NEWSLETTER SPRING 2019 To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow Rather like the quote above from the Scottish play that can’t be mentioned, there is a political situation going on which it is no longer acceptable to be mentioned in polite company. Having planned on putting pen to paper in early March for my market update, I feel horribly naïve that I assumed we would know our future by now. The other nagging worry is that by the time I have finished typing this sentence, something else pivotal or dramatic will have happened, whether this be a resignation, a new party, another vote etc. etc. However, life, to a point, goes on and while the politicians enjoy standing around in their circle of self-destruction, there is a property market to report on.   Down but far from out We are some four and half years on from the market peak for the prime London residential market. Statistics tend to provide a somewhat simplistic overview, equally they are as likely to be used strategically to make a particular case. I dislike using generalisations in such a nuanced market but you simply can’t avoid them. So, in general, prime London prices are somewhere around 15% to […]

For a few years now, I have found myself discussing politics more often than the usual drivers and influences behind a mature market such as this. I suspect this will continue as we become ever more entrenched in the heat of battle when it comes to Brexit, Corbyn, Trump’s new world order etc. In order to try to cut down on the waffle and avoid repetition (the biggest challenge when writing regularly about a market that can remain in a consistent state for months leading to years) I have decided to highlight stories or anecdotes that I feel to be relevant, interesting and informative in the hope of providing more context to the market in general. Rental demand surges in prime London as supply levels drop We are seeing the first signs for some considerable time that rents may be starting to rise, with several large agencies noting that tenant demand is increasing fast in prime London, while the supply of rental properties is reducing. Foxtons, who have more offices on the ground than most, reported the number of people searching for rental accommodation in London “increased significantly” across the capital in the final quarter of 2017. LonRes data just released showed a substantial 23% drop in […]

On balance 2017 was a pretty good year. If you were able to put down your newspaper, switch off the TV and chose Classic FM over Talk Radio, you probably found the world was a relatively content place. I am of course talking primarily as an investor but also from a prime London property perspective. I believe it was the first time in history that the FTSE recorded a gain in each and every month of the year. The euro zone kicked firmly in to life ahead of expectations and some of the returns in emerging markets, particularly the more mature Far Eastern markets, were blinding. Fortunes have been made on cryptocurrencies and no fortunes lost in Bond markets, despite many strong predictions. Meanwhile, no crash materialised in the prime London property market, to the contrary, despite a continued easing off in prices in general, the very top end appeared to show signs of a mini resurgence in transaction volume. I should add however that I do not in any way look to close my eyes to some of the real horrors experienced, and being experienced, during the year or to belittle the very big issues of our time. 2017 […]

Voters!….they don’t do what the media tells them, or what the politicians expect from them and what the majority reading this, want from them. No surprise perhaps when the world’s leading democracy votes for a bogus businessman/reality TV star. The UK has flirted with extremes over the past 12 months. Firstly in pursuing a zero compromise, hard Brexit (surely off the table now) and then coming within a few seats of electing a Marxist government (with the focus so much on Corbyn, it’s easy to overlook his henchman John McDonnell who is real old school hard left). Commentators often rather smugly say the electorate get what they want and this implies the UK wanted uncertain, impotent leadership over strong and stable. The final insult to anyone who thought that they understood politics and the will of the people, was labour winning ‘true blue’ Kensington where property values are 6 times the national average. A logical explanation for this could be that the percentage of foreign buyers (who don’t get to vote) is now so high that the core vote is closer to being made up by the considerable number of council tenants that are spread throughout the borough. Some believed […]