WEEKLY NEWS ROUNDUP – 16/06/2023
A roundup of the week’s top property and proptech news stories in partnership with Proptech-X
With banks failing, technology companies imploding and the UK housing market going backwards, just what is going on in 2023
If you live long enough you see all the same cycles come around, the UK housing market goes from boom to bust, interest rates move from low to high, banks fail and technology companies become dust overnight.
The problem is that all of these things are happening at the same time, and unlike at the start of the century, when the world was not full of digital natives and we are all plugged in matrix style, it seems that ‘bad things’ are coming at us at a rate of knots.
On the micro-level, in my street there are four houses for sale, one was sold last year for £450,000 it completed in autumn 2022. The new owners are moving on – with a listing price of £450,000. Five months later they still wait for a buyer as does everyone else.
Autumn was the hightide of Rishi’s giveaway SDLT giveaway washing through the market and the start of the Bank of England increasing rates, which will mean very soon a two year fixed will be above 6%, a whopping amount if you were used to paying 0.9%. The new Chancellor Mr Hunt (himself a millionaire) says that wage inflation means homeowners with mortgages need to suck it up. In the general election I think they may well have thoughts on that.
Since the demise of Silicon Valley Bank, and the failure of four other major banks, though we are not in the 2008 global meltdown of the banking system, there is clear signs of a lack of liquidity. The polite term for saying that many banks are sitting on certain assets that may in fact be quite toxic, which means that they may find themselves struggling to function. The outcome, prohibitively high rates for commercial lending impacting economic growth.
Has 3Di already built the proposed UK landlord portal
As a journalist, editor and Proptech analyst, to name but a few of the hats I wear, necessarily I spend a lot of my life reading and analysing company reports, data and more boringly sometimes government whitepapers or the actual acts when they pass into law.
I have for some time sensed that much of what the government dreams up regarding the property world, is in fact coming to us from across the pond or similar. A case in point, a hot topic at present, is the possibility of a Landlord portal for all in the UK.
Reproduced in full is the Gov.uk explainer, it makes for interesting reading. It is then followed by a piece by a Proptech company who is a client of mine, based in America 3Di systems, who seems to have been doing this ‘new’ iniative very successfully some time ago.
Source www.gov.uk/guidance/privately-rented-property-portal-renters-reform-bill
Nicky Stevenson MD of Fine & Country feels optimistic about housing market
Despite a drop in the number of sales and a recorded softening of house price growth, headwinds to the market look set to improve in the near term. This is according to Nicky Stevenson, MD of premium estate agency Fine & Country, who add that the predicted soft landing will be the most likely outcome, supported by a strong labour market, growing consumer confidence and an increasing acceptance of a higher mortgage rate environment.
Stevenson notes that the UK HPI indicates a modest start to the year, showing a property market still iced over by the mini-budget fallout. “A gentle slowdown of 1.2% was recorded between February and March, but up 4.1% year-on-year. Nationwide has recorded house price growth softening, with a 0.1% month-on-month fall in May, following a 0.4% rise in April.
Rightmove however, paints a much more positive picture, with a monthly increase of 1.8% in May on the average price of a property coming to market, the biggest jump of the year so far,” she says. “Despite tougher market conditions, the market is showing stable resilience.
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