Kate Allen

One of Britain’s least popular professions, the high street estate agent, is facing a shake-up as the digital revolution finally reaches the business of selling and renting bricks and mortar. The growing popularity of property portals Rightmove and Zoopla has made it possible for homeowners to take control out of estate agents’ hands. It has enabled the rise of online estate agencies, which offer sellers and landlords a way of advertising on the portals without having to pay the high fees that…

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Unreal City,Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,A crowd flowed over London Bridge When TS Eliot wrote those lines in the early 1920s London was a polluted, overcrowded metropolis blighted by heavy industry, poverty and slums. Forty years later city workers’ spacious new homes in airy, leafy suburbs and new towns were memorialised by John Betjeman. He wrote in 1962: One can’t be sure where London ends,New towns have filled the fields of rootWhere father and his business friendsDrove in the Lan…

Scotland’s grouse moors and castles have long been a draw for the globe-trotting wealthy. They will now face a land and buildings transaction tax (LBTT) at marginal rates of up to 12 per cent – up from a current maximum of 7 per cent UK-wide stamp duty for housing and 4 per cent for commercial property. The tax will be levied by the devolved Edinburgh government on a sliding scale, with the first £135,000 of any property being tax-free. Under the current UK-wide tax regime, someone buying a £5…

A huge London housebuilding zone has received two significant boosts, with planning permission given for the redevelopment of Britain’s biggest wholesale market and ministers approving the extension of a connecting Tube line. New Covent Garden Market in south London will be redeveloped to create thousands of homes in a £2bn project, after Wandsworth council granted planning permission on Wednesday. The fruit, vegetable and flower market is part of the Nine Elms regeneration zone in Battersea,…

Plans to extend Sunday shop opening hours suffered a setback after the government was defeated by 31 votes in the Commons — a reminder of the Conservatives’ fragile parliamentary majority. The government was beaten by 317 votes to 286 after being challenged by what it dubbed an “unholy alliance” of a handful of Conservative backbenchers, Labour, the Scottish National party, the Democratic Unionists, Plaid Cymru and some Liberal Democrats. The decision by the SNP to vote against the proposal wa…

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication