“They don’t ring a bell at the top of the market, but if they did, the sound would be deafening!”
Up until recently, the residential property market, between £1million-£3million in the Capital, has been as busy as we have seen it in a very long time. Very few properties were coming on to the market for sale, and the stock selection was scarce at best; when a fresh new seller eventually appeared, there was a ‘bun fight’ between estate agents to nab the instruction. Continue reading
One of the major planks of Margaret Thatcher’s deregulation initiatives, during the 80s, was to allow council house tenants to buy their own homes and become part of the ‘great British property-owning society’. A purchase then for circa £60,000, is today worth circa £6-700,000. One of the fortunate former tenants now has a nest egg, invariably free of debt, which when sold could buy a smaller property for themselves and release a handsome amount of cash that could provide a quasi-pension for their old age and possibly, in addition, give their offspring a ‘leg up’ by way of a deposit on their homes.
Although the mass-suicide of lemmings is disputed (apparently, they’re just following biological urges and can’t always see the edge of a cliff), it would seem that property valuers and analysts are indulging in the same behaviour. The rumour-mill has been cranking out reports that prices in the residential property market will undergo a significant correction of circa 14% after the Spring of 2021.
Is this prescient foresight or doom ‘n’ gloom prognostication? Let’s look at the economic fundamentals.
One side-effect of all this Covid chaos is the growing chasm between residential property consumers and the parlous state of the economy. Continue reading