In the world of surveying, common questions abound and are always being asked. ‘What is going to happen to UK house prices?’ tends to be the most common and the most general, and the answer is always, ‘We just don’t know’.
In 2014, five or so years, after the worst excesses of the pre-Credit Crunch mortgage and housing market were laid bare for all to see, the FPC introduced two changes designed to curb those excesses specifically in the lending sphere.
Tell most people you are involved in property, or the mortgage and housing markets, and you’re likely to get a number of stock questions thrown back at you.
Understandably, after the end of the stamp duty holiday in September, many were wondering what the repercussions for the housing market might be in October. Would we see a notable drop-off in transactions similar to that which was evident in July?
If that sounds like the type of lazy question you might get asked at a job interview, which is almost impossible to answer, then I apologise.
We are now over four years on from the Grenfell Tower disaster which took the lives of 72 people and brought to light just how dangerous, and susceptible to fire, some of the cladding was (and is) on hundreds of buildings all across the country.
If you’re a UK consumer who takes only a passing interest in the housing market then the likelihood is your views on ‘what it is like’ are probably shaped by the media, perhaps specifically the newspapers, you read.
Such is the inter-related nature of the housing and mortgage markets, that it’s inevitable that a pressure felt in one area will have consequences across multiple others.
I’m writing this the day before the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice-President of the US.
PI, at the best of times, feels like a ‘crunching hit’ waiting to happen and especially at this juncture when firms are being ‘battered’.