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 […]

NEWSLETTER WINTER 2020 Colour returns to the London property market Maybe, just maybe, we can now stop fixating on politics. Looking back at my missives over the past five years, it’s been the dominant theme that simply could not be ignored. As boring as Brexit became, our political story was able to throw up endless shocks and surprises that caught out all the commentators. Whether it was a Tory/LibDem coalition, the vote for Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn elected leader of the opposition or Boris Johnson’s ‘stonker’ of a majority, there will be few who took the odds on any of those outcomes. The change of mood in the country since 12th December is palpable. Whichever side of whichever political argument you sit, the clarity and direction provided by the 31st January date for leaving the European union and the powerful mandate of an 80-seat majority presents an ability to look towards the future, something that has been lacking for so long. Property comes back into focus The truth is that the UK property market has held up pretty well over these past few years. The broad national house market has shown consistent year on year growth, ending up 2.2% in 2019. […]

NEWSLETTER AUTUMN 2019 A time to buy? Once more it is impossible to attempt writing a comment on the market without making reference to the UK political situation. Indeed it is some months since I last put pen to paper, such has the political climate appeared so dominating and the situation forever changing. As critical as the politics are, the truth is that this market has (to a degree) just carried on despite it all. For sure, transactions are well down and prices off their dizzying highs. Estate agents are going to the wall (as if we were short of them!) and developers are restructuring debts as they accept sales will likely take years and not months. But as any opportunistic investor quickly learns, particularly those licking their lips as they relish buying cheap sterling, this buyer’s market is stubbornly devoid of any distress. I would suggest any other country going through such a political farce, would see riots on the streets, waves of capital outflow and a complete collapse of confidence, in property and all else. This is a peculiarly British crisis. If markets have a stiff upper lip, this one seems to! Five years on We are now […]

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 […]