Welcome to another edition of property news from around the UK and within the progressive property community.
So let’s start with property news from around the UK and in an article from Landlord Today; London Mayor Sadiq Khan has called for an extension of the eviction ban and a two-year rent freeze in London and although he has no major power over the private rental sector Khan wants the government to give renters the same protection as commercial tenants who have been granted an extension to their eviction until March.
And with the evictions ban ending next week ministers need to take urgent action to prevent people from being evicted from their homes and need to put into place a proper financial support package for those who have fallen into arrears through no fault of their own.
It’s also interesting to note that the reporting of ‘Rogue Landlords’ has seen a rise in complaints with more than 1,400 between March and December 2020 with one in five complainants reportedly claiming an unfair eviction and as a result, the government need to act really quickly in a positive manner.
Kahn is also requesting a government support package that includes grants to help renters clear rent arrears and is asking for more powers to implement a two-year rent freeze in London as an emergency measure.
In other news, award-winning property developers Cable talk about the impact of home builders in 2021 such as BREXIT show home digitalisation, working from home, a potential recession and the upcoming end of Stamp Duty and what effects they will have on the property market.
Let’s look at some of Cable’s thoughts on the housing market in 2021.
- BREXIT is going to to affect the house building market as there is going to be slowdown in the production and delivery of materials manufactured in Europe that are needed for development projects in the UK.
- Most developers may choose to permanently choose to offer site visits by appointment going forwards because it is worked effectively during COVID. So even after COVID comes to an end, it’s likely that developers will only do site visits by appointments and not have a walk-in show homes as we have seen in the past. And this could save developers money.
- Digitalisation during lockdown quickly escalated the importance of online material for video tours to social media and increased photography so that potential buyers can see properties in far more detail before actually viewing them. This is likely to continue and a lot of people have liked the idea of doing virtual viewings as it is a lot more convenient for people and developers will also adopt this.
- Working from home with the anticipation that employers are going to continue to allow a lot of staff to work from home and have the hybrid model of somewhat moving forward. It will be interesting to see how houses developers change the layout and design of new properties to accommodate working from home in the future. This could include bigger spaces for an office or even planned garden offices and it could end up being a really good unique selling point for developers.
- The looming recession hasn’t massively affected the Housing market yey and the reason for that is because of the recent Stamp Duty holiday, but with this ending in March we could start to see the effects of a recession on the housing market and see prices drop and potentially more demand for new build properties.
Progressive Property Community News
Okay, moving on, let’s go look little bit closer to home to the Progressive Property Community.
Co-founder Rob Moore posted in the community recently asking ‘when they think that the property market will start to correct our slow down’
Members of the community commented to say that it perhaps will not slow down until the end of the Stamp Duty Holiday and that when it ends property investors could all see a big crash in the market. It’s also noted that we could head into negative equity and that could massively affect mortgages and the demand for property in the market.
Another member of the community notes that soon after the Government Furlough scheme ends and the funding stops that the housing market will begin to crash.
What I’d like to add is that in reality the property market is affected by unemployment rates and deprivation in specific markets across the country. So if you look back to the property market crash of 2008, house prices didn’t fall by the same percentage across the entire country. There were micro markets and some parts of the country that didn’t fall by a small percentage and others fell dramatically.
So as a property investor you need to monitor the micro markets and make sure that you’re buying property in the right areas with the right strategy during a slowing market, but also making sure that you’re buying property at the right price and value making sure that it has a positive cash flows and potential to add value. You need to do this to protect yourself if the property price falls further as a result of the economic downturn.
