Prime Central London is becoming the new hub for Silicon Valley’s tech executives

Some notable figures who have made the move include Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and Meta’s chief marketing officer Alex Schultz who have made the move to London in the past year. In fact, Americans were involved in half of all prime central property deals in London last year.

Some of the reasons for this migration are London’s less expensive house prices compared to the Bay Area, a favorable exchange rate, its six airports and education system in addition to a more cost-friendly staff and favourable research and tax credits given by the government.

London’s rising popularity among tech executives is also supported by some of the tech giants’ expanding their operations in the UK which has cemented London as the tech capital of the world.

All of this spells good news for the overall London property market and not just prime locations as it will have a ripple effect across the Capital.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, Jun 18th 2023

Manchester and Bristol Ranked Top UK Cities for Property Growth

A comprehensive study by leading real estate company CBRE ranked these two as the top cities for growth over the next ten years followed by Brighton, Leeds, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Manchester ranked highly due to its vast and diverse employment opportunities ranging from tech companies based in MediaCityUK to life sciences and environment. It also has one of the largest student populations in Europe at 750,000 which caused student accommodation to rank highest for future growth. Similarly, Bristol’s tech ecosystem and highly ranked universities are major factors positively affecting its growth potential although, unlike Manchester, average house prices are among the highest of the cities analysed at £360,000.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, Jun 11th 2023

Slight Fall in UK House Prices but Outlook Remains Positive

According to leading UK lender Nationwide’s latest house price index, there was a 0.1% fall in prices in May. This follows Rightmove’s latest update which reported a 1.8% increase using slightly different criteria. Both entities anticipate a positive outlook provided interest rates remain stable. Nationwide’s Chief Economist did acknowledge that the recent disappointing inflation figure is likely to lead to further rate increases in the short term. However, Nationwide remains of the view that there will be a relatively soft landing given the strong labour market and reasonably solid household balance sheets. Over and above this, as we have commented on many times, new housing supply continues to lag demand.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, Jun 4th 2023

London Named Best City Brand in the World

The inaugural Brand Finance City index released recently ranked London first ahead of New York and Paris in second and third place respectively based on a survey of 15,000 people in 20 countries across all continents. Along with asking about familiarity, the survey looked at the top 100 cities in the world in terms of living, studying, working locally or remotely, retiring, investing and visiting. London ranked first in two of the seven key criteria – study and visit – and top 4 in every other. Over and above these criteria, when one considers that London is still the dominant financial hub in Europe, it is easy to see why real estate in the city remains a compelling investment.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, May 21st 2023

UK Housing Market Stabilises

Zoopla’s latest house price index for May 2023 revealed that the housing market is as balanced as it has been for many years with buyer demand and sales volumes recovering, leading the company to conclude that a major correction is very unlikely. In fact, Zoopla expects an annual price fall of only 1% for 2023 which underlines the resilience of the UK property market and once again is proving the doomsayers wrong. Despite the rapid rise in interest rates, tougher stress testing rules for banks have averted widespread defaults which occurred in previous cycles. With banks offering competitive deals and rapidly rising rentals, first time buyers are rushing to enter the market and made up the biggest percentage of buyers this year.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, May 7th 2023