I hope you’ve had a great week. At Track Capital, we’ve been taking more trips to development sites across the UK, capturing some exciting footage and progress pictures for our investors.
Investing in off-plan developments with Track Capital means being involved from start to finish, with developer updates, site visits and a bespoke unit selection process. We are proud to be doing everything we can to make investing an enjoyable and simple process for you.
Now, let’s take a look at all the headlines that caught our attention this week. I always try to summarise the links to save you having to click through.
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Property News This Week
- ‘Levelling Up’ Plans to Transform Derelict Homes – The Department for Levelling Up in the sector for Housing & Communities has announced its intention to transform countrywide derelict and underused brownfield sites into new homes to support young people and families in their quest for home-ownership. This comes as part of the government’s wider Levelling Up scheme, implemented to equalise wealth and opportunity across the country. The plan also aims to protect and extend green areas and reinvigorate derelict buildings, specifically focusing on communities in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and the Tees Valley. The local authorities for these areas have all been apportioned a share of the £30 million regeneration funding in order to create 2,500 new homes.
- Buyers Are More Interested in New Homes Since Pandemic – An independently commissioned survey on UK homeowners and homebuyers found evidence of a strong uptick for the new-build housing market. The survey revealed that over 25% of homeowners are more interested in purchasing a new build than they were before the pandemic, with 50% of respondents stating a willingness to buy a new build. The new-build market has received major government support since the onset of the pandemic, such as Help-to-Buy schemes, the introduction of covid-secure homes and the stamp duty holiday, which encouraged many new buyers onto the market. All these factors play a part in the new-build market’s positive upward trend.
- Property Transactions Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels – Data released by the HMRC shows that UK residential property transactions reached 85,520 across the UK in January. This is a drop of 12.6% when compared to January 2021, and is 22.2% lower when compared to December 2021.
When compared with levels pre-pandemic, where January transactions reached approximately 83,840, we can see a strong similarity in transaction levels. Despite this drop, the transaction level overall remains very strong and indicates a resilient post-pandemic market, with the drop suspected to be more related to undersupply than a lack of interested buyers. Although steady demand suggests a strong housing market, uncontrolled house price inflation is likely to be driving prices well beyond the reach of the upcoming generation of potential buyers.
- Russian Property Sanctions May Spark Mass Exodus – Among the slew of UK sanctions being levied at Russia in an attempt to curb its aggressive attempted takeover of Ukraine, investigations related to the ownership of London properties by high net wealth Russian individuals are causing some to believe a mass exodus will result. Estate agency Aston Chase says that there is a real potential for substantial wealth to be removed from the UK if wealthy Russians start to feel their assets are no longer ‘safe’. However, it may be that the younger generation of Russians who are currently living and buying property in the UK feel more confident than their predecessors of the validity of their assets and are therefore not as worried about sanctions becoming stricter in the near future.
That is all we have for you this week. If you have any comments or questions on this week’s news summary then please feel free to send us an email at [email protected] – if not, see you next week.
