Stamp duty receipts tumble by £1 billion
Latest statistics from HMRC confirm a massive fall from £12.9bn in 2017/18 to £11.9bn in 2018/19, the biggest decline seen since the financial crisis
£1m+ deals rocket despite a ‘lacklustre’ wider market
Twenty Ci reports a 66% year-on-year jump in £5m+ property transactions, while the overall number of new instructions has dwindled and property prices have fallen in most regions
At a glance: Property taxes around the world
CBRE compares how the tax treatment of property differs by country, but which is the most favourable for buyers?
Construction firms facing ‘catastrophic’ changes to insurance contracts
‘Unprecedented’ tightening of insurance market conditions could end up forcing some firms out of business, warns Mactavish
Labour moots centralised targets and controls for house price growth
Bank of England could set targets for property price inflation, says Shadow Housing Minister John Healey, managing the market through tougher lending restrictions.
IMF creates an ‘early warning system’ to predict the next house price crash
The International Monetary Fund’s House Prices at Risk tool is designed to flag property markets at risk of significant price drops at least a year before the market turns
Rent or Buy: Does the British obsession with home ownership pay off?
Professors Colin Jones and Abdulkader Mostafa of Heriot-Watt University and Edinburgh Business School have explored the bottom-line implications of buying a home rather than renting. “The deep-seated home-owner aspirations of Britons are justified and have been sustained by significant financial gains,” they conclude; “it really does pay to buy”
ATED receipts tumble as property owners de-envelope & relief claims escalate
Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea provided nearly three-quarters (73%) of all receipts from the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings in 2017-18
Prime property demand builds, but fails to translate into activity in a ‘Brexit-paced’ market
Demand is building in prime regional and prime London markets, says Savills, but prices continue to fall as uncertainty ‘dictates the pace’
London’s housing pipeline constricts as office-to-resi conversions dry up
The number of office-to-residential conversions in London has fallen by more than 50%, says Knight Frank, driving a  20% reduction in net additional dwellings.
China’s ‘Silk Road urbanism’ is changing cities from London to Kampala – can locals keep control?
Jonathan Silver of the University of Sheffield and Alan Wiig of the University of Massachusetts Boston explore how China’s vast “Belt & Road” investment initiative is transforming neighbourhoods around the world, from London’s Royal Albert Dock to Uganda’s capital Kampala.
Long in the tooth? Analysing the 2014-2019 bear market from a historical perspective
At the end of last year, fund manager-turned-buying agent Fraser Slater set out ten reasons why he expects Q1 2019 to mark the low point of the Prime Central London property market; here, he looks back at how the current downturn compares to others over the last 30 years, and assesses if there are grounds to believe that prices have indeed bottomed out…