It says that a Cambridgeshire buyer has purchased an apartment with lender Nationwide through the NewBuy scheme, which provides prospective buyers with a 95% mortgage and predicts it will be the first of many under this scheme.

Bovis says that high deposits have certainly been a deterrent to many getting onto the housing ladder, so a scheme which can limit a deposit to just 5% will be welcomed by many, homeowners and first-time buyers alike. NewBuy was designed by the Home Builders Federation and the Council of Mortgage Lenders along with the backing of the government and is open to all those buying new build properties priced at up to £500,000.

It is already backed by Nationwide, Barclays (Woolwich), RBS (Natwest) and Halifax and more lenders are thought likely to come on board soon. Are you in favour of this seemingly popular government initiative? Does it have any drawbacks? Let me know what you think.

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The Manchester Building Society has removed its tracker mortgages from the bank rate while the Skipton has removed its 3% over-base-rate-cap and a number, including the Halifax, Bank of Ireland and Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks are all putting their rates up on May 1.

Are your rates on the rise? Is it sneaky to find ways of increasing rates while interest rates remain at an all-time low of just 0.5%? Let me know what you think.

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Grenville Turner, chief executive of Countrywide, said that a recent survey, commissioned by the company, showed that almost half of all 18 to 34-year-olds questioned said that raising a deposit was the greatest obstacle to them buying their own home and that as a result, future generations could find themselves priced out of the property market.

The survey, of 6,000 people, found that of those who were not moving home 21% said they could not afford a deposit, while smaller numbers said that they could not keep up with mortgage repayments and added costs such as stamp duty. Meanwhile, only just over a third of private rental tenants said that they were happy where they lived. So, despite most wanting to get themselves on the housing ladder, a great many simply cannot afford to.

Countrywide says that government intervention is needed and Turner believes that without it there will be massive problems in the future. The company wants to see the chancellor, George Osborne, introduce mortgage relief for first-time buyers and set tough lending targets for banks. So, are you a renter and if so, are you happy with that situation or would you ideally like to own your own home? We’d be very interested to get feedback from you.

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However, is that the right way to deal with the problem? Shouldn’t the government be tackling the problem of homelessness instead? Recent figures released by the charity Crisis claim that 40% of single homeless people have squatted at one time or another, with a great many of these people having mental health or other problems.

So, the argument goes, these are some of the more vulnerable in society, with a life expectancy of 47 for a homeless man and only 43 for a homeless women. Additionally there is an argument that criminal law as it stands does already deal with squatting as it is an offence under the Criminal Law Act of 1977 to squat and make use of utilities without paying or cause criminal damage. So, in the event the law was correctly applied, some squatting cases might be resolved swiftly.

So, there are measures a homeowner confronted with this problem can take, although they require proper enforcement by the police rather than introducing a whole new law, a stance which is opposed by both the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association amongst others.

There are many others of course who believe that legislation, as it stands, doesn’t protect homeowners, and there have already been many stories through the years of the massive problems law abiding people may have when trying to remove squatters from their own property. So, which side of this argument are you on? Should the law, as it stands, be more strictly enforced or is a different law necessary to make squatting a criminal instead of a civil offence which would safeguard homeowners? We would like to hear what you think.

Gross mortgage lending in December was £11.7bn, down 12% on November but up 12% on December 2010, while mortgage lending for the whole year was £140bn, up from £136bn in 2010.

However, the encouraging figures do not translate into optimism for the housing market as a whole. Bob Pannell, chief economist at CML, said that it was difficult to forecast accurately because of the continuing uncertainty regarding the eurozone. The CML has already said that the increase in lending in November was because of the high number of those who are taking up fixed-rate deals.