UK housing remains subdued, RICS survey shows
The housing market in England and Wales remained subdued in June although there were signs of marginal improvement, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) UK Residential Market Survey. New buyer enquiries remained negative, with a net balance of -29%, a slight improvement on the -34% recorded in the previous two months. June […]
Society of Licensed Conveyancers welcomes government’s buying and selling reforms
The Society of Licensed Conveyancers (SLC) has welcomed the government’s plans to reform the buying and selling process, but warns its success will rely on engaging “all participants in the home moving process”. Simon Law, chairperson of the SLC, said the organisation recognises the potential for the proposed reforms to deliver faster, more transparent and […]
Scrapping stamp duty ‘to bring 300,000 homes to market in a year’
Ending stamp duty land tax could bring up to 750,000 homes to the market across England within three years, new research suggests. According to the Jackson-Stops Housing Mobility Report, stamp duty is the third most commonly cited barrier to moving. The survey of 3,000 owner-occupiers conducted in June 2026 revealed 28% of respondents cited stamp […]
Flood Re to halve insurance premiums for lower income households in 2027
A government-backed reinsurance scheme designed to offer flooding insurance to homeowners and renters in high risk areas has announced a series of major reforms to mark 10 years since it launched. The new measures are designed to cut costs, strengthen flood resilience and ease the transition until the end of Flood Re, a reinsurance scheme […]
The first hard evidence of the wave that is coming for conveyancing
The transformation of legal work by agentic AI has until now been a prediction. New data from OpenAI makes it a timetable: software engineering has already gone almost wholly agentic, and the legal teams that followed started later and moved faster. Ed Molyneux on why their 2025 is conveyancing’s 2026. For months this column […]