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Latest property news
First property, now petrol for serial investor and Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman
Zoopla founder and ZPG CEO Alex Chesterman (pictured, right) has been revealed as a key investor in an unusual, if not bizarre, new business start-up, which is his 12th to date. Zebra Fuels offers vehicle owners a new service that enables their car, van, lorry or bus to be filled up while they are parked up. Founders Reda Bennis and Romain Saint Guilhem (pictured, LtoR, below) have raised $2.5 million from several new investors including Brent Hoberman, founder of Lastminute.com, and Saul Klein, a co-founder founder of Lovefilm with Alex Chesterman. The duo say they hope to make petrol stations “obsolete”. After signing up to the Zebra Fuel app, customers then pick a time and date to have their car filled up and leave their vehicle parked at a specified location with its fuel cap open. The company, which currently only operates in central London and offers just diesel, is hoping to use the extra cash to expand to a London-wide service and offer both petrol deliveries and electric car charging. “Our goal is to replace the petrol station and in doing so make filling up your car faster, cheaper, less harmful to the environment, and hassle-free,” Reda Bennis told…
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Latest property news
Buy-to-let mortgage stress test shock
As mortgage approvals continue to fall – down to 60,058 in August from 60,925 in July – buy-to-let lending is also likely to decrease with the latest news from the BoE’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) which has confirmed that a series of investors’ affordability checks and interest rate “stress tests” will be introduced from January 2017. Buy-to-let lenders will be required to verify that landlords can afford to pay the mortgage under potential future interest rates of 5.5 per cent, as the PRA recommended that the interest coverage ratio, a commonly used measure of the ratio of rental income to mortgage payments, does not fall below 125 per cent. Affordability assessments will need to take into account borrower’s costs, personal income and possible future interest rate increases, with lending to portfolio landlords to be assessed using a specialist underwriting process. “The PRA’s actions are intended to bring all lenders up to prevailing market standards and guard against any slipping of underwriting standards during a period in which firms’ growth plans could be challenged by the changing economic landscape and the impact of forthcoming tax changes,” it said. Peter Williams, Executive Director of Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) said, “IMLA welcomes…
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