Four friends keen to get on the property ladder, but finding prices too steep, clubbed together to buy a home in London. Could this be the future of home ownership? The two couples, now each with a baby, live together in a three-bedroom flat in north-east London.

Francesca, Graeme, Sonja and Kieran, all 34, have known each other since school and university, and lived together during the Covid pandemic until the landlord "doubled the rent overnight".

Rising goods prices are showing up in the inflation data; however, they’ve largely been overshadowed by factors such as falling gas prices and a continued slowing of price hikes for services, particularly rent and housing. As such, inflation data to this point has remained fairly muted — for now.

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• Sweden’s Stockholm Wood City is being built largely from timber.
• The construction industry produces 37% of the world’s carbon emissions.
• Building using wood is one way to reduce the sector’s climate impact.
• People seem to love wood. Visitors to Sweden’s 20-story Sara Kulturhus building have been seen hugging its timber columns, according to its architect Oskar Norelius.

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New data from housing analytics firm Cotality shows that serious mortgage delinquencies -- loans overdue by 90 days or more -- reversed their post-pandemic decline in mid-2024. Nearly half of all U.S. states saw delinquencies tick up, with sharp increases in Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia -- states hit hard by natural disasters and skyrocketing insurance costs.