The annual FT Weekend Festival went virtual this you and I joined Aneisha Beveridge, Hamptons research director, Nathan Brooker, FT House & Home deputy editor to discuss the strange 2020 housing market and what the future might hold. One of the most popular sessions of the three day event I’mContinue Reading

Since the market re-opened (in England on 13th May) we’ve had lots of anecdotal indications on what is happening to the housing market and more importantly to prices and we’ve had some detail on asking prices but we have yet to see any concrete data on what buyers have beenContinue Reading

Nobody knows what’s going to happen to the housing market, to prices or to transaction volumes over the coming months and years. There are as many opinions as there are people you ask. Most optimists happen to be estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage brokers and to be fair they areContinue Reading

The Chancellor has announced a Stamp Duty holiday to take immediate effect and which will run until the end of the financial year. The details have been published and the official online Stamp Duty calculator has been updated so you can calculate the tax you will owe. SDLT is dueContinue Reading

You’d be surprised how many people equate ‘value’ with an asking price. It’s not hard to see why – agents call their pre-marketing pitches “valuations” and sellers often mistake of choosing an agent to sell their property based on the asking price they recommend. The asking price is all partContinue Reading

The Government has unlocked the housing market and the sales and lettings agents are getting back to work. Advice on moving home, how to view a property and what agents should do has been published here.Continue Reading

Almost half of the questions I get at the moment is from people who have negotiated a deal and are moving towards exchange of contracts on their purchase and they’re reading that perhaps house prices may fall after the Pandemic. Time after time during the Live Q&A I did forContinue Reading

The Bank of England has issued a pretty bleak warning that the economy is heading towards the mother of all recessions. The Bank’s latest Financial Stability Report makes for somber reading. The Bank’s scenario was consistent with a 16% drop in house prices. One in seven mortgage holders has takenContinue Reading

Lock down has been extended for another three weeks but even then it seems difficult to work out what might happen to the housing market, to transaction volumes and to prices. In past crisis the market has at least ticked over but for now there are almost no transactions makingContinue Reading

Of course what everyone would like to know is “what will happen to house prices once this is over?”. On Twitter I find there are quite a few estate agents who would prefer not to speculate – one or two feel that it would be self-fulfilling to do so butContinue Reading