Breaking Property News – 01/09/2023
Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X.
novvy says surging rental prices, will outpace slowing house price growth
As Rightmove announces today that residential house sale completions are down by 20%, one real estate industry expert has some good news for those in the property sector, and why the lettings sector for investors is likely to pay dividends.
“I’ve witnessed first-hand the seismic shifts in the UK’s real estate landscape. The dynamics of surging rental prices juxtaposed against a backdrop of slowing house price growth have created a housing market narrative that demands our attention,” says Ashish Saraff, Founder and CEO of novvy.
The UK property market is going through an exciting metamorphosis in an unexpected turn that has stunned market analysts. According to Ashish Saraff, recent figures acquired from reliable sources reflect this transition. The tug-of-war between rising rental prices and a discernible slowdown in house price increases best illustrates this dynamic and paints a clear picture of the market’s current position.
Remarkable numbers from August this year set the stage for this story. Rightmove has reported a 1.9% decline in average asking prices, or £7,012. This decline contradicts the typical summer slowdown, which registered an August decline of 0.9%. What seems to have sparked this change? The Bank of England’s Base Rate is impressively high at 5.25%, the highest level since 2008, amidst strong inflation. Potential investors have been discouraged by rising borrowing costs, which has led to a considerable 15% decrease in the number of completions agreed upon year over year.
Saraff says, “Reality is setting in, albeit slowly. Vendors who wish to sell either must face reality and lower their prices or be ready to hold for a couple of years until BBR comes back to 2-3%. One cannot keep expecting their property to sell at 5-6% cap rate with BBR being where it is.”
Will Ai Replace Real Estate Agents? Wesley Snow CEO of Ascendix has some answers
Wesley Snow, CEO of Ascendix is a veteran of the both the ever changing real estate space and the emergent technology that looks to power the industry, and with AI becoming a deafening noise, he has some insightful takes on what is around the corner.
Wesley Snow, ‘The potential impact of AI on job displacement has raised concerns, with Goldman Sachs predicting that the technology could render 300 million full-time jobs obsolete. This raises the question: Was Elon Musk correct in describing the pursuit of AI as a “dangerous” arms race? Here’s my point of view on this: although AI, in some very creative ways, is changing the way property business is done, ai replacing real estate agents does not seem possible anytime soon. I believe too many augmentations will be needed until the tool can replace any job at all.
However, just considering how quickly Open AI, the company behind the renowned chatbot, is growing and establishing some of the most revolutionary collaborations, these augmentations might not take long to take place. Just look at the recent news about Salesforce’s intentions to incorporate ChatGPT enterprise-grade AI technology into one of their flagship products – Einstein GPT – to allow users to ask natural-language prompts (i.e., conversational questions) directly within Salesforce CRM.
Property Inspect explains the importance of going from paper to data
Full disclosure, as well as being the Editor & owner of Proptech-X, I do in my other position a CEO of Proptech-PR ‘A consultancy for Proptech Founders’ have an association with Property Inspect, similarly though I have no commercial ties, and I often have the delight of meeting Andrew Knight from RICS, when we are on seminars or I am hosting events and he is a key speaker, this man is an polymath and I would warmly suggest that anyone in need of enlightenment reaches out to Andrew. The following piece was first published, in a slightly different format earlier this month.
Thought Leadership by Property Inspect.
‘There’s no denying the value of data to power the operations of forward thinking businesses. A Harvard Business review study recently revealed that companies making data-driven decisions are more profitable than their competitors. This realisation has caused the rethinking of models across the banking and insurance sectors, but commercial property companies on the whole have been slow to catch on. Speaking to Forbes, technology investor Louisa Xu picked up on this, saying that although real estate is the largest asset class in the world, “it is one of the last to adopt technology.”
However, there has been a gradual switch from using pen, paper and spreadsheets to adopting integrated property management technologies – going from documents to data. This enables the collection and analysis of commercial property data at a much more impactful scale, and, as such, data-driven technologies are being leveraged for an overall competitive advantage.
ection advisory network of TenetLime. If the deal goes through LSL’s ranks will be swelled by over 230 advisers with a possible tranche of nearly 50 to be passed across in the near future.
If you have a view – please let us all know by emailing me at editor@estateagentnetworking.co.uk – Andrew Stanton Executive Editor – moving property and proptech forward. PropTech-X
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