Image by Tom Raferty via Flickr

With that rather enjoyable Indian Summer coming to an end and colder weather fronts gathering strength just off our western shores, it’s about time you started thinking about how you are going to keep warm this winter, whilst not breaking the bank in the process.  Here are Cashzilla’s top 10 energy saving tips on keeping the house warm and the cost’s down.

Turn it down – It’s maybe the most obvious, but it’s easily one of the most effective ways to reduce your energy bills.  Turning down your thermostat by just 1°C could cut your heating bills by almost 10 per cent. If you are wandering around your house in shorts and t-shirt comfortably in mid-December you might as well be running your boiler on £5 notes.  We’re not suggesting wandering around your house dressed for an Everest expedition, but turning down the heating and having a jumper on whilst in the house will save you a lot of money.

Turn your hot water down – If you could make a cup of tea from the hot water that comes from your tap, you have your boiler set to high.  Your hot water thermostat should be set to 60°C, not only will this save you money, but it will avoid the quite real danger of scalding yourself or your children when having a bath or shower.

Insulation – Up to a third of heat disappears through the roof, so you really should make sure you have it insulated. There are all sorts of insulating fibres these days, including the very green option of sheep’s wool. Installing 270mm of insulation could cost as little as £250, whilst potentially cutting your fuel bills by up to £100 a year.

Close your curtains – At dusk get those curtains closed, it keeps those pesky draughts out, not to mention nosey neighbours peering eyes.

Mind the chimney – If you’re lucky enough to have an open fire, good for you, but be careful when it’s not in use.  An open fire might look attractive, but it’s just like having an open window when it’s not in use.  You could buy a chimney balloon, for around £20, that can be inflated in the opening to reduce drafts, or just do what my granny did, which was to block the chimney with plenty of scrunched up old newspaper.

Don’t heat for no-one – Another obvious one, but don’t heat rooms you don’t use.  If you have any spare rooms that you don’t use, or rarely use, turn the radiators to the lowest settings in those rooms and shut the doors.  You can quickly heat them up when required.

Get an efficient boiler – Installing a more efficient boiler will lower your heating costs, particularly if you buy a condensing boiler. According to the Energy Saving Trust, a condensing boiler could save you as much as £235 a year, although the installation cost could be high you are guaranteed long term savings.

Check your taps – A dripping hot water tap wastes energy and in one week wastes enough hot water to fill half a bath, so fix leaking taps and make sure they’re fully turned off.

Wrap up your tank – If you live in an older house and have an un-insulated (or poorly insulated) hot water tank, you are wasting money every time you switch on your hot water system. Wrapping it up in a British Standard cylinder jacket (75mm thick) can reduce heat loss by 70 per cent. Jackets are available for as little as £5.

Check out the Energy Saving Trusts website – for more information about how you can save money on your energy bills this winter have look at the energy saving trust’s website.

If you have any other energy saving tips we’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Research from the Home Builders Federation has suggested that first time buyers would have to save every single penny that they earned for two years in order to have enough money for a deposit to buy a house. Even if first time buyers hold out for 5 years it will still take 45% of their monthly wage to afford the £37,000 deposit to buy an average starter home. Obviously depending on where you live this can greatly vary, London is far more expensive.

I am in this category and with rent prices and general living costs saving 45% of my income is simply not possible. One of my friends is lucky enough to have managed to save enough for a deposit but when she started to look there was a lack of affordable housing. Even when she did find somewhere the bank was far from forthcoming to offering her a mortgage, essentially shutting young people out of the housing market.

Now the average age of people buying homes without the help of their parents is 37. People even have to live with their parents for longer. A third of men between 20 – 34 are living with their parents and a fifth of women are doing the same. I’m not sure who I feel sorrier – for probably their parents!

Zoopla has bought Thinkproperty.com from the Guardian Media Group. In a sign of the teams you could read about this consolidation in the UK property portal market in the Zoopla blog.

Zoopla don’t just get a great brand. They’ve managed to secure themselves as the exclusive search partner for the Guardian.co.uk.

We agree with the wise words of Property Owl who hoot that there are still too many portals and that Zoopla now face the challenge of the integration. In particular Property Owl’s suggestion that an industry wide standard on property feeds would is an interesting idea and worth looking at.

What does all this mean to you?

It means that there are still loads of places for you to discover houses for sale. The fact there is need for consolidation suggests that the current levels of competition are just not sustainable so we might see some reduction in choice and incentives over the next few months but savvy ‘zilla house hunters will still be checking online for years to come.

According to a new survey from the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), the number of young people, in the UK at least, who aspire to own their own home, and see it as “the ideal living situation” has dropped.

Others around the world however have see it as an opportunity to be more inventive and find alternative ways to reduce their costs and increase their green housing credentials.

While the idea of using converted churches as clubs or houses has become widespread, a group of monks from the Sisaket province of Thailand have gone the other way, by taking the leftover from clubs and used over one million recycled glass bottle to construct their eco Buddhist temple.

Others have seen opportunities such as living in second hand shipping containers, missile silos, retired planes!

It seems that necessity really can be the mother of invention.

Following swiftly on from an announcement by the National Landlords Association, that UK housing tenants are more in debt than at any time since the late 1980s, and with the global financial crisis still making lenders cautious about taking on first-time buyers without requiring a big deposit upfront, ARLA has announce new guidelines to protect tenants and homeowners who use letting agencies.

At a time when, despite falling house prices making buying more affordable (well – slightly more affordable than the incredibly bloated prices which have become commonplace over the past few years), few first-time buyers are able to venture onto that first rung of home ownership. This means there are a vast number of 20 to mid 30 somethings who are being forced to throw yet more money away by having to rent instead of buy.

Now as the doom and business gloom appears to be really setting in and redundancies are becoming commonplace, many of those who have to rent are being pressed even further, as work becomes less secure and landlords become more demanding and provide less assurances.

In the present climate, according to ARLA, there are many lettings agencies which are going out of business and are then owing landlords thousands of pounds. Money which the landlord will often try to recoup from the renter, or will skimp on maintenance costs.

The new scheme, while not providing a universal panacea for all the nations housing problems, is intended to not only protect tenants deposits more effectively than the existing government protection scheme, but will also ensure landlords hold professional qualifications and adequate professional insurance is in place, and will also create a licensing scheme which will see landlords who did not keep their property in good condition being struck off and have their licence revoked.

The new plan has already been hailed by Shelter, and having been on the wrong end of a bad landlord myself when I was at dinoversity, and not knowing of any way to prevent them doing it again to some other studentosaur, I wish something like this could have been in place all those millennia ago.

A word of caution should be sounded however, as Shelter Scotland points out that up here in wee Nessieland, where private landlords have been required to register for the last three years, some rogue landlords are still continuing to operate.

Commenting on the BBC, Martin Ellis of the Halifax said, “This mixed pattern of monthly price rises and falls is a typical characteristic of a subdued market”, and he predicted that house prices will slow down even more this coming year.

Malcolm Barr, economist for JPMorgan Chase believes that, “lenders have begun to cite the expectation of house price falls as a reason to tighten credit availability, and the data have moved to confirm those expectations, remains a significant worry,”

Despite various reassurances from many housing and mortgage providers, it looks like house price uncertainty is still set to continue for some time to come and tightening of mortgage lending may significantly effect the likes of first time buyers, but may also help lead to a reduction in the run away house prices experienced in recent years that are shutting many out of the market.

But recently it’s been rather quiet. Those who have yet to buy their first home have become sceptical, if not bored by chasing impossibly affordable homes and those who have bought property have become nervous, if not by the commentary that house prices are falling, but by the fact that they have bought property on top of other debts and the realisation that repayments are becoming more difficult.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry, bankruptcies are still on the increase, up almost a third on the previous year. In the latest debt statistics by Credit Action, UK economist Vicky Redwood from Capital Economics states that the level of personal debt is at breaking point:

“It is unlikely that the numbers have peaked but we estimate that households must be feeling the pain of borrowing too much. People are paying the equivalent of about 20 per cent of their disposable income on interest and debt repayments – the highest since 1990.”

In a survey by the Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB), the three most common reasons for debt problems were quoted as:
“ * Sudden change in personal circumstances – resulting typically from job loss, relationship breakdown or illness;
* Low income – the consequences of living for a long time on a low level of income; and
* Over-commitment – in some cases related to money mismanagement.”

It is the third reason that is often highlighted in the context of mortgage borrowing. In a press release regarding the Chancellor’s proposals to introduce cheaper mortgages, Keith Tondeur, Director of Credit Action warned that:

“At first glance the offer of help to first time buyers sounds useful. However this scheme comes at a time when after several years of steep rises the market is cooling. One question that we should be asking is whether this is being done to keep the housing market buoyant so that people feel confident and therefore keep on spending”.

“House prices are undoubtedly too high for many people to afford which explains why numbers of first time buyers have been falling, with the average age of a first time buyer rising sharply. This scheme could therefore, if care is not taken, create a false market and lead to first time buyers taking on a large amount of long term debt that they could well struggle to repay.”

The seduction of the property market may cause a vicious circle of debt: if people borrow more than they can afford, they may damage their credit record if repayments cannot be met. An adverse credit record will brand the borrower “sub-prime”, and is likely to prompt less favourable credit options later in life. It is true that products such non-standard mortgages, adverse loans and adverse credit cards serve a purpose, but their rates will always be less favourable than standard products.

In addition to self-inflicted debt, it is also possible for your credit record to be manipulated by other parties. In June earlier this year, Callcredit issued a warning to guard against identity fraud when moving house.

“Homeowners who fail to check their credit file before they move and register themselves on the Electoral Roll once they have moved are at risk from:

* Identity fraud – a fraudster could obtain enough financial information about you from your rubbish to run up debts at your old address without your knowledge. People who just cut up cards and don’t tell their lender are particularly at risk from this type of fraud.
* Credit refusal – a person’s credit history has to add up to the lender when you apply for credit, if you don’t appear on the Electoral Roll at your current address it will make it more difficult to get credit.”

If you’re thinking about buying a house, try the following sites for starting your own detective work in finding a good mortgage:

* Make sure your credit record is in good shape:
* * http://www.callcredit.plc.uk/
* * http://www.checkmyfile.com/
* * http://www.experian.co.uk/

* Don’t be lazy, shop around for the best mortgage:
* * http://www.moneynet.co.uk/ (compare mortgages)
* * http://www.cml.org.uk/servlet/dycon/zt-cml/cml/live/en/cml/pub_info (superb range of consumer information.)
* * http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mortgages (Martin Lewis has some money saving recommendations)

Make sure you keep your finances flexible; ensure you know what you can afford and for how long you can afford it. What was the best mortgage, current account, ISA account five years ago, may not be performing as effectively now.

“Sharp fall in first-time buyers casts a long shadow over housing market”

Oh I hope so.

1) I am fed up with my friends becoming anxious about getting on to property ladder, especially when they have to give up their social life to do so and even more so when their parents cough up some of their retirement savings to assist their offspring. Does anyone have a twenties anymore?

2) We have lost all interesting topics of conversation because of people’s obsession with property

3) It is ridiculous (I say!) how expensive property has become and the fact that people are allowed to get multiple mortgages on sketchy finances – pushing up property prices and forcing people to rent

4) I know quite a few people who have “embellished” the exact figure for their earnings, allowing them to get bigger mortgages than they could get normally

It’s about time my generation learnt to stand on their own two feet… rather than everyone else’s…

How granny am I….?