The Guardian reports that in the five months since the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission began operating it has seized around 340 properties and frozen the bank accounts of more than 200 parents who defaulted on child maintenance payments.

Latest figures show a record 809,800 children are now benefiting from maintenance payments through the agency.  Compliance by non-resident parents rose to 74.5% and total arrears dropped slightly to £3.78bn.

The Ministry of Justice has begun a consultation on whether property owners who have failed to repay consumer credit debts should have a minimum level of debt before a court can order the sale of their home.

Under the current system, a court can place a 'charging order' on a property if the owner has failed to pay unsecured debts, for example on credit or store cards.  In some cases an 'order for sale' may follow if a judge decides a homeowner can only settle the unsecured debt by selling the property.  There is no minimum level of consumer credit debt required before an order for sale can be issued.

A High Court judge has ordered the destruction of a mock Tudor castle, secretly built on farmland and hidden behind giant bales of straw, because the landowner failed to apply for planning permission.

The Guardian reports Robert Fidler, 61, from Honeycrock farm, Redhill, Surrey started building the luxury four-bedroom property ("complete with ramparts, turrets, a cannon ... and two redundant grain silos transformed into towers") in 2002.

It took him two years to complete construction and he lived in the castle with his wife and son without disturbance (albeit behind haystacks and under a giant tarpaulin) from 2002 until 2006.

BBC News reports many Muslim marriages in the UK are legally invalid.

Muslim couples who have a traditional 'nikah' wedding in the UK but fail to register the marriage are not recognised as married under British law.

The BBC spoke to a young student from Birmingham who learned her nikah was legally invalid when she enrolled at university and was asked to produce a marriage certificate.  "It was then I realised I didn't have one and it came as a big shock to me," she said.

Apparently she asked her husband to register their marriage but he was against the idea.  Then, a few months later, she came home and found that the locks to her front door had been changed and that she had been thrown out of her home:

"I took legal action but I got nothing.  I'd paid the mortgage on the house but my husband held legal title to the property so I lost everything.

"It was as though the marriage had never happened.  It was the worst time of my life."

During a lecture on Family Relationships and the Law yesterday, Gresham College Law Professor Ruth Deech challenged the political and legal establishment with two questions: 

1. Why does the law treat siblings less favourably than married or civil partners?
   
   
2. Why doesn't the law expect adults to care for their parents and grandparents?

The Costa Blanca and Costa Calida Leader reports that 60% of people visiting international property shows in the UK last year indicated a preference for Spain; France came second in the survey; the USA, Australia and New Zealand placed highly too.

The paper, which is targeted at British émigrés living in Spain, says that despite the downturn "there are signs that things are beginning to happen" in the expat property market and that "green shoots of recovery" are starting to make an appearance.

Many people delayed moving abroad in 2009 because of the credit crunch and economic uncertainty.  But now that house prices have bottomed out, hundreds look set to take the plunge and buy the home in the sun they always dreamed about.

Overseas property buyers beware, however: the Leader says it's hearing of "more and more cases concerning expats duped into buying illegal properties or falling foul of a law that has previously been ignored."

In one case, the Leader reports nine British landowners stand to lose their homes in Almeria following a demolition order.  The homes have defective building licences, which local officials blame on the 'speculative interests of professional defrauders' who attract foreign investors by offering cheap land and fail to explain local building restrictions.

December data from the Land Registry shows an annual average house price increase for the first time since May 2008, indicating the UK property market is bouncing back after a torrid 18 months.

Seven regions in England and Wales experienced increases in their average property values over the last 12 months.  The region with the highest annual price change was London with an increase of 6.1%.  The region with the most significant annual price fall was Wales with a movement of -2.5%.

The 2.5% annual average house price increase was accompanied by a slight monthly increase in December of 0.1%.  The average house price in England and Wales now stands at £161,783.

The Ministry of Defence and Department for Communities and Local Government launched a new home ownership scheme yesterday for Armed Forces personnel looking to buy property.

Members of the Armed Forces will be able to claim up to 50% of a property's value under the scheme.  They can also sub-let their properties and will not normally pay any fees on the equity while they remain serving members of the Armed Forces.

BBC News reports a woman who breached an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) banning her from having noisy sex received a suspended prison sentence last week.

Caroline Cartwright, 48, from Washington, Wearside, earlier pled guilty to three counts of breaching the ASBO.

Neighbours, a postman - even a woman who walks past Ms. Cartwright's house to take her child to school - all complained about her blusterous bonking with husband Steve.

Next door neighbour Rachel O'Connor explained: "The noise sounds like they are both in considerable pain.  I cannot describe the noise.  I have never ever heard anything like it."

The Government released new guidance to help local authorities tackle problem roadworks today.

Road works permit schemes give councils more power to coordinate roadworks and take action when they overrun.

Once a scheme is in place companies must apply for a permit before they start roadworks and abide by certain conditions (e.g., on timing and the amount of road space to be left available to road users during the works).

The Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) has warned "unwelcome chickens may be coming home to roost" for people who bought flats in the 1970s and 1980s on relatively short leases of 125 years.  Under the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, leaseholders have the right to extend their leases by 90 years, but the costs of doing so can jump dramatically once the unexpired term of the lease dips below 80 years.

The main reason the cost of extending a lease jumps so dramatically when only 80 years remain is that valuers must take into account marriage value.  Under the Act, marriage value is defined as "the potential for increase in the value of the flat arising from the grant of the new lease" and requires that this "profit" be shared 50:50 between landlords and leaseholders.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders has released new data showing mortgage loans have increased by 67% over the past year.  The figures also show the percentage of income spent on mortgage interest payments is almost 4% lower than twelve months ago and the lowest it has been in thirteen-and-a-half years.

On average, home owners needed only 10.6% of gross income to cover mortgage interest payments in November 2009, down from 11.1% in October. Other than a brief low of 10.2% in the middle of 1996, this is the lowest debt burden on home movers since the Council of Mortgage Lenders started recording this data in 1974.

The Ministry of Justice has issued a press release reminding everyone that the rules on leaving property in trust for future generations are set to change.

The Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 2009 seeks to modernise and simplify trust law and will come into effect on 6 April 2010.

The Act covers two areas of trust law: (1) perpetuities; and (2) accumulations.

Perpetuities

The centuries-old rule against perpetuities will be replaced under the Act by a standard perpetuity period of 125 years.  The perpetuity period limits the length of time that the future ownership of property can be dictated by a person setting up a trust, by will or otherwise.

According to new research from the Halifax, home affordability for potential first-time buyers improved significantly in 2009.  The Halifax First-Time Buyer Annual Review shows the average price paid by a first-time buyer was affordable for someone on average earnings in nearly four in ten (39%) of local authority districts.

This represents a substantial improvement on 2007, the zenith year for property prices, when only 6% of areas were affordable. 

The proportion of disposable income devoted to mortgage payments by a potential new first-time buyer on average income - a measure of affordability that includes the impact of interest rate changes - has almost halved from a peak of 50% in June 2007 to 27% in November 2009. 

The current level is below the average over the past 25 years of 34%.

This improvement in affordability arises from a combination of lower house prices and interest rate reductions.   

Commenting on the figures Halifax housing economist Martin Ellis said: