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Brokers believe the early signs this year show that certainty is returning to the housing market.

The Halifax House Price Index showed December saw the biggest monthly rise in house prices in 2019 at 1.7%.

Furthermore, reallymoving has forecast a 1.4% annual house price growth for January, followed by 3.7% in February and 3.1% in March.

David Hollingworth, associate director of communications at L&C Mortgages, said: “The early signs are encouraging and a lot of it is to do with sentiment and there are signs that sentiment has much improved.

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Buying a home has become more affordable in nearly two-thirds of local authority areas in the UK in 2019, but is still more expensive than before the financial crisis in almost half of areas, according to research from Yorkshire Building Society.

The research, which measures the relationship between the cost of homes and earnings at a local authority level, found that wages have increased faster than house prices in 233 areas during 2019, improving affordability for homebuyers.

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House prices increase by 0.9% in the 12 months to October, the lowest annual growth seen in 2019, according to the latest Halifax house price index.

The data shows that house prices increased by 0.2% over the quarter and fell by 0.1% on a monthly basis.

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House prices are holding steady with a 0.3% monthly rise and 0.1% quarterly rise in August, according to the latest Halifax house price index.

House prices in August were 1.8% higher than in the same month a year earlier.

Russell Galley, managing director at Halifax, said: “There was no real shift in house prices in August as the average property value grew by just 0.3% month on month. This further extends the predominantly flat trend we’ve seen over the last six months, with the average house price having barely changed since March.

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Parents spend so much money to get their children onto the housing ladder that they are now among the biggest lenders in the UK, a survey suggests.

The average parental contribution for homebuyers this year is £24,100, up by more than £6,000 compared to last year, according to Legal & General (L&G).

Collectively parents have given £6.3bn, high enough to rank the bank of mum and dad 10th if it was a mortgage lender.

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Scotland has replaced London as the fastest place for a seller to find a buyer for their home, figures suggest.

In 2014, it took 36 days in London on average to secure a buyer, but this rose to 60 days by last year, according to property portal Rightmove.

In contrast, the average time to secure a buyer fell from 66 days to 41 days over the same period in Scotland.

The figures, compiled for the BBC, show that the market for flats has slowed amid debate over leasehold rules.

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Your Conveyancer first partnered with Nasstar in 2011 on a five-year contract. At the time, we already had a relatively large in-house IT team who were instrumental in initiatives such as the move towards a paperless organisation, early deployment of online portals and client reporting and sophisticated workflows. We were already demonstrating our own technical skills, know-how and ambition; therefore, the next sensible step was to select an IT partner that could help underpin our future innovation and success. 

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Average house prices in the UK increased by 1.4% in the year to April, down from 1.6% in March, according to the latest UK House Price Index from the Land Registry and the ONS.

The figure is supported by strong growth in Wales of 6.7%, up from 3.9% in March 2019. This strengthening in the annual growth rate for Wales is due to both strong growth between March and April (2.4%) and falling prices (0.3%) between March and April 2018. Falling prices last year can be linked to Land Transaction Tax replacing UK Stamp Duty Land Tax in Wales from April 2018.

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The number of mortgages approved by the high street banks increased by 5.4% to 44,000 in April, according to the latest UK Finance statistics.

Approvals for home purchase were 8.6% higher than in April 2018 while remortgage approvals rose by 2.2%.

Gross mortgage lending across the residential market was £20.3 billion, 1.4% lower than the same month in 2018.

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Mortgage approvals saw a monthly rise of 5.5%, as first-time buyer figures saw continued growth, according to the latest e.surv data.

Approvals were 2.7% higher than April 2018 as buyers benefit from increasingly competitive rates, despite the market for those moving home remaining subdued.

The proportion of loans given to customers with a small deposit was 28.5% in April, significantly higher than the 26% recorded in March.

Yorkshire was the region with the largest number of small deposit borrowers for the fifth consecutive month.

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