Monthly Archives: July 2017

The Future of Student Housing

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Held in late June 2017, this half-day conference explored some of the issues of the day facing the student housing sector – with a range keynotes and panel discussions involving investors, agents, sector professionals, amongst other stakeholders and representatives.  Topics approached included the current state of play and challenges; ongoing investment interest; an innovative student mortgage finance model; perspectives from a student landlord; how to balance quality with affordability; student housing development financing and some direct insights into how the sector is attending to real student needs. We have outlined some of the key takeaways from these presentations over this long-form post.  Please click on the links in the contents box below to head to specific topics of interest and use the arrows to scroll back up. The State of Play and Challenges for the Student Housing Sector  Karen Burke,... [Read More]

Rightmove´s Head of Lettings on the Current State of Play

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Below are some of the highlights of a recent conversation we had with Sam Mitchell, Head of Lettings at Rightmove – largely based on the portal´s Q2 2017 Rental Tracker: The quarterly data is extracted from Rightmove´s portal, based on properties marketed by both online and offline letting agents. Achieved rents may be lower and even higher, relative to the level of demand; The Q2 figures revealed that, while the national average asking rent (excluding Greater London) rose by 1.9%, Greater London´s rental values actually dropped by 3.2% (with a quarterly drop of 0.2%); However, the general feeling moving forward is that the supply of rental property is likely to be constricted as a result of the 3% Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) surcharge implemented in April 2016, Section 24 of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015 and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) stricter borrowing... [Read More]

Commentary on the July 2017 Property Investor´s Factfile

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July 2017 Property Investor´s Factfile The Property Investor Blog´s monthly factfile presents a range of relevant data from national / London house prices, the latest buy to let Limited Company (SPV) loan rates, LIBOR / SWAP rates and rentals to mortgage debt figures and information on the first-time buyer sector.  Some noteworthy observations from the last month are outlined below: According to Rightmove asking prices for UK homes fell by 0.37% in June, the first price drop in the month since 2009. Director Miles Shipside attributed this to buyers´ confidence being “affected by inflation outstripping their pay packets” in addition to “current political events”. The figures were indeed based on properties advertised between May 14 and June 10 (therefore largely covering the weeks preceding the general election); Data from the Halifax reported a 0.48% rise in prices between and April and May; Whilst the latest Nationwide... [Read More]