Property Market Weather Report
September 4, 2024
We take a look at the property scene as we enter the prime post summer and back-to-school market.
Confusion reigns, and we all get wet, or at least some do. Others carry umbrellas. The property market is in one of its more confusing phases and there are some essential things that we need to learn, such as what will happen in one of the most hotly anticipated budgets for decades this autumn. Will it, for instance, affect inheritance and capital gains taxes, and what will that mean to property buyer and seller sentiment? Will the result of the US general election send a shock wave to our economy in November?
We need to find out whether the government’s plan to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years is realistic. Has anyone worked out that it will mean over 800 houses being finished across the country every day? We are now two months into this government. That means roughly 50,000 homes should have been built thus far to stay on target. Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he wants to work at speed. He will certainly need to.
But there are things we do know which will give us confidence that entering the property market this autumn shouldn’t risk a soaking. We know that mortgage rates are slowly decreasing, and that each rate drop brings more buyers into the market. These buyers are also buoyed by reported falling costs and improving job stability. The result is more buyers at a time when increasing numbers of properties are becoming available. This greater equilibrium should stabilise the market, at least until the end of the year.
Fortune hunters favour market turbulence, but the rest of us favour balance. Some buyers will eagerly study the trends, trying to anticipate the moment some personal algorithm or cost/risk ratio analysis alerts them that financial opportunity has reached its zenith. But for most of us life events like getting a mortgage, securing a job, running out of space, the school holidays and Christmas are the catalysts that occasion a home move and actually drive the market as a whole. So it’s OK to weather the market this autumn. Certainly there will be one or two showers so take an umbrella, but overall the outlook is sunny.
