House prices are expected to see a short-term fall over the next few months for the first time in nearly four years, according to a poll of surveyors.
The report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) pointed to uncertainty around the EU referendum and a recent hike in stamp duty tax for landlords as weighing on the market.
Shares in house builders such as Taylor Wimpey, Berkeley, Persimmon and Bellway fell in the wake of the survey - the latter despite an update in which it said it had seen a "positive trading environment" with no noticeable effect from this month's poll.
According to the RICS poll, for the first time since November 2012 a majority of members questioned expected that prices over the next three months would fall.
However, most still saw an increase over a 12-month horizon.
RICS chief economist Simon Rubinsohn said that for now the group's members were only forecasting a temporary dip in prices, which have surged by as much as a third in the past five years.
He added: "Sadly, for the many young people looking to enter the property market, it is unlikely that we are seeing the emergence of a more affordable market.
"Instead, it appears to me that what we are looking at is a short term drop caused by the uncertainty resulting from the forthcoming EU referendum coupled by a slow-down following the rush to get into the market ahead of the tax change on the purchase of investment properties.
"There is not at this point a sense that a fundamental shift is taking place in the market."
RICS said its headline house price balance for changes over the previous three months fell to its lowest since February 2015 at +19 for May, down from +39 in April and below forecasts.
Sales dropped at the fastest rate since August 2008, and new buyer inquiries declined at the sharpest pace since June 2008.
Sir John Major has warned that Brexit could "tear apart the UK" and trigger instability in Northern Ireland.
Speaking alongside Tony Blair in Northern Ireland, Sir John said it would be a "historic mistake" to do anything that would undermine the peace settlement.
In a significant moment in the campaign, with the two old adversaries alongside each other, the former Conservative prime minister said relations had never been better and he worried about a British exit that would "leave Ireland on the other side of the table" in negotiations between Britain and the European union.
He added that if the UK voted to leave it would have a huge impact on the economies of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Speaking to students at Ulster University, Sir John made an impassioned plea to young people to stay in the EU, saying: "Europe is not for the elites, it is for you, for your generation ... We're not going to be around."
Sir John said that in 1973 the UK was called the "sick man of Europe" and was now on track to be the biggest economy on the continent because of its membership of the EU.
Mr Blair said Europe was an "important part of the context" in which the UK was able to broker peace in Northern Ireland and that people there faced a "seismic decision" on 23 June.
The former Labour leader said that people advocating Leave did so in broad terms but when the detail was pointed out they "waved them away".
Mr Blair claimed the problems of reinstalling hard borders between the UK and Ireland were "immense" and would have a huge impact on people's daily lives and on relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
He said Leave faced "fundamental questions" about the common travel area that the people of Northern Ireland needed to see answered before the referendum.
And he accused Leave of "ignoring" Northern Ireland in the debate about leaving the EU.
Northern Ireland Secretary and Out campaigner Theresa Villiers accused the former prime ministers of being "irresponsible" with their claims.
She said: "Support for the peace process in Northern Ireland is rock solid.
"The vast majority of people in Northern Ireland believe their future should only ever be determined by democracy and consent and not by violence.
"I very much hope figures who played such an important role in the peace process would not suggest that a Brexit vote would weaken that resolve in any way.
"Whatever the result of the referendum, Northern Ireland is not going back to the troubles of its past and to suggest otherwise would be highly irresponsible."
She said the common travel area would continue if there was a Leave win, even though the border would become the frontier between an EU member and a non-EU nation.
A poll for the Belfast Telegraph suggests that Northern Ireland would vote to Remain in the EU - with 56% opting for 'In' and 35% to Leave.
New M&S boss Steve Rowe has slated the legacy of predecessor Marc Bolland, saying that the high street retailer has been "giving customers too many reasons not to shop with us".
Mr Rowe set out a series of reasons why shoppers were unhappy with stores and clothing ranges and said that from now on it would no longer be "slavishly following catwalk trends".
The chief executive set out the criticisms in the group's annual report - which also revealed that Mr Bolland's annual bonus had climbed 4% to £622,000, as first revealed by Sky News.
It was roughly a third of the maximum bonus he could have achieved.
M&S chief executive Steve Rowe
Mr Bolland left in April after years of struggling clothing sales, to be replaced by long-serving M&S executive Mr Rowe, who began his career in its Croydon store at the age of 15.
Mr Rowe has already said that he will cut prices and put more staff in stores as he sets out to revive general merchandise sales, which remain "not satisfactory".
In a strategic update published in the company's annual report, he said: "We have a lot more to do. We have been giving customers too many reasons not to shop with us.
"They tell us that we have not got the balance between fashion and style right and that we don't offer enough choice.
"They say that we are sometimes too expensive and that our stores are too difficult to shop.
"We will put increased emphasis on contemporary styling rather than slavishly following catwalk trends, and will focus on innovations that are genuinely useful to our customers."
Last month, M&S reported an 18% fall in pre-tax profits to £489m for the year to the start of April as one-off costs relating to its ailing international business and insurance mis-selling weighed on its bottom line - though underlying earnings stripping out these charges rose.
The company's annual report showed that Mr Bolland's total pay for the year fell 3% to £2.04m as his performance share plan awards fell.
It revealed that the value of his annual bonus was reduced from 80% of salary to 64% of salary to take into account the company’s "mixed" performance over the year.
The 15th European Football Championships begin on Friday, the largest-ever and the most anxious.
No previous edition of the continental cup, and perhaps no other major sporting event, has had to contend with the security challenges that provide the inescapable backdrop to what was supposed to be a month of football en fete.
Security is a staple narrative of sport in the modern era of mega-events, from the World Cup to the Olympics, but it has never been more relevant or real than at Euro 2016.
The hosts will kick-off against Romania tomorrow night in the same national stadium attacked by three suicide bombers last November, and with the nation under an extended state of emergency.
The Stade de France attack was the beginning of the 13 November atrocity and though the least deadly - a Portuguese bus driver was the only person among 130 killed that day to die at the stadium - it has shaped preparations.
Jacques Lambert, president of the organising committee, admitted as much this week.
"We want to lift ourselves out of the negative spiral around security that was imposed on us," he said.
The crowds of young, care-free supporters who gather at stadiums and fanzones are what give tournaments their colour.
They are also a security nightmare, a soft-target for terrorists who have demonstrated their capacity more than once in Europe in the last 18 months.
So preparations are in place.
The police and army personnel deployed this month would not fit inside the Stade de France.
There are 90,000 on duty but they are exhausted, with millions of hours of unclaimed overtime after more than a year on high terror alert and after a spring of civil discontent in France.
Argos owner Home Retail Group is setting aside at least £30m in compensation after admitting thousands of store card customers were overcharged.
The company has launched a detailed review into the issue, which relates to "buy now, pay later" plans for some of the retailer's 1.5 million store card holders who were charged excess fees for late payments.
Chief executive John Walden said it affected up to 10% of Argos card customers.
They are expected to receive compensation of up to £100 each and Home Retail will write to affected customers in the next few weeks.
The group said it had found that "a more extensive customer redress programme" would be required than first thought when the issue was discovered earlier this year, increasing the likely cost by about £30m.
It said its financial services division had discovered it "had erroneously collected excess fees in relation to the late payment of amounts due from certain customers".
Mr Walden said: "It's not a material number of customers and not a material amount of money per customer.
"But for each customer it matters. We will address it and treat customers fairly."
Home Retail Group had disclosed in its results for the year to the end of February that it had set aside £17m for customer redress, but this mainly related to payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling - a separate, long-running scandal across wider financial services that has mainly affected banks.
The new disclosure came in a first quarter trading statement showing that Argos' like-for-like sales grew by just 0.1% in the 13 weeks to 28 May.
The group blamed poor weather and falling prices for the stuttering performance as well as "cannibalisation" of sales from its own stores as it added new space.
Mr Walden said the planned £1.4bn takeover of the group by Sainsbury's was on course to complete in the third quarter of the calendar year. Competition bodies are currently weighing whether to launch an inquiry into the deal.
The chief executive added: "Given the natural distraction that a transaction such as this can be for our colleagues, on top of the recent sale of Homebase, I am particularly pleased with our performance in the quarter."
A man has died after falling into a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park in the US state of Wyoming.
Colin Nathaniel Scott, 23, of Portland, Oregon, was with his sister and had walked more than 200 yards away from the designated boardwalk when he slipped and fell into the acidic hot spring in the Norris Geyser Basin, park officials said.
Teenagers laugh as steam rises from a hot spring
His sister reported his fall and rangers tried to navigate the highly-fragile crust of the geyser basin to recover his body, but they have now suspended efforts "due to the extreme nature and futility of it all".
A spokeswoman from the park said: "They were able to recover a few personal effects. There were no remains left to recover."
Mr Scott's death occurred in one of the hottest and most volatile areas of the park.
It comes after a number of incidents in which tourists have left the designated path.
"It's sort of dumb, if I could be so blunt, to walk off the boardwalks not knowing what you're doing," said Professor Kenneth Sims, a member of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
"They're scofflaws [a person who flouts a law] essentially, who look around and then head off the boardwalk," he said, adding he was talking generally, not specifically, about Mr Scott's situation.
Mr Scott himself was described as "a very nice young man, a bright spirit" by a former manager.
At least 22 people are known to have died from hot spring-related injuries in and around the park since 1890.
Signs are posted throughout the park, warning people to keep to the designated trails in thermal areas which feature boiling pools, geysers that can blast hundreds of feet into the air and toxic gases.
The crust that makes up the ground in parts of Yellowstone is formed when underground minerals dissolved by the high-temperature water are redeposited on or near the surface.
Communication in the Internet Century usually means using email, and email, despite being remarkably useful and powerful, often inspires momentous dread in otherwise optimistic, happy humans. Here are our personal rules for mitigating that sense of foreboding:
How Google WorksCover of ‘How Google Works,’ by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
1.Respond quickly. There are people who can be relied upon to respond promptly to emails, and those who can’t. Strive to be one of the former. Most of the best—and busiest—people we know act quickly on their emails, not just to us or to a select few senders, but to everyone. Being responsive sets up a positive communications feedback loop whereby your team and colleagues will be more likely to include you in important discussions and decisions, and being responsive to everyone reinforces the flat, meritocratic culture you are trying to establish. These responses can be quite short—“got it” is a favorite of ours. And when you are confident in your ability to respond quickly, you can tell people exactly what a non-response means. In our case it’s usually “got it and proceed.” Which is better than what a non-response means from most people: “I’m overwhelmed and don’t know when or if I’ll get to your note, so if you needed my feedback you’ll just have to wait in limbo a while longer. Plus I don’t like you.”
2.When writing an email, every word matters, and useless prose doesn’t. Be crisp in your delivery. If you are describing a problem, define it clearly. Doing this well requires more time, not less. You have to write a draft then go through it and eliminate any words that aren’t necessary. Think about the late novelist Elmore Leonard’s response to a question about his success as a writer: “I leave out the parts that people skip.” Most emails are full of stuff that people can skip.
3.Clean out your inbox constantly. How much time do you spend looking at your inbox, just trying to decide which email to answer next? How much time do you spend opening and reading emails that you have already read? Any time you spend thinking about which items in your inbox you should attack next is a waste of time. Same with any time you spend rereading a message that you have already read (and failed to act upon).
When you open a new message, you have a few options: Read enough of it to realize that you don’t need to read it, read it and act right away, read it and act later, or read it later (worth reading but not urgent and too long to read at the moment). Choose among these options right away, with a strong bias toward the first two. Remember the old OHIO acronym: Only Hold It Once. If you read the note and know what needs doing, do it right away. Otherwise you are dooming yourself to rereading it, which is 100 percent wasted time.
If you do this well, then your inbox becomes a to‑do list of only the complex issues, things that require deeper thought (label these emails “take action,” or in Gmail mark them as starred), with a few “to read” items that you can take care of later.
To make sure that the bloat doesn’t simply transfer from your inbox to your “take action” folder, you must clean out the action items every day. This is a good evening activity. Zero items is the goal, but anything less than five is reasonable. Otherwise you will waste time later trying to figure out which of the long list of things to look at.
4.Handle email in LIFO order (Last In First Out). Sometimes the older stuff gets taken care of by someone else.
5.Remember, you’re a router.When you get a note with useful information, consider who else would find it useful. At the end of the day, make a mental pass through the mail you received and ask yourself, “What should I have forwarded but didn’t?”
6.When you use the bcc (blind copy) feature, ask yourself why. The answer is almost always that you are trying to hide something, which is counterproductive and potentially knavish in a transparent culture. When that is your answer, copy the person openly or don’t copy them at all. The only time we recommend using the bcc feature is when you are removing someone from an email thread. When you “reply all” to a lengthy series of emails, move the people who are no longer relevant to the thread to the bcc field, and state in the text of the note that you are doing this. They will be relieved to have one less irrelevant note cluttering up their inbox.
7.Don’t yell. If you need to yell, do it in person. It is FAR TOO EASY to do it electronically.
8.Make it easy to follow up on requests. When you send a note to someone with an action item that you want to track, copy yourself, then label the note “follow up.” That makes it easy to find and follow up on the things that haven’t been done; just resend the original note with a new intro asking “Is this done?”
9.Help your future self search for stuff. If you get something you think you may want to recall later, forward it to yourself along with a few keywords that describe its content. Think to yourself, How will I search for this later? Then, when you search for it later, you’ll probably use those same search terms. This isn’t just handy for emails, but important documents too. Jonathan scans his family’s passports, licenses, and health insurance cards and emails them to himself along with descriptive keywords. Should any of those things go missing during a trip, the copies are easy to retrieve from any browsers.
