More than half (54pc) of Britons questioned in a poll commissioned by Grainger, the UK’s largest listed residential landlord, expect that in 15 years more people in the UK will be renting their homes than owning.

The split today is around 30pc rented and 70pc ownership. With social renting expected to stay fairly stable at 16pc, the survey implies that private renters – currently representing 17pc of the market – will double by 2016, said Grainger.

“There is a new housing reality dawning on Britain: the financial crisis has tightened mortgage lending; house prices continue to be uncertain; and, frankly there are simply too few homes for the demand,” said Nick Jopling, the company’s executive property director. “More and more people are renting.”

The survey found that 40pc of people now see renting as a first step on to the housing ladder. In addition, 92pc of young people polled (18 to 34-year-olds) said they saw renting as the only way they can move out from their parents’ homes.

The younger generation was also less likely to say that owning a house was an important today as it was 25 years ago. Grainger saw this as evidence that the “stigma” of renting is dissipating over the generations.

The company wants the Government to speed up the process of unlocking land for new developments, to implement their controversial proposals to reform the planning system and to back the private rented sector as an acceptable form of housing tenure.

“The shortage of housing is set to continue – more needs to be done to avoid the growing crisis and close the gap between supply and demand,” said Mr Jopling.

Shelter, the homeless charity, warned that the shortage of housing already means that private rents are now “sky-high”.

“As well as this, almost half the properties in the sector are in poor and substandard condition which people have no other choice than to accept,” said Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter.

“This raises some very serious questions about how we create a decent stable private rented sector that meets the needs of the 1m families with children currently living there. We urge the Government to address this in their upcoming housing strategy.”

The survey polled more than 2,200 people.

Report by By Emma Rowley – The Telegraph

Hundreds of thousands of Britons have lost money on illegal or unfinished homes in Spain. Will attempts by the British government to help them prove successful?

Last month when the Spanish government organised a property road show in the UK, attempting to lure Britons to invest in its saturated housing market, it was greeted with derision and angry public demonstrations. What did it honestly expect?

There are no easy solutions to Spain’s property scandal, which has affected hundreds of thousands of Britons who have either been duped into buying illegally built homes, affected by land grabs and retrospective coastal planning laws or lost deposits on off-plan builds. To Spain’s shame, corrupt councils, estate agents, property developers, builders and lawyers have all been complicit in the chain of events that have led to many losing their life savings on worthless properties, and in extreme cases having their “illegal” Spanish properties demolished.

The British government has been hugely aware of the property issues affecting British expats in Spain but has found itself in an invidious position, being unable to intervene in local property disputes which are a matter of Spanish internal law. Instead, last year, the British Embassy in Madrid appointed a temporary special advisor to get to grips with the complex issues of property laws and regulations in the country with an aim to offering comprehensive advice through its website to future buyers, as well as those encountering problems with an existing Spanish property.

In order to better understand the situation, the special advisor has already met with a number of resident groups throughout Spain and with diplomatic missions whose nationals have encountered similar problems. The findings from her report are now being used to help the British Embassy and consulates in Spain to understand how best to offer support to British expats.

In tandem with this, the British Ambassador to Spain has been meeting with key officials in the central and regional governments to raise awareness of the problems and to express concern for the plight of those affected. The issue is also being addressed through the UK Representation to the EU (UKRep) and the British Embassy in Spain, which is in discussion with MEPs, and staff from the European Commission and European Parliament offices in Spain.

Although the British government admits that there’s a long way to go before a solution is found for those caught up in the scandal, it insists that progress has been made. Already there have been reforms made to the criminal code, strengthening the penalties for crime linked to urban developments, and the Andalucian regional government is preparing a decree to regularise the majority of irregular properties. For future purchasers, a free step-by-step guide to buying property in Spain, translated into English, has been produced by the Registradores de España; hopefully opening the door to greater transparency in the process of purchasing property in the coming years.

For those distressed British expats caught up in their own personal property nightmare there is no immediate solution in sight, but at least their voices are finally being heard at a national and international level. Buying in Spain might not be as safe as houses yet, but with new legislation being enforced by the country’s regional governments, and with excellent property advice being offered online, the future certainly looks brighter.

Report by Anna Nicholas – The Telegraph

House prices in Dublin have fallen nearly 50 per cent since their peak in 2007, the Central Statistics Office has said.

According to the CSO’s Residential Property Price Index, house prices in the capital are 46 per cent lower than 2007, while apartment prices have fallen 53 per cent since their high in February 2007.

Nationally, residential property prices fell by 1 per cent in the month of April. This compares with a decline of 1.7 per cent recorded in March.

The index, which looks at property on a national level, shows residential property prices throughout the rest of the country are 36 per cent lower than their highest level in 2007. Overall, the national index is 40 per cent lower than its highest level in 2007.

Dublin apartment prices fell by 1.8 per cent in the month of April and were 14.1 per cent lower when compared with the same month of 2010, while house prices fell 0.7 per cent and were 12.6 per cent lower compared to a year earlier.

Property prices throughout the rest of the country fell by 36 per cent in the first three months of 2011, and were 11.7 per cent lower than in April 2010.

Dermot O’Leary, economist at Goodbody Stockbrokers, said the national average price for a house was €180,000, back to levels seen in early 2002.

“It is clear that an unprecedented correction has taken place, but until the banking sector shows real signs of rehabilitation, facilitated by the restructuring efforts currently ongoing, there is little reason to believe that prices will rise,” he said.

Report by PAMELA NEWENHAM – Irish Times

One of Ireland’s top investors who gobbled up trophy properties in Manhattan, London and Eastern Europe during the market’s go-go years now owes hundreds of millions of dollars and is holding a global fire sale of his assets.

Derek Quinlan’s first New York City property to get dumped: an Upper East Side townhouse. A buyer has signed a contract to purchase the five-story townhouse at 20 E. 64th St., which had an asking price of $29.5 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Quinlan paid $26.2 million for the property in 2005.

That sale and numerous others around the world mark the latest chapter in the rise and fall of one of the most recognizable players in Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy, which boomed in the years leading up to the global recession. The former tax inspector from Dublin, Mr. Quinlan founded his own firm investing money for high-net-worth individuals in 1989. His initial purchase was an ice-cream parlor in a Dublin suburb.

As head of a private-equity firm, he borrowed heavily to make splashy acquisitions at home and abroad. For example, his group paid $1.4 billion for the Savoy Group, which controlled Claridge’s and other posh London hotels, and later bought the Madrid headquarters building of Banco Santander. He managed a fund that once had assets under management of around $15 billion.

Mr. Quinlan also bought a waterfront villa on the Cote D’Azur that had its own discotheque and was located next to homes owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Roman Abramovich, a Russian-born billionaire who owns the U.K.’s Chelsea Football club.

In New York he had his eyes on townhouses. In addition to 20 E. 64th St.—a 25-foot-wide property with its own elevator which he rented out for $90,000 a month—his firm bought another East 64th Street townhouse around the same time for $18.7 million that was once the headquarters of the New York Observer.

Many of his loans had recourse provisions that enabled lenders to go after his personal savings in the case of a default, said a person familiar with the matter. When his investments floundered during the market bust, he owed hundreds of millions in debt.

Mr. Quinlan resigned from his private-equity firm, which was renamed Avestus Capital Partners, in 2009 and moved to Switzerland. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

To pay back his creditors, Mr. Quinlan has put up for sale several of his marquee holdings, including stakes in the Banco Santander building and the Citibank tower in London. In that city, he has already sold a house in the Mayfair neighborhood, a DKNY building and the Asprey building on Bond Street.

In New York, he first listed 20 East 64th St. with Prudential Douglas Elliman in 2009, then with Leslie J. Garfield. It is now in contract, according to people familiar with the matter. The sale price and buyer’s identity aren’t known.

The other townhouse, 54 East 64th St., was listed for $25 million through Sotheby’s International Realty but was recently taken off the market.

Despite setting up a New York office and meeting with lenders and potential investors in the city, Mr. Quinlan never got very far in the U.S., buying Chicago property, a Georgia golf resort and some land in Southern California before the market turned.

Mr. Quinlan’s personal debts to the National Asset Management Agency, an Irish government agency created to buy up risky loans from Irish banks, are around €230 million ($340 million), according to London’s Sunday Times. He has paid off about €140 million from property sales in the past year.

After he failed to agree on a debt repayment plan with the National Asset Management Agency, the agency took control of some of his property and debts outstanding.

Report by CRAIG KARMIN – Wall Street Journal