We have had very good and interesting feedback on our recent Building Private Rented Communities (PRC) paper from February 2014. One of the more frequent questions I have been asked is on the rationale behind the new PRC terminology that we are actively encouraging in the market to replace Build-to- Rent. First and foremost, PRCs better reflect the […]
The words ‘bubble’ and ‘housing market’ are enough to make many people pretty uncomfortable, especially with the global financial crisis still fresh in many minds and the UK economy having just begun a slow and gradual recovery. The housing market is showing relatively strong signs of improvement, with house prices recording growth of 0.8% in England […]
The Dubai real estate market is showing signs of recovery for the first time since it was so seriously impacted by the global financial crises in 2008. While the recovery has been led by the hotel market, there are now signs that prices and rents are increasing again in the residential sector. To date this […]
Across the MENA region there is a serious undersupply of affordable housing, which is recognised as one of the underlying causes of the recent social unrest. The need to provide more affordable housing represents one of the most important challenges for governments but also an excellent opportunity for real estate developers and investors. However, developing […]
Several things are clear about the UK housing market. For example, transaction volumes are very low and mortgage lending is not far off the record lows established after the global credit crisis hit. It is also clear that house prices in London are rising. It is not however clear in which direction house prices are […]
The social and political turmoil that has swept through the MENA region over the past 6 months (the Arab Spring) has had a positive but muted impact upon the Dubai real estate market. While increasing demand in some sectors of this traditional ‘safe haven’ this has been insufficient to offset the impact of the Emirates […]
There was the predictable populist attack on bankers, energy firms and oil company profits – but what did the UK budget offer for the property industry. I feel it touched on a multitude of issues: there were some progressive components (new REIT legislation & SDLT reform in particular!), but overall it was thin on the […]
What a seismic shift in mindset it might seem, moving away from owner-occupation as the housing tenure of choice in the UK (as discussed previously on this blog)… but it looks like we might be getting there. We have seen a growing focus, and widespread demand, for the private rental sector to step in and […]
Did Santa Claus visit the House of Commons early? What a gift the Communities secretary delivered for local authorities this week, “a new era of people power”, “overturning decades of central government control”, and the ability to “set up banks, develop property, run new services and own assets”… he could have finished his speech […]
Remember the ‘golden days’ of bank lending? Debt was at record levels and UK and Irish banks provided 70% of the total supply of debt. Banks were the close friends of real estate and lending volumes increased exponentially between the early 1980s and the mid-2000s. However, as the economy began to falter so did the […]
I recently read that the zero carbon homes target is set to be watered down… So how do we encourage home owners to take energy efficiency more seriously in the UK? More than a fifth of homes are rated in bands F or G (the least energy efficient rankings of an EPC) so is […]
I have had to pull my thoughts on the economy together this week as I took the podium at yesterday’s ‘First of the Month’. For those not in the know, this is an hour’s slot where our business teams run through the UK property markets, providing their up-to-the-hour view on rents and yields. For me, […]
…or so the saying goes. But how much longer can this continue? Our Retail 2020 research suggests massive changes in the way we’ll shop over the coming years. The needs of office occupiers are going through a seismic shift and the evolution of logistics networks will affect the industrial sector. When reading our latest UK Residential Market […]
With the cost of owning a home in the UK prohibiting many people from ever becoming owner-occupiers I would like to kick-off the following discussion: should the national government be assuming more responsibility for housing supply, and therefore, pricing dynamics across the UK? Socially, economically and morally I see an argument for the government stepping […]
