Main photo: Cheshire excess £10,000,000 (Alderley Edge)
Front cover and far right: Anglesey £1,750,000 guide (Chester)
Welcome surge in prestige house and holiday home sales driven by availability, as a calmer market encourages owners who must sell to buy, to make their move.
In Chipping Campden, Rupert Wakley’s Cotswold team has enjoyed a revival in sales above £2 million to levels not seen there since the SDLT changes of nearly a decade ago. Many other regions, especially the South West and North West (where shortage of stock remains an obstacle) have seen similar if less dramatic increases in high end sales. Nor is the readiness of the more monied amongst us to spend their money, restricted to the purchase of main homes. We have seen an increase in holiday home purchases, too. In this, our experience echoes the most recent update to the English Housing Survey, to which we shall return.
First though, a little dose of reality. Like a tax on buying, higher interest rates suppress inflation and sales. That is their purpose and, in mid-summer, our year-on-year volume of sales was down, as was our number of wouldbe buyers and property viewings. In most areas (less so in the North) prices are down, too, on those of the ‘pre-Truss’ era, though not dramatically.
Stock levels were, and remain, up. For those who want to both sell and buy, this is good: there are houses for sale, to see. A year ago, few houses were on the market for as much as a couple of days. Pressure to commit was intense and non-cash buyers felt all but excluded.
Paradoxically, the higher stock resulting from higher interest rates is encouraging confidence amongst owners that they will find the house
they want, so they are putting their property on the market, too. In particular, owners of larger, more prestigious properties – often retired –who want to downsize, can now find what they want and proceed at a pace that suits them. This greater availability of the very best houses is exactly what the high end buyers have been waiting for and, because higher interest rates are less of an obstacle (and often a benefit) when you have money, they need not hesitate.
That literal tax on buying, stamp duty, gets very high at the high end: over £150,000 at two million and over £270,000, at three. This favours those looking for a long-term home. It also, according to Daryl Parr at our Colchester office, makes buyers keen to get it right: “They give lots of detail, ask dozens of questions and check out areas, village by village. When they do buy, it’s with genuine commitment to the location, which is tremendously welcome.”
It helps that a significant proportion of purchasers are able to secure some measure of SDLT relief. Properties which qualify can include those with some non-residential use and those with a separate dwelling (see
A significant proportion secure some SDLT relief
Right: Dorking
£2,000,000 guide (Dorking)
Below: Worcestershire
£4,500,000 guide (Chipping Campden)
‘Multiple Dwelling Relief’ on the gov.uk website). This is a complex area but, even at lower price levels, the sums involved are so large that it’s best to get specialist advice before you set your budget. You might have more than you expect.
The turmoil of recent years has been so great that mere mention of the major causes (pandemic, Brexit and war in Ukraine) can cause eyes to roll. Their impact continues
regardless. It is evident in the expansion of commuter belts and need for work spaces at home, in the demand for energy efficient homes and, builders still being elusive and expensive, in premiums for fully renovated and new properties. One trend, reported in the latest update to the government's English Housing Survey, is perhaps typical of our times: more UK holiday home owners (60%) now have a holiday home in the UK, than abroad. This reverses the position of a decade ago when the ‘overseas majority’ was,
appropriately perhaps, 52/48. Feedback from our coastal offices suggests that the cause is not just the 90 day EU Schengen area limit. It’s also that families who moved out of London and other major cities during the lockdowns, liked it. They now want a bolt-hole they can enjoy at any time of the year, without having to get there via an airport and passport check. The English Housing Survey also showed a jump in vacant stock of nearly 4%, or 34,000 dwellings. This was seen as shockingly wasteful by the press and charities for the homeless, but the period in question included the rather more shocking figure of 123,000 excess deaths due to Covid 19. Bearing in mind that securing probate and selling a house rarely takes less
than six months, taking average figures for ages, home ownership and those living alone, it is possible that almost all of that increase resulted from the pandemic. Indeed, the region with the highest average age – the South West – also saw, at 7.8%, by far the greatest jump in the proportion of vacant homes. Looking ahead, we expect the combination of high interest rates and a national shortage of homes, to favour an active but slower mainstream market, with resistance to the downward pressure on prices. The high end is not immune from these factors, but it is heavily insulated, especially while buyers enjoy a long-awaited increase in supply.
Above: West Sussex £1,600,000 guide (Midhurst)
Below: Somerset £2,250,000 guide (Taunton)
Opposite page, top: Cambridgeshire £9,250 pcm (Newmarket)
Bottom: Kent £3,750 pcm (Cranbrook)
High rents for well-located larger houses are persuading many owners beyond the traditional corporate ex-pat world, to rent out the family home.
We have seen an increase in supply of higherend rental properties, almost across the board. Indeed, our Northampton office entered the summer having already let more than double its usual number of larger houses, for an entire year and the average monthly rent for the admittedly niche portfolio of our Alderley Edge office, is now £5,350. Sarah Leslie, our Lettings Manager at Sevenoaks, says that monthly rents of £4,000 or more, get owners thinking about options. “Historically, this market was driven by senior PLC executives taking jobs abroad and their families would always move during the school summer holidays. The timing of this year’s supply has been much more haphazard, because new kinds of owners are deciding to let.” Instead of moving to where the parents will work, a growing number of work-from-anywhere families are moving abroad to live where they want their children to go to school. Other ‘digital nomads’, without children, are letting to simply try life in a new country. Meanwhile, just as recently retired owners are using rental income to fund travel and all sorts of adventures here and overseas, so much older owners, faced with a care home bill of £7,000 or more a month, are realising that, between rental and pension income, they might
be able to cover it. Some of the demand is from less traditional sources, too. For anyone newly wealthy who plans to move within a few years but wants a good home today, renting a £2 million house is now the smarter option. In most areas, demand is keeping pace with supply, even if their timing is less in-step.
The additional costs and regulations heaped upon landlords (interest rate rises being just the latest) have prompted some sales from within our managed portfolio, but not the “exodus” reported elsewhere. The sellers tend to be more highlygeared, non-incorporated landlords for whom property investment has been a sideline. Higher rents and some government soft-pedalling on the next rounds of regulations (see page 15) are persuading most professional investors to ‘hold’. Recent ONS figures on the national stock of private rental properties confirm this trend, recording a decline of just 0.6%. Given that our population keeps rising, especially in the south east, this suggests that rent rises will continue to test the limits of affordability for the foreseeable future.
A small selection of some of the eye-catching country houses that we have sold over recent months.
Desire to live in the capital is at an all-time high
Confidence in our great city is stronger than ever. The London property market has been incredibly busy with demand from buyers and tenants continuing to grow. The number of people looking through us for their next home is increasing year on year, and in London alone, we are arranging over 2,000 viewings per month.
We have offices positioned in the desirable locations of Mayfair and Pimlico in prime central London, and Teddington, Richmond, Wimbledon and Weybridge in Greater London. We can support and advise our clients and customers across
the UK no matter their requirements, making us the first choice for those looking to move or invest in the capital.
“Our experience, local knowledge and service standards are vital to our success, which is why over 70% of our new business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations,” says Harry Buchanan our Sales Director at the Pimlico & Westminster office, “This is evident by the increase in the number of new instructions across our London network which is up by an average of 43 per cent compared to this time last year.”
Demand for well-priced, good-quality property has driven a steady increase in property prices.
“Our experience, local knowledge and service standards are vital to our success, which is why over 70% of our new business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations”
With the current base rate now just over 5%, lending rates have also increased but this hasn’t deterred buyers, who are still pressing on with their planned moves.
Tim Firth, Sales Director explains, “In Weybridge, there are two markets operating, the local market with buyers upsizing and downsizing within the same town and those moving out of London and into Surrey, a trend that has increased exponentially over recent years. Buyers are still buying for the same reasons they always have, location, lifestyle and value for money”.
Demand for rental homes across the capital remains at record levels with more tenants opting for long-term tenancies than ever before. Our Corporate Lettings and International Relocation team are receiving hundreds of enquiries each week from largescale corporations looking to relocate their staff to London, giving our landlords access to top-quality, professional tenants.
Alex McConnell, Lettings Director of Pimlico & Westminster explains, “London is iconic which is why the desire to live here means we’re receiving enquiries from all around the world - professionals and students alike. With a lack of supply, London needs more landlords than ever before, especially with more than 70 per cent of tenants choosing to renew their contracts, meaning less property is coming back to the market.”
“Tenants are also drawn to the Greater London suburbs. The abundance of space, privacy and value for money are important factors”, says Joe Hartnett, Lettings Director of Weybridge, “We are regularly dealing with CEOs and professional athletes who are specifically looking for homes on private roads and estates across Weybridge, Leatherhead and Oxshott. We recently let a five bedroom home in Oxshott with an asking price of £15,000 pcm, making us the agent of choice for luxury property in Surrey.”
Providing the very best service to our clients and customers is an important part of what we do. Our landlords and tenants are supported by our proactive Property Management team, who are never more than 15 minutes away from a
property should an issue arise. Our proactive approach builds rapport with the tenant and keeps arrears to an absolute minimum - only 1% of our landlords experience rent arrears against a national average of 36% (according to the National Landlords Association).
Our clients understand that London is a brilliant place to invest and we’re here to support them through their property journey. We expect that demand will remain strong throughout the year as buyers and tenants continue to flock to London and its surrounding areas.
Opposite page: Cornwall, from £795,000 guide. All apartments at this new St Ives development have 999 year leases.
Timetables remain uncertain for new laws which promise seismic impacts on both long leasehold and rental property. In July 2023, speeches were made by Michael Gove and Housing Minister Rachel MacLean to underline their desire to push through leasehold reform “within this Parliament”, i.e. in 2024. Their plan includes measures to:
• Give leaseholders the right to extend lease agreements to 990 years “as often as they wish, at zero ground rent”
• Abolish marriage value (already abolished for leases over 80 years) to reduce the cost of extending a lease
• Enable holders of long leases, to buy out the ground rent without extending the lease and to cap the price of doing so.
It’s thought that steps will be taken to sweeten the pill for apartment building freeholders, perhaps because all reforms appear to strengthen the hand of the leaseholder.
The leasehold reforms could be on the statute books by the end of 2024, but it’s looking tight. In contrast, that deadline looks impossible for the Renters Reform Bill, which had its first reading in May 2023. Indeed, because of the need for a General Election, it’s unlikely to pass until Autumn 2025 at the earliest. When it does, we are promised it will ban fixed term tenancies in favour of open agreements with minimum notice periods. It will also ban landlords from evicting tenants other than on specific grounds. That sounds alarming, but they include:
• Landlord or close family member to live in the property
• Property to be sold or redeveloped
• Tenant failing to pay the rent
• Tenant engaging in, or “capable of causing”, anti-social behaviour.
Between them, these cover almost every eviction we see. The primary effect of the legislation is thus to make the detailed checks which we routinely carry out on the suitability of each tenant, all the more essential. Similarly, even though the Bill also appears to make the process of increasing rents more difficult, with good management, it need not be so. Landlords must serve formal notice of any proposed increase. Where tenants believe the rent proposed exceeds market value, they can refer the matter to tribunal via a newlyestablished ombudsman. This process should, we are promised, be swifter and less expensive than at present. In our view though, it should rarely be necessary. If a mechanism for determining market value was agreed at the outset, this would all but eliminate room for valid dispute. If so, rents could keep pace via a near automatic and, most importantly, annual process which could be more predictable and less stressful, for tenant and landlord alike.
Further information: House of Commons Library Leasehold reform in England and Wales: What’s happening and when?
Niche builders prosper via creativity, local sensitivity and getting on with the job. Should the system give them a fairer chance to compete with the nationals?
We have to declare a degree of partiality here. Serving, as we do, the middle and upper echelons of the market, the new homes builders for whom we act tend to be the smaller, more specialist firms who speculate on plots rejected by mainstream builders for being too small or idiosyncratic. In doing so, and in order to make a profit, our clients often have to deploy a level of site-specific creativity and local market awareness rarely required of their high volume counterparts. As a result, smaller firms lead the residential market in disciplines such as energy efficiency, low carbon structures, landscape sensitivity and smart technologies. Many of them, we are only too aware, would readily handle bigger projects but find that high costs and long delays in securing detailed planning permission, effectively block access to all but the national players. This is frustrating not only for them but also for local people who would prefer the arguably superior and often faster solutions offered by smaller, more local businesses. For example, having sold many of them, we know that almost all new homes with A-rated energy performance certificates (EPCs) are built by niche firms. According to Inside Housing magazine, only two builders of A-rated homes
have completed more than 100 such units in the last 12 months and they are both housing associations. The position is improving slowly and much has been made elsewhere of a five year increase in A-rated homes from 1% to 4% of all new builds. But that hides the fact that their actual number has barely doubled, to nearly 9,000. The percentage is high because the volume house builders have been cutting production of everything else. Barratt, to take just one example, started the year with a 4.4 year land bank, detailed planning permission for over 47,641 homes but an expectation of only “16,500 to 17,000 completions” in 2023*. They have since cut this to as little as 13,250. Barratt is not alone in holding back: the Local Government Association estimates there are over one million unbuilt new homes for which planning permission has been granted, the vast majority of which lie within the land banks of high volume builders. Small house builders cannot afford to do this. Securing a decent margin and juggling cash flow is often a
Above and below: Underground house in Greater Manchester £3,500,000 guide (Hale)
Above: North Devon from £525,000 guide (Barnstaple)
Below: Kent (plot only) excess £650,000 (Sevenoaks)
nerve-testing battle. They have to build. In August 2023, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it would, as part of a study into the housing market, investigate in detail whether some builders are using their immense land banks to limit competition and regulate supply, and whether there is real competition between smaller firms and the national players, to buy sites. Looking at the astonishing variety, attention to detail and customer commitment offered by the smaller firms, we suspect that, if they did have access to some of the larger plots they covet, their proposals would attract far less opposition. In our experience, local people often have no objection to new development in principle: they just want it to be good. If so, smaller firms might, given the chance, collectively increase our national stock of housing at a faster rate than their outsized rivals. We shall watch the CMA’s progress with interest.
*Source: Barratt Developments PLC Half Year 2023 Results
We are advising clients against a wait-andsee approach when it comes to locking in to recently reduced mortgage rates. While there is a sense of excitement about the prospect of a rate war or a substantial dip in mortgage rates over the coming months, market conditions do not align with such expectations. The hopes come from genuine signals: a ‘double dip’ of rate reductions over the summer, a slowing of the property market and suggestions from the Bank of England’s Chief Economist and its Governor that its rate is at, or near, peak. These are, though, waves at the surface of a sea change. The Bank has spent nearly two years marching us up the interest rate hill, from a low point never seen before (0.1% from March 2020 to December 2021). When we start climbing back down again, it will be at a slower pace, to somewhere more historically typical.
The ONS’s recent, rosier picture of UK postpandemic GDP does not help the odds of rate reductions. Wage growth over the last year of 7.8%, hinders them. Financial markets agree that interest rates might be near their peak, but their expectation of a slow fall to settle at around 4.5% can be seen in the bond markets, the Sterling Overnight Interbank Average rates (SONIA), and low-LTV 10 year fixed mortgage rates of around 5%. There is a broad consensus that rates are unlikely to fall at all, until 2025. All of that said, within the financial sector at the moment, there is a greater degree of uncertainty than usual about short-term interest rate intentions. This is creating some ‘surface battles’ for market share, with fixed rates which might look remarkably good in a month or two. Thus, even if your need is as much as six months away, we suggest locking in to today's best rate. You can always switch nearer the deadline, should rates fall unexpectedly.
For independent advice, contact Private Finance on 0870 600 1650 or jackson-stops@privatefinance.co.uk.
Co-founder of The Eurythmics, Dave Stewart is a musician, producer, owner of Bay Street Records and co-founder of the hit US TV talent show Songland, which highlighted songwriters.
Ah, coming back home after a whirlwind of tours and other creative endeavours, traversing the globe with music as my guiding light: it's like stepping into a warm embrace. The road can be seductive and fierce, offering up treasures and challenges in equal measure. But there's nothing quite like the sweet sensation of returning to the haven that is home.
You see, every city I've played, every stage we've graced, they've all added their colours to the canvas of our journey. The cheering crowds, pulsating lights and foreign tongues weaving a tapestry of sound – they've all left their mark on my heart. Yet as the last chord fades and the applause turns into echoes, there's a longing that starts to bud, a longing for familiarity. But there's always the music. The tunes that have been the soundtrack to our travels, take on a new dimension when played within walls that have absorbed our dreams and hopes. Melodies resonate differently, lyrics speak with a newfound intimacy. The studio recordings may capture the essence, but it's in the silence of your own space that the music truly comes alive.
on the roof, the stories of each stage, each city, unfurl like scrolls. The highs and lows, laughter and exhaustion, they all merge into a collage of experiences that only those who have been on the road can truly understand. And as I sip my Martini at the same hour every night and play a simple riff on my old Gibson parlour guitar, I realise that the journey isn't just about the miles travelled – it's about the transformation
So here I am, back on familiar ground, with memories of those stages and faces etched into my being. The road has a way of changing you, of shaping your perception. But home is the anchor that keeps you grounded. It's where the heart finds its rhythm and the soul finds its solace. And as I strum these chords and let the melodies flow, I'm reminded that every note carries a piece of those distant stages, and every lyric echoes with the cheers of the crowds.
SINCE 1910
In those moments of solitude, as I watch the sunset from my window or feel the rain tap gently
Returning home after those long world tours is a symphony of emotions, a reunion of self with surroundings. It’s a reminder that while the world may be vast and diverse, there's no place quite like the sanctuary we call home.