Housing market in England and Wales weakening due to Iran war, say estate agents
Fears of higher mortgage rates and rising inflation as a result of the Middle East conflict are leading to a subdued and downbeat housing market, according to estate agents.Demand from potential homebuyers across England and Wales has shown a “noticeable softening” recently, according to a monthly survey of estate agents by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).Members have told the professional body that buyers and sellers are becoming more cautious, and many agents have cited clients who are worried about whether inflation and interest rates will rise in the coming months, leading to slower sales, fewer homes on the market, and more price-sensitive buyers.The Bank of England warned last month that interest rates may have to increase in the coming months as “higher inflation is unavoidable” because of the war in the Middle East and resulting jump in oil and gas prices.At the same time, mortgage rates are likely to be affected by the current sharp rise in government borrowing costs, as swap rates – which lenders use to price their fixed-rate mortgages – tend to move in tandem with government bond yields.
Tarrant Parsons, head of market research and analysis at the RICS, said: “Until there is a clearer path for inflation and borrowing costs, activity and sentiment look set to remain subdued, particularly across southern England and London where affordability pressures are most acute.”The RICS said a net balance of 34% of its members said inquiries from new buyers in April had fallen since the previous month.This is a slight improvement on the net balance of 40% who said inquiries had fallen in March, but still “indicative of weak market momentum”.The index measures the difference between the share of agents reporting rising and falling new buyer inquiries.The volume of agreed sales deteriorated in April, with a net balance of 36% of members reporting a fall, versus 35% a month earlier.
Estate agents are pessimistic about this improving much over the next three months.The report added that the flow of new properties being put up for sale was “largely stagnant” over April, while 34% more members reported decreases in house prices over the past three months than increases, marking a “further deterioration” from the -25% reading seen last month.However, there is a widening regional divide in house price growth, with stronger price falls being reported in London, the south-east, East Anglia and the south-west, while the north-west and north of England continued to post marginally positive readings.In the rental market, demand is outpacing supply, as a rising number of landlords leave the sector in face of increasing regulation and higher taxes.RICS members said the level of demand from new tenants has been increasing, with a net balance of 14% reporting a rise over the past three months, while there was a drop in new instructions from landlords to put their properties up for rent.
A net balance of 25% of respondents expect rents to rise over the coming months,The RICS report ties in with results from Savills, the estate agent, which said that it had seen “greater caution” among buyers and sellers in its UK residential business since the onset of the Middle East conflict,The company, which was giving an update to shareholders before its annual general meeting, said this caution has resulted in longer completion timeframes, and transactions overall for the first quarter increased by just 1% year on year,
GameStop’s $55.5bn bid for eBay rejected as ‘neither credible nor attractive’
The board of eBay has rejected the US video games retailer GameStop’s surprise $55.5bn bid (£41bn) for the online marketplace, describing the proposal as “neither credible nor attractive”.Earlier this month, GameStop made an unsolicited bid for eBay, publishing a letter on its website outlining a half-cash, half-stock proposal.This was despite the US games company – which became a global household name during the meme stock craze of 2021 – being worth far less than its takeover target. GameStop had a market valuation of roughly $12bn before its bid, almost a quarter of eBay’s $46bn valuation
Molière Ex Machina: AI used to create ‘new work’ by beloved French playwright
Molière is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English: the last word in historical literature, drama, wit and satire.Now, more than 350 years after his death, the 17th-century dramatist has been revived after scholars at the Sorbonne University in Paris used artificial intelligence to help write an experimental play in his style.L’Astrologue ou les Faux Présages (The Astrologer, or False Omens), a three-act comedy, made its debut at the Royal Opera at the Château de Versailles last week.The two-hour play tells the story of a wealthy bourgeois Parisian who, under the instruction of a charlatan astrologer called Pseudoramus, insists his daughter Lucile marry a debt-ridden and elderly wigmaker.While the theme could well have been dreamed up by Molière, the dialogue, music, costumes and scenery were all created with the help of a French AI tool called Le Chat (The Cat)
Who is Louis Mosley, the man tasked with defending Palantir against its critics?
The hall was packed with rightwing radicals when Louis Mosley heralded a coming revolution. Just as Oliver Cromwell – that “crusader for Christ and liberty” – routed King Charles I’s royalists, “a similar revolution is brewing today”, said the UK and Europe boss of Palantir. Globalism’s “twilight” was upon us, he said in a speech dotted with admiring mentions of the podcaster Joe Rogan and “Elon’s Doge”.It was not a typical peroration for a big UK government contractor with more than £600m in deals with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and police. But Palantir, the world’s most controversial tech company, is no typical contractor
Europe’s AI translation industry told it risks reputation by partnering with US firms
AI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm.While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use.The biggest success story is Cologne-headquartered DeepL, an online translator that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments. Used by governments, courts and half of the Fortune 500 list of highest-earning US companies, last year it was reported to have recorded revenues of $185.2m
Shivon Zilis, mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, testifies in OpenAI trial
Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive and the mother of four of Elon Musk’s children, took the stand on Wednesday as one of the most highly anticipated witnesses in Musk’s case against OpenAI. The ChatGPT maker has argued that, while Zilis worked with OpenAI from 2016 to 2023, she was also involved in a secret relationship with Musk, acting as an informant for him.Musk’s case against OpenAI alleges that the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, and president, Greg Brockman, co-founders of the company with Musk, broke a founding agreement when they restructured it from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. The Tesla CEO accuses Altman and Brockman of unjustly enriching themselves and wants both removed from their positions at the startup, one of the most valuable in the world. He is also seeking the undoing of the for-profit restructuring and $134bn in damages to be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm
TikTok’s algorithm favored Republican content in 2024 US elections, study finds
A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature finds that TikTok’s algorithm systematically prioritized pro-Republican content in three states leading up to the 2024 US elections.Researchers created hundreds of dummy accounts and conditioned them to mimic real users’ behavior by watching a set of videos either aligned with the US Democratic or Republican parties. Then, they tracked the videos TikTok recommended on these accounts’ For You pages, TikTok’s main feed.“We found a consistent imbalance,” they wrote in Nature.About 42% of US social media users say that these platforms are important for getting involved with political and social issues, according to Pew Research, but it’s not often clear how recommendation algorithms shape what appears in feeds
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