Proactive Investors -
- FTSE 100 drops early on
- House sales rebounding
- Businesses less confident pre-Budget
8.05am: House sale activity booms on income growth and falling mortgage rates
Sales activity across Britain’s housing market has hit its highest in four years thanks to income growth and falling mortgage rates, according to Zoopla.
Some 306,000 homes collectively worth £113 billion are currently in the process of being sold, marking a 30% increase year on year and the highest level since Autumn 2020.
House prices ticked up by just 1% over the year to October in comparison, as growing choice for buyers and affordability issues have kept a cap on increases.
Comparison site Zoopla said the market was on course for a “bumper year” as a result, after a spike on mortgage rates weighed on sales in 2023.
“Overall, the market remains on track for a modest 2% price increase in 2024 and 1.1 million sales,” Zoopla executive director Richard Donnell commented.
First time buyers were said to have largely driven the recovery, with Zoopla forecasting the group would account for 36% of sales over the year... Read more
7.39am: Business confidence declines ahead of Budget
Business confidence has fallen to a four-month low in October as the prospect of tax increases in Wednesday's Budget weighs on sentiment.
Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LSE:LON:LLOY)’s business barometer showed a three-point drop over the month to 44 on Monday.
This reflected falling confidence around the economy as a whole and firms’ own trading prospects, with the drop taking sentiment further from a nine-year high seen this summer.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to lift the likes of employer national insurance contributions in the Budget this Wednesday, under plans to raise billions to fund further government spending.
The drop in Lloyds’ reading comes after separate surveys from GfK and S&P Global previously also showed business sentiment had dropped ahead of the Budget... Read more
7.15am: FTSE 100 seen higher
Futures had the FTSE 100 climbing by 35 points ahead of Monday’s open as a busy week of blue chip earnings and the Autumn Budget loomed in London.
While Monday is set to be quiet on the reporting front, BP PLC (LSE:LON:BP.), Shell PLC (LSE:LON:SHEL, NYSE:SHEL), HSBC Holdings PLC (LSE:LON:HSBA) are all due to update later in the week, alongside the likes of Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) from across the Atlantic.
The FTSE 100 had dropped by 109-point drop over the course of last week, with the looming Budget, this Wednesday, among factors weighing on stocks.
Overnight, Asian markets faced a mixed performance, with Japan’s Nikkei enjoying the biggest gain of 1.82%.
Benchmark Brent crude slumped on Monday morning in the meantime to US$72.86 a barrel after a strike by Israel on Iranian military targets did not prompt a vow to respond.