Posts Tagged ‘housing market’
Why Is Foxtons So Undervalued?
I continue to be astonished by how little the stock market values Foxtons. Its market capitalization is currently just £168 million but its value for break up is clearly so much more than this. We are regularly selling managed letting businesses in London for two times turnover or more. Foxtons letting business turns over £100…
Read MoreWhat impact will an agency sector dominated by mega-businesses have on us independents?
Adam Walker (right), a well-known broker who specialises in selling letting businesses, recently wrote a very interesting piece about the consolidation of the lettings industry where he forecast “that within the next five to ten years the lettings market will be dominated by a small number of mega-businesses with independent agents becoming increasingly rare”. If…
Read MoreA Huge Vote Of Confidence In The Letting Market
The recent sales of Stirling Ackroyd, Chestertons and Alexander & Co represents a huge vote of confidence in the UK letting market. Despite endless articles about the decline of the buy to let market, it seems that a private equity fund and a large European property conglomerate still have enough confidence in the sector to…
Read MoreThe Impact of Higher Interest Rates
Interest rates are now at their highest rate for 15 years and the whole country is reeling from the impact. So far, letting agents have been relatively unaffected. Some landlords are leaving the sector because they cannot afford the increase in their mortgage payments but increased rents have more than compensated for the lost fee…
Read MoreWill The Buy to Let Sector Survive?
Our government seems to be intent on destroying the buy to let sector. Changes to taxation have made it far more difficult for landlords with mortgages to make a satisfactory return on their investment. Frequent changes to legislation have imposed huge extra costs on landlords and have left them in fear of being hit with…
Read MoreHow To Make A Profit In A Downturn
In last month’s article, I said that good agents can make money during a downturn in the housing market. In view of the economic damage caused by Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, it seems appropriate this month to cover this topic in much greater detail. Let’s take as an example an estate agency which generates income…
Read MoreWhat Next For The Housing Market?
A week is a long time in politics and a month is a very long time for a columnist. I can hardly believe that only last month I wrote a piece about how positive the outlook was for the housing market following Covid. Since then, dark clouds have returned with a vengeance. The war in…
Read MoreWhat Will Be The Long-term Impact Of COVID On The Housing Market?
Now that the Negotiator magazine is back in print again, I must write my monthly article a couple of weeks before it is published. This makes me a little nervous about covering fast-moving topics but this month I am going to make an exception because this article is too important to delay. After two years…
Read MoreThe End Of Let-only Contracts?
It is commonly accepted that the property market has survived Covid-19 well but this is not entirely true. The truth is that some sectors of the market have done very much better than others. Residential sales agents have been to hell and back. When the first lockdown was announced last spring, many agents felt that…
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