NEWSLETTER AUTUMN 2021 Now it’s London’s turn The most recent figures from Nationwide on the UK housing market are quite an eye catcher. Year on year, prices are up 11%. The reasons for this extraordinary growth in a time of pandemic and multiple lockdowns are many. With the pandemic spreading, the government stepped in with a stimulus measure by suspending Stamp Duty on the first £500,000. An immediate saving of up to £15k in a market where the national average house price stands at £248,857 (Nationwide). This coincided with mortgage rates hitting an all time low with sub 1% five year fix deals being offered from early summer. The pandemic of course slowed the world down and this in turn led to a review, for many, of priorities and lifestyle in general, home and work/life balance being high up on the list.   The result has been a rampant domestic housing market with first-time buyers desperate to take advantage of cheap mortgages and square foot challenged city folk making rapid decisions to escape to the country and live the rural dream. As things stand there is nothing to suggest the market will not continue to rise, albeit the pace will […]

GOOD NEWS FLASH Performance indicators Since our February commentary where we made a number of predictions for the year, we have seen more data on how the market performed in 2020 and have a clearer idea on how it is likely to perform this year. Influential to this was the budget on March 3rd. Furthermore two key studies released this month by the OBR show both consumer and business confidence back to pre-Covid levels with anticipation of a huge surge in economic activity as we come out of lockdown. As a country, we also have an opportunity (albeit a rare one) to feel proud of our performance amid this pandemic thanks to the vaccination programme. We gather quite a few did not receive the February comment and we apologise if this was the case. It can be viewed here however. Market health report 2020 was the first recorded time when property prices rose in a recessionary year. Taking the various market trackers together, the UK house price indices rose somewhere between 7-8% last year. This was quite an extraordinary performance given the circumstances. Reasons are varied, but key to the context was the high level of optimism at the very […]

NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2021 To the future There is really nothing to add when it comes to looking back on 2020. The year ended with a horrible tally of deaths, and it’s all too easy to overlook those still suffering from prolonged illness. Debates naturally raged on government tactics and how it should all have been done differently. As with all crises, we discovered some real heroes and a few villains. On balance, those who were able to remain unaffected directly by the dreadful illness, were able to count their blessings and simply mourn a lost year of international travel, cultural activity and social interaction. Few, if any, of us will have lived through a more extraordinary year and 2021 already looks like another year for the history books after the events in Washington DC on 6th January. We last shared our views in September and so feel the time has come to venture an update on our thoughts as 2021 gets underway. The market in 2020 What a difference a year makes. One year ago, following the extraordinary UK election result in December 2019, the market was in rude health. The first two months of the year saw a surge […]

NEWSLETTER AUTUMN 2020 Strength in adversity Write off the UK property market at your peril, or so it appears. Over the course of the summer there have been some eye-catching reports in the press. The average UK house price now stands at a new high, according to both Halifax and Nationwide’s latest August reports which follow on from HM Land Registry’s most recent figures. What the press is saying… Here are some of the highlights featured in the property press in recent weeks: ‘Rule book rewritten as buyers go on a £37bn summer spending spree,’ according to property portal Rightmove. ‘There is normally a seasonal slowdown in housing market activity over the summer months but not this year.’ House prices ‘are set to hold firm for the remainder of the year,’ predicts Zoopla, despite the onset of a recession and rising unemployment. The portal is standing by its forecast that prices will end 2020 2% or 3% higher than they started it. Resi developer London Square has cheered the best sales performance in its ten-year history, with revenues, completions and profits all up on 2019. Reporting its latest set of annual results, the large-scale operator confirmed it had completed on […]

NEWSLETTER SPRING 2020 ‘Strange’ market update These are indeed strange, if not scary, times. The papers and news bulletins offer up an endless menu of depressing statistics and heart-breaking stories. A macabre league table of deaths by country and cases of celebrity contractions have replaced the gentle pleasure of checking sports results and daily gossip. After the financial crisis of 2008, we were repeatedly told we were ‘all in this together’, nothing is more true today. With our prime minister in hospital and countless household names displaying symptoms, we will all know of people affected. My sister and her whole family are emerging from contracting Coronavirus and their experience is ‘interesting’ to use a classic understatement (one laid low in a bad way for two weeks, one feeling like death for four days followed by a quick recovery and two with mild symptoms albeit very different in nature). None thankfully needed hospital treatment but all are untested and therefore outside of the statistics. In recognising that there are more important things to address, this is simply a brief report on how we, as a business, are experiencing this challenging environment with a few observations on what others are doing as […]