Morning Briefing: Brexit could disrupt EIB funding in Wales

In the news

Housing associations in Wales fear they could lose out on £200m of loan finance they had been hoping to secure from the European Investment Bank (EIB) due to Brexit.

Stuart Ropke, chief executive of Community Housing Cymru, which represents the sector in Wales, told the BBC the organisation had been working to help secure long-term loans worth more than £200m for various associations, but negotiations had stalled due to Brexit.

He added: “There is no shortage of financial institutions who want to invest in what is a very successful sector, but what the EIB money would have done – those terms that were on offer, particularly the cost of funding – was very attractive.”

In other news, insurance giant Legal and General (L&G) has published its latest research on the ‘Bank of Mum and Dad’, this time revealing the role of parents in the rental market on the back of last year’s research about mortgage finance.

It found parents will fund £2.3bn of rental payments in 2017, paying out on average £415 every time a rental payment is made. The Bank of Mum and Dad now helps 9% of renters across the UK with their financial commitments to their landlords on nearly 460,000 properties, L&G said.

And finally, in The Telegraph Tim Wallace and Isabel Fraser consider the potential for another property market downturn.

They write: “More than half of the top-end properties put on the market so far this year have been pulled as owners are reluctant to take a hit on the sale. Over London’s market as a whole, price growth has slumped. Ten years on from the last bust, are we on the brink of another crunch?”