London is made up of 32 boroughs, some of which are host to some of the most expensive properties in the world, which reside next to social housing, owned by the state and rented at around a third of the cost on the open market. London continues to see demand move onwards and upwards as the population is ever increasing from a mix of people who have lived there all their lives, through to those around the UK and abroad looking to find their own fortune! Because of the huge area London covers and the vast differences within it, we don’t like reporting just on ‘London’, so instead have created our own monthly London property report. Read more to find out what's happening to the London prices and rents.
Over the last eleven years I have produced the Belvoir Index to give landlords an up-to-date and accurate picture of what’s actually happening to rents in their area, as opposed to just looking at ‘averages’. The Belvoir Index offers invaluable rental information, not only for the UK on average, but also for each country and region and, most importantly, for individual offices. We not only assimilate and evaluate data from many of the offices around the UK, we also ask for individual feedback from offices in towns and cities in each country. Read the full article to find out what's really happening to rents in your area.
I was recently chatting to Clive Bull on LBC about the up and coming election and housing policies. He asked me an interesting question: are you looking forward to hearing about new government housing policies? My answer surprised me a little, as normally I would just say yes and then go on to talk about existing and proposed policies and their pros and cons, but as I was thinking on my feet, what I actually said was ‘no’, what we really need is practical solutions, not policies. And I do think this is key to sorting out housing problems.
It’s significant that both Rightmove and LSL are reporting prices falling in England and Wales, year on year, for this month, and albeit these are ‘tiny’ falls, they indicate a slowing market. With an election upon us, housing is going to be a key topic, but perhaps not as high as it would be without Brexit still ‘being on the list of ‘to dos’. For all the latest on property prices, read Kate Faulkner's comprehensive report.
BIG NEWS STORY: Rental affordability is ‘spot on’, not that you’d know that from the headlines! The real story from the rental report is that all the headlines accusing ‘greedy landlords’ and ‘letting agents’ of charging extortionate rent and rents ‘sky rocketing’ are incorrect.
