Deposit is key to locking both parties

John Brown, director of DTZ Residential has called for a purchaser deposit scheme to be introduced so as to locks both buyer and seller into a contract, in turn preventing mass gazundering and gazumping.

He is proposing the highest bidder pays 2% of the purchase price as a deposit and a further 3% on concluding missives.

Mr Brown said the system would also stop gazumping, where a vendor pulls out of an deal because they have received a higher offer from a third party, as the seller would be bound into an early contract by accepting the deposit.

BoE holds interest rates

For the tenth month in succession, the Bank of England MPC have held UK interest rates at 4.75%.

Economists are, in the main, expecting a cut in rate soon. After the MPC meeting last month it transpired that one member of the committee had voted for a rise.

The number Buy-to-Let purchases set to fall

New research conducted by Nationwide's specialist subsidiary, UCB Home Loans, indicates that 55% of mortgage brokers expect the number of buy-to-let purchases to fall this year compared with 2004. If correct, it will be the first time in the sector's history (eight years) in which the number of buy-to-let mortgages has fallen.

UCB Home Loans Managing Director, Keith Astill said: "Predictions for the year as a whole are that the massive influx of new investors into this sector has now passed its peak."

Does Brown need to rethink SIPPs?

There is a lack of understanding amongst many, including the Treasury, regarding the impact that that changes to the rules governing SIPPs will have.

The article suggested that Gordon Brown may have to reconsider the range of investments available via a SIPP, including proposals to allow residential property to be held in the tax shelter of a personal pension from next April. Buying residential property through a SIPP is expected to reduce the effective cost of a buy-to-let property by 40%.

Ros Altmann, a consultant who advises the government on pensions, told the FT: "I just don't think they have a clue how much money is waiting to go in here . . . there's a hell of a lot."

Lord Oakeshott, a Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, is now set to write to the Chancellor warning him: "If you do not act to safeguard the tax base now, I fear current tax leakages will turn into a tidal wave next year."

While Lord McIntosh, a former minister, told the Lords in January: "Any additional cost to the exchequer will depend on uncertain behavioural responses to these reforms - whether or not individuals who will be able to invest in a wider range of assets choose to invest more than they do now."

Lord Oakeshott said: "Translated into English, this means 'we haven't a clue'."

The rich get richer.

Sales of million-pound properties across Britain in 2004 were 36% higher than in 2003, according to research from the Halifax bank.

Over the last ten years the number of sales valued at £1 million and above has risen 19-fold from 228 in 1995 to 4,331 in 2004. There are now 47,500 properties in Britain valued at least £1 million, estimates the bank, while it predicts that 29,150 of these properties are located in London.

Irrespective of the growth of expensive properties outside London and the South East, one in three of all million pound plus property sales nationally in 2004 were in just two London boroughs: Kensington & Chelsea (825 sales) and the City of Westminster (488 sales). These two areas have consistently topped the £1m plus sales table by a wide margin.