2019 London Property Forecast

Happy 2019, I hope the year is off to a great start for you, it’s definitely off to a great start for me I’m looking forward to continuing the momentum of 2018 which was actually my best year in the business
as I worked with landlords, buyers, renters and sellers helping them achieve their goals.

So where did we end up in 2018?
2018 was definitely a challenging year as we know, I came to you several times during the course of the year, and we saw the overall transactions were down and housing prices declined anywhere from 1-4% depending on area and depending on the statistics and the sources you read the information from, and that’s not surprising as Brexit continues to loom and creating uncertainty and giving buyers and sellers a reason to wait and sit on the sidelines and wait things out. However, as I’ve said multiple times, there’s always a reason to sell and buy one of the things we know, and statistics do show this, is that on boxing day, The Daily Mail reported a 2 million viewer increase, year on year in terms of the number of buyers looking on the portals looking at potential properties to buy.
So we do know that buyers are out there, but we also know is that in uncertain times they want to see value, and that’s what’s really going to cause them to take action. That’s where we try to advise sellers
and when we talk to sellers, it’s all about  understanding their strategy,why are they looking to sell, what are they trying to achieve, and then our job is to give them the best information, arm them with a bespoke marketing strategy, to demonstrate how we are going to expose their property to the widest possible audience and then negotiate strongly on their behalf.

We certainly see a lot of agents right now undercutting our commission, with the strategy of taking on as many listings as possible, recognising that they are only going to get a fraction of them sold and achieve the goals. Whereas for every listing we take on, we want to work harder than anyone else to make sure that we achieve the goals for our clients and that often comes with demonstrating the value that we bring.
So, what does 2019 look like?

There definitely continues to be uncertainty with Brexit, I’m not sure it’s actually going to happen, but even if it does, we know that there is going to be several more years as the UK has to renegotiate trade deals. We know that interest rates will likely increase as well, creating more buyer affordability issues. We know that additional tax changes impacting landlords continue to rack up so that’s going to have impact.

There’s so many different factors, and that’s why we want to make sure that when we talk to our clients, we help them understand the overall environment, but then be specific to them as well.

So, if you are thinking about buying or selling in London, or struggling to sell with your current agent, or want to consider other options then please get in touch, you can always find me on Social Media, you know I love showing off London, talking to you, sharing different parts of the capital I’m on Twitter and Instagram, I’m also on Facebook and Linkedin.

So I look forward to keeping in touch, coming back to you and if you have any questions in the meantime, do get in touch.