its nearest competitors “impending doom” and “we are all screwed”.

This has now been recognised by the good people at the Concise Oxford English Dictionary who have added a new definition of “crunch” as “a severe shortage of money or credit”.

Other new entries from the property sector include “non-doms” and “sub-prime” as well as the facebook definition of “poke”.

According to Europe’s largest plumber training centre, the number of people applying to become a plumber has increased by over 30% in the last two months.

Building Trade Skills Centres say that they are currently handling more than 1,000 calls a week from people looking to enrol in their training centres in Manchester and Surrey.

It appears that traditional trades are bucking the trend of the economic slowdown, with 82% of plumbers saying that they are actually better off than a year ago.

With the credit crunch starting to pinch, it appears that would-be first time buyers are choosing to hold back from starting on the property ladder. Many people are therefore having to rent. Last night Alison Cork was invited by ITV to talk about the UK's rental market. If you missed it, there's no need to panic! Have a look at the piece here.

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Some interesting research has been released today, suggesting that 2 million homeowners are set to take advantage of falling house prices.

According to the Abbey Mortgages’ report, 1.2 million homeowners are looking to upsize at a bargain price while over 800,000 plan to sell and move into re

So the news out today is that 23,000 people are staring down the barrel of negative equity, but what does it mean?

The cost of doing DIY has soared by 20% because of a shortage of tradesmen and the rising costs of transport.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) has released the figures to coincide with the launch of its Property Makeover Price Guide, which gives homeowners an insight into how much a DIY project will cost them.

The 20 per cent rise has occurred over two years with the escalating price

After celebrating its 21st birthday last month, sales in Ikea’s new flat pack homes have fallen because of fears among mortgage lenders.

The development of homes, known as Bokloks, was opened in Gateshead last week and was backed by massive publicity campaigns.

For Alison Cork’s take on recent money matters have a look at her latest article on Orange’s property pages. This month Alison discusses who is to blame for the excessive borrowing of the last few years. Is it the banks, the Government or us?

Figures released last week by the Halifax showed that average UK house price dropped by 2.5% in March - the biggest monthly dip since September 1992.

So with prices on the slide, homeowners now have to work harder than ever before to consolidate or improve the value of their property.

There has been a lot of talk of the ‘credit crunch’and the knock-on effects for business and consumers. Share prices have dipped, and banks have tightened their lending criteria. What might this mean for tradesmen over the coming weeks and months?  ProblemSolved has been examining the potential impact on your business.