House sales tumbled by almost two-thirds in July after tens of thousands of homebuyers rushed to complete their purchases in order to beat Rishi Sunak’s end-of-June stamp duty holiday deadline. Following a record surge in activity in June, when 213,370 UK homes changed hands, transactions slumped 62% to 82,110 in July according to official data, after...
Becoming a millionaire was never part of the plan. Michele Venton had left London for Bournemouth, keen to escape corporate life – and decided to try selling dresses online. “I always had this idea that I would design this range of dresses for a particular woman,” she says. She found a factory to make her...
UK house prices hit a new high in June and are 30% higher than the peak they reached before the 2008 financial crisis, according to the latest snapshot of the market. The property website Zoopla said the average price of a home was £230,700 – as much as 5.4% higher than the same month a year...
Months of “frenzied buyer activity” have driven the average asking price for a home in Britain to a new high, according to the property website Rightmove. The property portal said it expected figures from HMRC due later this week to show that June was the busiest month on record for sales, with buyers rushing to...
The former chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said the huge online marketplace fostered by tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google means the opportunity to “rip off ordinary people” is growing and that the regulator is struggling to keep up. In a new report, Andrew Tyrie, who quit as chair of the competition...
Soho House is to float on the New York Stock Exchange at a potential valuation of $3bn (£2.2bn), as the private members’ club seeks to take advantage of a post-pandemic global business recovery. The company – which owns 28 Soho Houses worldwide and a clutch of other businesses including Soho Works, Soho Home, The Ned...
You’ve taken delivery of a shiny new electric car, and the plug-in charger is being installed next week. You’re almost ready to go – just don’t forget to switch to a specialist electricity tariff. If you don’t, your bills could end up at least £300 a year higher than they need to be. Over the...
The total value of homes sold in the UK is expected to reach £461bn this year, a jump of 46% on 2020, indicating the current housing market boom is likely to continue, according to a new prediction. The property website Zoopla said its projections indicated the property market in 2021 was on course to be...
Royal Mail’s annual profits quadrupled in its latest financial year as the pandemic-fuelled online shopping boom provided a surge in demand for parcel deliveries and triggered a turnaround in the company’s fortunes. Pre-tax profit jumped to £726m in the year to 28 March, compared with a profit of £180m a year earlier. “This time last...
Sales and profits have slumped at the catering firm Compass Group as the pandemic kept canteens closed at factories, offices and schools. Operating profit fell to £290m in the six months to the end of March, down 65% from £817m a year earlier, while revenue was down almost a third to £8.6bn. However, the figures were an...